[Music] hello again I live up here in the far northwest of Scotland where I run an adventure school but sometimes where I want to think of it I come up here just a couple of hundred feet up behind the house it's not really a hill far less a mountain in the world scheme of things but this addition a wide world is all about men and mountains and mountains much higher than this one first I want to ask you a question who said because it's there and what mountain well the mountain is easy enough Everest but the man George Lee Mallory not long after he made that famous remark Mallory was last seen less than a thousand feet from the summit and still going up so was he in fact the first conquer of Everest nearly thirty years before hillary and tenzing this question has fascinated many people besides me the mystery of Everest was on the morning of Sunday June the 8th 1924 the George Mallory and his climbing companion Andrew Irvin set out to climb the final slopes of the highest mountain in the world shortly after midday they were spotted less than a thousand feet from the top then clouds rolled in and they were never seen again [Music] now more than 60 years later we retrace their route up the mountain and look again at the evidence of climbers and historians to try and unravel what remains one of the greatest mysteries of modern exploration could these two men have been the first to reach the top of Everest the last person to see Mallory and open before they disappeared was the expedition geologist Noah Liddell in an interview just before he died he told us that he believed nothing would have stopped Mallory going for the top I think that when they got to the foot of the I know pyramid it was late Mallory would say well we got to hurry up here because as he is he almost poaching dusk and long we go I don't think I mean in any way would hesitate to go no oh I think he'd been unfit enough to say oh no I don't think we can manage it I think you've been perfectly willing to go on and they might well have got her top captain John Knoll who is now 97 was the official photographer and filmmaker on that 1924 expedition he believes that Mallory realized that this would probably be his last opportunity to reach the summit and he felt Mallory was a very determined man I got the impression that he was absolutely obsessed to the idea of timing about everything it said his heart felt like they talked about nothing else at all and I believe that the clutter of the walk was a reason to his death until the first Everest reconnaissance expedition of 1921 no Western explorers had been within 40 miles of the mountain and in those days knowledge of high-altitude climbing was very limited no one knew for example whether it would be humanly possible to survive on the summit at 29,000 feet without oxygen you've got to realize one thing about them shooting the member of the extradition because we were short of climbers you see the First World War killed many of the youth of our country a terrible loss to our country these expeditions were exploration in the grand style hundreds of Porter's cooks and donkey men serving a handful of curiously assorted and by modern standards ill-equipped Mountaineers the Tibetans were amused by this strange cavalcade despite this these were men in the mould of the great Victorian explorers and Empire builders to whom nothing seemed impossible George Lee Mallory was a Vickers son from Moberly in Cheshire he was a schoolmaster and lived in Cambridge with his wife and three small children he had been a contemporary and friend of the poet Rupert Brooke he was a quiet man an intellectual but by 1924 he was the most experienced Himalayan climber of his generation Andrew come in Irvin sandy to his friends was only 22 an engineering student at Merton College Oxford he was the star of the University rowing team tall blond and powerfully built this was to be his first time in the Himalayas but he had almost no mountaineering experience yet on the boat trip to India Mallory had singled him out as a possible climbing partner it would he thought be a powerful combination of experience and youth Everest was the chance of a lifetime for young Irvin but for Mallory this was his third Everest expedition at the age of 37 he knew it was unlikely he would go again in his last letter to his wife Ruth he said it's fifty to one against us but we'll have a whack yet and do ourselves proud all these early expeditions attempted Everest from the north side from the tibetan side in those days Tibet was open and Nepal was closed it's a route now returned to by many of the recent expeditions but it's an exhausting 12-mile approach up the east wrong book glacier before the mountain is even reached the principal barrier to the upper slopes is the imposing cliff of the North Col 1,500 feet of steep snow and ice back in 1921 Mallory had climbed to the North Col at 23,000 feet and it's seen a possible route onward to the summit the following year he was with another British team which had pushed to 27 thousand three hundred feet within striking distance of the summit and far higher than anyone had been before but that expedition was marred at the very end when a column of Porter's Mallory was leading at the North Col was caught in an avalanche seven men died and Mallory held himself responsible for that accident now in 1924 the team once again made the arduous six-week journey from northern India to the mountain they arrived with high hopes after all they'd got very close to the summit in 1922 Mallory wrote to a mountaineering friend we're going to sail to the top this time and God with us or stamp to the top with our teeth in the wind but a month later it was a different story heavy snow and high winds had destroyed the chance of a quick ascent to attempts to establish a camp on the North Col at 23,000 feet had already cost the lives of a porter and a Gurkha climber and Mallory wrote home to his wife it's been a bad time altogether I look back on tremendous effort and exhaustion and dismal looking out of the tent door into a world of snow and vanishing hopes hope was vanishing fast the onset of heavy monsoon snows could be no more than a few days away now spelling an end to all climbing for the year yet there was still enough spirit in the team for one last all-out assault Mallory wrote the issue will shortly be decided the third time we walk up the east wrong book plasyer will be the last for better or worse we've counted our wounded and know roughly how much to strike off the strength of our little army as we plan the next act of battle we expect no mercy from Everest in the first attempt on the summit Mallory and Jeffrey Bruce failed to establish a hike camp because their Porter's insisted on turning back two days later with the camp now in place Colonel Norton the expedition leader with Howard Somerville travels across the North Face towards the summit they were climbing without the help of bottled oxygen and summable was forced to give up because of a severe high-altitude cough Norton went on alone to set a new high altitude record of 28,000 200 feet climbing to this altitude had proved an alarming experience Somervell had almost died of suffocation in a coughing fit and Norton had to be carried down in great pain suffering from snow blindness because he had taken off his goggles a day or two later Somerville wrote to the times we have no excuse we have been beaten in a fair fight beaten by the height of a mountain and by our own shortness of breath but Mallory was not persuaded he was determined to make just one more final attempt this time he'd do it with oxygen in fact he reckoned the two previous attempts had been a waste of effort without it but the sets used in the 1920s were primitive they were notoriously unreliable and each weighed 33 pounds this is an enormous load of high altitude but Irvin was an engineer and carried out extensive modifications he reduced the weight by five pounds and coaxed the best out of the equipment nevertheless he was appalled and wrote home the oxygen apparatus has already been boggled they haven't taken my design but what they have sent is hopeless breaks if you touch it leaks is ridiculously clumsy and heavy out of 90 cylinders 15 were empty and 24 leaked badly by the time they got to Calcutta heed God's a broke one today taking it out of its packing case for this last climb Mallory had selected Irving as his climbing partner rather than Noah Liddell who might have seen the logical mountaineering choice because Odell was by far the more experienced climber and just coming to the peak of his fitness I think Mallory realized that since they were going to try to get a beneficial effect from oxygen operators Evan had done a lot of the last stages of work on the apparatus they were taking that he admitted to Maris he was the best mechanic myself he doesn't offer lot of work on this apparatus and when Mallory spoke to me about this I said that I was perfectly satisfied and I told him frankly that my interest in the mountain was not only climate but horses now suddenly the composition of it and told him about the geology on the morning of June the 6th Odell took this picture of Mallory and Irving leaving camp 4 on the North Col it's the last picture ever taken of them next day he received a message sent down with the Porter to say they had gone on up to their high camp just 2,000 feet below the summit dear Adele were awfully sorry to have left things in such a mess our honor cooker rolled down the slope at the last moment be sure of getting back to 4:00 tomorrow in time to evacuate before dark as I hope to in the tent I must have left a compass for the Lord's sake rescue it we're without to here on 90 atmosphere for the two days so we'll probably go on two cylinders but it is a bloody load for climbing perfect weather for the job yours ever gee Mallory on the day of their last ascent Adele was climbing in support about half a mile below and behind them the clouds suddenly cleared above him he wrote later I noticed far away on a snow slope leading up to what seemed to me to be the last step but one from the base of the final pyramid a tiny object moving and approaching the rock step a second object followed and then the first climb to the top as I stood intently watching this dramatic appearance the scene became enveloped in cloud once more it was of course none other than Mallory and Irvine an hour after Dells sighting in the early afternoon of the summit day the weather took a turn for the worse concern for Mallory's and urban safety Adele climbed alone beyond Camp six in a high wind and driving sleet to try and find his friends but there was no sign and as instructed by Mallory he returned to camp four at the North Col for that night [Music] over the next two days despite feeling exhausted Adele climbed again on his own to the top camp but found no trace of Mallory and urban [Music] he now been above 23,000 feet for 11 days and his solitary search for the missing climbers barely a thousand feet below the summit remains a mountaineering achievement without parallel [Music] there's blowing very hard blowing blowing snow and miss suffers visibility was bad very bad anyhow I got back to bivouac tent after looking for them above camp six let's say above ten seven thousand feet I got up I don't know I got up somewhere between 27 or 28 thousand feet and got back there i signaled by a very primitive means by means of sleeping bags placed a certain position although there's pats of snow I did indicating couldn't find them and that what me must conclude that they were lost the expedition leader authorized an answering signal abandon hope come down there was no point in mounting another search after four deaths Colonel Norton was not prepared to take further risks he felt Mallory's and Ervin's lives had not been wasted but they had died to keep alive the spirit of adventure that had made the British Empire he said we were a sad little party from the first we accepted the loss of our comrades in that rational spirit which all of our generation had learned in the great war and there was never a tendency to a morbid harping on the irrevocable the struggle to reach the highest point on earth had made heroes of Mallory and Irvine and captured the imagination of a world so recently savaged by war no one can know for sure whether Mallory and Irvine were the first to reach the summit of Everest officially the honor of first ascent went to Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953 yes when I when I reached the summit of Mount Everest and sort of looked round about and particularly when I looked down towards the North Col the Mallory actually was very much in my mind and although I really had no hope of actually seeing any sign of his passing I certainly looked down towards the North Col I looked full of Oliver and down the very steep slopes leading from the summit and but I saw nothing no sign of Mallory's passing the loss of Mallory and urban brought the death toll over the first three Everest expeditions to 13 and still the tantalizing uncertainty remained had the mountain been climbed in 1986 an American team went to Everest to examine the clues and the conflicting accounts of Mallory's last climb the team included old result british historian and one of the world's leading authorities on Everest and Tom Herzl a Boston engineer who has studied the Everest mystery for 16 years together they've written a book in which Herzl outlines his own controversial theory about what might have happened what I think happened is that Mallory in Irvin reached the second step a 50 foot cliff and the only real obstacle in their path at about one o'clock in the afternoon at this time Mallory had to make a major decision because it was really time to turn back so he had a brainstorm he decided to send Irvin down who was urban was an inexperienced climber he he would take Urban's oxygen and together with his own give him just enough to reach the summit and then Mallory could continue on the risky climb to the top remember this was Mallory's third time to Everest and certainly would be his last attempt to reach the summit of the highest mountain in the world they started off Mallory up and Irvin back to camp six and in about an hour were hit by a snow squall the snow squall proved too much for urban and he fell to his death Mallory on easier ground continued up I believe Mallory reached the summit but then he faced a long arduous descent it's impossible to say how Mallory died he may have fallen off the mountain but I think he may have actually reached the second step and realized it would be impossible to climb down so he decided to sleep out in the open and would have died of exposure and is it any wonder Mallory liked other climbers of his day was dressed in a tweed jacket and cotton wind suit he was already according to the plan they'd made four hours late to arouse Kenan and when four hours late he would going forward to towards the top not returning back to their last camp now on Everest no human being can stand survive without the health of his sleeping bag in his tent at that altitude their last camp was 27,000 feet above the sea they had to get back to it that night they never did nobody doubted Mallory's courage or his snow craft he was one of the best climbers of his generation but he had his flaws a loyal mountaineering friend called him affectionately a very stout hearted baby but quite unfit to be placed in charge of anything including himself one of the enduring controversies surrounding Mallory's last climb lies in that brief sighting by Odell he was only three and a half thousand feet away when he thought he saw them but did he see men or just rocks I'm absolutely certain that they were climbers they were moving actually moving figures it's a mystery which intrigues all Mountaineers Chris Bonnington who has led three expeditions to Everest and reached the summit himself in 1985 readily admits that he's fascinated I'm practically certain my own mind that Adele did see the two figures and they were people and they weren't rocks and I think the reason for this is firstly Adele himself the fact that he had first-class eyesight the fact that he was completely at home in that environment the fact that he had a scientists powers of observation I mean the way he was wandering around looking for rocks the fact that he actually saw the figures moving and specifically said they were moving which I think means that they couldn't possibly have been two rocks they were definitely moving figures and therefore they must have been mariner 'then it was nine years after the deaths of Mallory and urban before another expedition went to Everest but the mystery was heightened by the only clue they found to the fate of the two climbers they came across an ice axe lying on slabs above camp six puzzling thing was that it was lying considerably lower down the route than the point at which Odell lisore Mallory and Irvine hadn't slid down at all was lying flat there on these rocks well that was left there obviously left there must have been left there well well whoever left on the way up all the way down is often arisen there's a question sir jack long hland one of the leading climbers a decade later was on the unsuccessful 1933 Everest expedition which found the axe this much must mark the spot where an accident happened on the grounds that first nobody in his senses is going to be even Isaac's on Everest either on the way up or on the way down it's far too useful in a number of places more than 40 years passed and nothing else was discovered on the mountain then a rumor reached the West that in 1975 a Chinese climber had stumbled across a body at 26,000 600 feet on a sloping terrace in the middle of the North Face directly below the sight of that ice axe it's a report that has never been officially confirmed could it be that the Chinese are perhaps unwilling to invite speculation into Mallory and Irvine slime because that might cast doubt on their claim to have made the first ascent of the North Ridge the Chinese climber who found the body in 1975 died on Everest four years later the day before he died he revealed his secret to a Japanese man Taniya and Tom her sell sums up the evidence about this body we know that it was an English dead for two reasons one the Chinese and Japanese characters are very similar although the spoken language is not and Wang actually etched in the snow the words for English dead 80 100 meters and then pointed up on the hill so there was absolutely no question about it in addition the single English word that Liang knew was the word English because all the expedition's prior to the this one had been English coming in secondly they then had a sort of hands and feet description and hat and Wang actually went like this to indicate and point it up to indicate that there was someone sleeping at 80 100 meters the body appeared to being found directly below where the ice axe was discovered in 1933 the body has not been sighted since but it surely must be that of Mallory or Ervin because they are the only climbers known to have been lost anywhere near the spot but which one is it did Mallory or Ervin wandering off the route stop there and later died of exposure or did one of them fall to the terrace were they on the way up or the way down those answers are still unknown it is not possible without stronger evidence to award the laurels of first descent to Mallory and Irvine the honor goes to ed Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing there's became the names that flashed around the world on coronation morning 1953 vivid were discovered that Mallory had an actual fact set foot on the top of Everest obviously it would make some difference to Tanjung and myself for 33 years we have been regarded as the heroic figures who who first reached the summit of Everest well now I guess we'd be just downgraded a little bit to being the the first two men who reached the summit and actually got safely down again which brings up a point of course if you climb a mountain for the first time and die on the descent is it really a complete first ascent of the mountain I'm rather inclined to think personally that maybe it's quite important for getting down whether they reach the summit or not it does seem clear that Mallory's seriously underestimated the time it would take to reach the chop and return to their camp at 27,000 feet a common error of judgment at high altitude but one that may well have cost them their lives all climbers understand the dilemma close to the summit after a long and exhausting climb the determination to get to the top can be overwhelming I'd certainly I'd love to think that they actually reached the summit of Everest I think it's a it's a lovely thought and I think it's something you know gut emotion yes I'd love them to have got there whether they did or not I think that's something one one just cannot know I think one can say it is perfectly possible they did and I think the mystery the question of whether they did or not I think that's one of the nice things to conjecture about there was never any doubt among Mallory's loyal friends veteran Explorer Tom Longstaff who was with him on the 1922 Everest expedition wrote about it in a letter to a friend he was quite certain it is obvious to any climber that they got up you cannot expect that pair to weigh the chances of return I should be weighing them still it sounds a fair day probably they were above those clouds that hid them from Adele how they must have appreciated that view of half the world it was worthwhile to them now they'll never grow old and I'm very sure they would not change places with any of us [Music] [Music] well I agree with Bonnington I have a feeling that for Mallory at that stage of his life getting to the top of Everest was everything and really the spirit is everything and I feel II could have made it certainly it's a staring and splendid story but the fact remains that the first people to see the summit take photographs and come back alive were not Hillary and Tenzing they were the crews of two specially prepared British aircraft in 1933 it was a remarkable expedition and it's their story we're going to see now one way or another we're going to reach that summit tonight [Music]
