Only One Man Knows Who Climbed Everest First and We Can't Find Him

this video is kindly sponsored by brilliant find out more later in the video hey 42 here some of humanity's greatest achievements are so remarkable that the individuals involved will forever go down in history neil armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon roald hamilton was the first to reach the south pole roger bannister ran the first sub four minute mile and yuri gagarin was the first person in space this particular class of firsts are different to most of the other random statistics we humans like to keep track of usain bolt is the fastest man ever to run the utterly arbitrary distance 100 meters but one day someone will do it faster and bolt will have to pass his crown onto a new owner neil armstrong on the other hand will still be the first member of our species to have walked on the moon untold eons from now at the heat death of the universe admittedly it's quite unlikely anyone will actually care at that point but you see what i'm getting at to do something first is to write your name indelibly into humanity's collective history book but there is one famous first that's a little less set in stone than all the others brilliant is a revolutionary problem-solving website and app that teaches you to understand the logic and methodology behind a problem rather than giving you essentially the same problem with different values over and over which doesn't really improve your understanding with over 60 different courses from the fundamentals of mathematics to special relativity and computer programming brilliant provides you with your daily mental workout and a good dose of self-improvement and it's all delivered seamlessly through a friendly and undeniably beautiful user interface as someone who's previously dabbled rather heavily in computer programming i was really interested how brilliant approaches to teaching of computer science and i was not disappointed it didn't just throw meaningless coding tasks at me instead it teaches you the fundamentals that govern computer science and now i genuinely feel like i understand the underlying concepts of computer science better than ever before and why computers and algorithms behave in the way they do so if you're looking to learn about computer science or even excel in maths and science brilliant will be there to help make you brilliant go to www.brilliant.org forward slash 42 to sign up for free and the first 200 people will get 20 off their annual premium membership in 1953 sir edmund hillary and tenzing norgay did something truly remarkable they became the first humans to reach the very top of the world the peak of mount everest but some people believe this particular first was in reality a second because it turns out mount everest may in fact have been successfully climbed almost 30 years before the date currently recorded in the history books by george mallory and andrew irvine two members of the 1924 british expedition to everest this is the story of the biggest unanswered question in the history of mountaineering one that has endured for almost a century who really climbed mount everest first on the 8th of june 1924 george mallory and andrew irvine were making their bid for the summit of the world's tallest mountain irvine was just 21 at the time and a relatively inexperienced mountaineer but mallory was one of the best around a veteran of two previous everest expeditions and a minor celebrity back home in britain you may not be familiar with the name but you've probably come across his most famous quote when asked by a reporter why he wanted to climb everest like an absolute boss mallory simply replied because it's there as the two men toiled their way through the rarefied air at the top of the world another member of the expedition noel odell was moving up everest hundreds of meters below in a support role the mountain had been shrouded in mist and cloud for most of the day but around lunchtime the sky suddenly cleared odell squinted up against the sunlight and there clinging to the side of the mountain he could just make out two tiny figures his heart started to pump half a beat faster and not because of the effort of breathing the thin air malory and irvine had almost reached the summit just as soon as the breaking weather had arrived it was gone and mallory and irvine just specs against the snow disappeared completely from view noel odell didn't know it then but that was to be the last time his friends were ever seen alive there has never been any doubt that george mallory and andrew irvine lost their lives shortly after odell glimpsed them that day the question was did they make it to the summit of mount everest before they met their end it's hard to overstate just how dangerous a place mount everest is its peak rises a frankly ridiculous 8849 meters above sea level that's 5.5 miles which is just about getting into the territory of cruise altitudes for commercial jets to call the environment at that kind of altitude challenging would be like diving into a swimming pool full of molten lava and complaining that the water was a tad warm everest is so tall that the jet stream regularly batters it bringing with it winds of up to 175 miles per hour to put that into perspective gusts of just 73 miles per hour are considered hurricane force if you ever fancy trying to climb the mountain you'd better wrap up warm average temperatures hover at around -20 celsius in the summer and -35 in the winter you'll need your wits about you too because everest is going to attempt to murder you at regular intervals by burying you in avalanches dropping landslides down on your head or luring you into one of the countless crevasses that crisscrosses its glasses but horrific weather temperatures that would make your freezer feel cozy and death by snow and dice would actually be the least of your worries if you ever did decide to brave everest because the top 10 percent or so of the world's tallest mountain pierces what is charmingly known as the death zone at this altitude generally considered to be above 8 000 meters there simply isn't enough oxygen to sustain human life there's no acclimating yourself to these conditions if you're foolish enough to stay up that high for long you'll die in the death zone life expectancy is literally measured in hours despite having been climbed over 8 000 times the longest anyone has ever survived at the summit of mount everest without supplemental oxygen it's just 21 hours you may be thinking that it's no real surprise or squishy hairless apes don't last long up everest were hardly built for physical extremes after all i start to feel dangerously chilly if someone accidentally leaves a window open but it isn't just us no non-microscopic animal of any kind is known to make its home in the top 2 000 metres of everest slopes not even plants can live this high the last scraps of vegetation on everest disappear at 6500 meters well short of the summit put simply the upper reaches of mount everest are abhorrent to life as we know it okay so hopefully i've painted a picture that everest is a sub-optimal holiday spot for those looking to remain in possession of a beating heart because all this explains why it took so long for the mountain to be climbed in the first place everest was first established as the tallest mountain on earth way back in 1852 but nobody got anywhere near climbing it for decades which brings me back to the question at hand who got there first according to the official report from the 1924 expedition it was mallory and irvine though nobody on the team had definitive proof of a successful ascent noel odell's sighting of the pair near the summit and the team's absolute belief in the mountaineering brilliance of mallory was enough to convince them the two men had made it before succumbing to the unrelenting violence of the mountain but over the years people began to question the validity of that conclusion odell claimed to have last sighted mallory and irvine at what is now known as the second step a feature on everest's northeast ridge that would have been the single most challenging section of their entire route according to odell the two climbs the steep rock of the second step in just five minutes something most mountaineers believe simply isn't possible in fact many in the climbing community suspect the second step would have been beyond the skill level of the two climbers entirely it's so difficult that these days almost everyone who summits everest by this route climbs the second step by way of a ladder and the difficulty of the climb wasn't the only question mark against mallory and irvine the pair were equipped with all the state-of-the-art mountaineering equipment of the day unfortunately state of the art in 1924 was quite we're talking about a time before the invention of the television here the expedition did carry a primitive oxygen setup but it was their clothes that might have really let them down these days mountaineers wear cavernous down-filled jackets and over advanced technical gear whereas mallory and irvine were decked out in far simpler garments of layered wool silk and cotton that looked a bit like the kind of thing bear grylls might come up with if you asked him to design a business suit for a long time people have reasoned that this kind of get up simply wasn't up to the demands of climbing everest and the pair would have quickly succumbed to the freezing temperatures and biting winds that plagued the mountain's peak but whilst there were plenty of reasons to doubt whether mallory and irvine could really have made it to the summit there is also a persistent lingering suspicion that they may just have done it for every argument against the pair there was an equally believable argument for for example perhaps the second step was beyond even mallory's prodigious climbing ability but that might not have actually mattered because mallory is known to have previously made use of a mountaineering technique that involves using your climbing buddy as a kind of human ladder it might sound a bit fanciful that he could have cheesed such a hard climb this way but it turns out that's exactly how a chinese expedition did it when they made the first documented ascent of the second step in 1960 and if mallory had been able to get through this section of the climb he would arguably have been odds on to have made the summit even if it meant leaving irvine behind as for the team's lowly equipment and old-fashioned clothing carefully researched replicas of the outfits used during the expedition were tested on everest back in 2007 and were found to be perfectly adequate for a summit bid in fact the team carrying out the tests who were all experienced mountaineers found the archaic outfits to be extremely comfortable and much lighter than their modern equivalents so yeah there's never been enough concrete evidence to rule out the possibility that one or both of mallory and irvine made the summit the problem is there's never been any concrete evidence to prove that they did make it either not that that stopped people from trying to find some in 1999 an expedition set out to retrace mallory and irvine's steps in the hopes of proving once and for all whether or not they reached the summit back in 1924 everest is easily one of the most challenging places on planet earth to mount a search effort and yet on the first day scouring their chosen site the team hit the jackpot because they didn't just find a few subtle old clues hidden here and there they found george mallory this is where i should probably point out that bodies aren't exactly uncommon on mount everest more than 300 people have died on the mountain as their dreams of reaching the top rapidly transformed into nightmares but the atmosphere is so cold and dry up there that bodies don't rot away they freeze it's usually too dangerous and costly to retrieve the dead and so they're simply left there frozen corpses are so common around everest's jagged peak that some of them like the one known as green boots have become grisly landmarks that help climbers pinpoint exactly where they are on the mountain having said that finding malory who in the years since the disappearance had become a mountaineering legend of almost mythical proportions was huge the body was frozen solid its skin bleached pure white by the sun but mallory was remarkably well preserved one of his legs was badly broken and he had rope burns around his waist suggesting he may have taken a fall whilst attached to irvine but he couldn't have fallen far as that was the extent of his injuries well aside from the deep puncture wound at his temple which was probably the cause of his death it seems likely mallory hits his head on a sharp rock during the fall though it's also possible his own ice axe was responsible for the injury as he frantically attempted to use it to arrest his fall with a technique known as a glissade all of this was interesting stuff a window into the last desperate seconds of a legendary mountaineer who died some 75 years before but the big question remained did this tragic accident happen on the way down from the peak of everest after a successful summit well maybe because the 1999 expedition did find a couple of pieces of evidence hinting that mallory might well have made it all the way to the top of the world before he died for starters his goggles were found tucked away in his pocket and not on his head suggesting he may have been descending the mountain in the dark everest is a death trap at the best of times and wandering around on its desolate windswept slopes at night isn't the kind of thing any experienced mountaineer would contemplate but anyone who's climbed everest will be familiar with what's known as summit fever a kind of pseudo condition where climates start to get more and more reckless the closer they get to the prestige of a successful summit if mallory had felt he was close enough to complete the climb he may well have pushed on far longer than was sensible leaving him no choice but to descend in the dark after hitting the top the second clue was even more intriguing it was well known that mallory had kept a picture of his wife with him throughout the expedition with the intention of leaving it at the top of everest if he made the summit plenty of things were found on mallory's frozen corpse in 1999 a pocket knife an altimeter and several handwritten notes but no picture of course neither of these clues proves anything mallory may simply have taken two pairs of goggles with him up to the summit with the set he was wearing being torn from his head in the violence of his final fall as for the picture it does seem unlikely that it somehow dropped out of his pocket but unlikely isn't the same as impossible and hey maybe he just forgot to take it with him that day although admittedly it wasn't found amongst his possessions at the team's camp okay so this is usually the part of the video where i tell you we'll likely never know the truth of what happened and that this one will remain a mystery forever but as it turns out there is actually genuine hope we might one day know for sure whether or not mallory and irvine achieved their ultimate goal and became the first humans ever to set foot on the summit of mount everest because along with the photograph of his wife something else was missing when mallory's body was found in 1999 a camera mallory and irvine are known to have taken a kodak pocket camera with them on their summit attempt and remarkably experts from kodak believe that if found there's a good chance the film within will still be viable they've even provided instructions as to how to handle the camera if it is ever found to minimize the chances of damaging the film since the pair would certainly have taken a picture of the momentous achievement had they been successful in reaching the summit if the camera is ever found it may well finally give up everest's greatest secret the fact that no camera was located at mallory's final resting place isn't too much of a surprise irvine was in charge of the expedition's cameras and was the more accomplished photographer so it makes sense that he would have been in charge of snapping the big moment unfortunately as of today the location of irvine's body remains unknown but even here this strange tale offers a few tantalizing clues in 1979 a group of climbers were sharing stories from their camp high up on the slopes of everest when one of them chinese mountaineer wang hong mao recalled having seen what he described as an old british dead at 8 100 meters during an expedition four years earlier as i've said dead bodies are a dime a dozen on mount everest but old british ones at the altitude and location wang'd described are not as it happens it was wang's story that led the 1999 expedition to george mallory's body but details wang had described the position and orientation of the corpse the type and location of the injuries it had suffered didn't match malory's body at all leading many people to speculate that wang had actually found irvine unfortunately nobody has ever been able to ask him for more information about the exact location in which he saw the long dead climber because he was killed in an avalanche on everest the very day after sharing his story back in 1979 almost as though the mountain was trying to protect its last great secret expeditions still periodically search for irvine's body chasing similar leads to wangs or checking out promising sights after scouring high-resolution satellite images after all there's no doubt irvine is still up there somewhere and with him just maybe a camera containing a roll of undeveloped film that could quite literally rewrite the history of one of humanity's greatest achievements for now sir edmund hillary and tenzing norgay's names rightly deserve to be listed as the first men to successfully summit mount everest but make no mistake there's every chance that george mallory and andrew irvine or perhaps mallory alone made it to the very top of the world almost 30 years before then [Music] thanks for watching

Channel: Thoughty2

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Length: 22min 54sec (1374 seconds)

Published: Mon May 17 2021