100th ANNIVERSARY !!

Credit: Pictorial Press Ltd/ Alamy Stock Photo

In May 1953, New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached the top of Mount Everest. Their groundbreaking climb to the 29,035-foot summit made them the first people to officially stand atop the world’s tallest mountain. Rewind to 1924, however, and the fatal expedition of British climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine leaves open the question of the date of the first Everest ascent. Mallory and Irvine were last sighted by fellow climber Noel Odell on June 8, 1924 at the Second Step, just 820 vertical feet from the summit. About an hour later, an intense snow squall obscured Odell’s view, and the mountaineers were tragically never seen alive again. Did they make it to the top? Why did they vanish without trace? How did they scale the infamous Second Step, which wasn’t officially climbed until 1960 with far more advanced equipment?

A breakthrough in this Everest mystery was the discovery of Mallory’s body in 1999 during an expedition to search for the missing mountaineers. The corpse showed signs of injuries from a fall that would have left him unable to continue on foot. His rib cage was compressed by a rope, thus suggesting that Mallory and Irvine were attached at the time of the fall. Gone from the body was a photo of Mallory’s wife, Ruth Dixon Turner, that he had promised to leave at the summit. Despite rumored sightings, Irvine’s body is yet to be found. Also missing are two Kodak Vest Pocket cameras owned by Mallory and Irvine. If discovered, the cameras could once and for all confirm what the mountaineering world has waited almost a century to know.