Mallory and Irvine

Summary

On 8 June 1924 George Mallory and Andrew Irvine were seen high on the Northeast Ridge of Everest, climbing towards the summit, and did not return. Mallory's body was found in 1999 and part of Irvine's in 2024; whether either reached the top is still unknown.

A century of searching has partly established where the two men ended up and, broadly, how Mallory died. It has not produced the one object that might show how high they climbed: the camera they are believed to have carried.

What is documented

The climbers. George Mallory, 37, had been on the British Everest expeditions of 1921 and 1922. Andrew "Sandy" Irvine, 22, was the youngest member of the 1924 expedition. With Noel Odell he was one of its two oxygen experts, and Mallory chose him as his partner partly for what the expedition's account calls his "peculiar genius for mechanical expedients" with the faulty oxygen apparatus. On 8 June 1924 they set out from Camp VI, the expedition's highest camp, climbing with oxygen, using the modified apparatus with two cylinders.

The last sighting. Odell was climbing alone below them in support. At about 26,000 feet the cloud cleared, and he saw on the ridge "a tiny object moving and approaching the rock step. A second object followed". The first climbed to the top of the step; then cloud covered the scene. He timed it at 12.50 pm. In the expedition's account, published in 1925, Odell wrote that he could not be precisely certain which of two steps on the ridge they were on. At the time he took it for the higher Second Step, but he had since become "a little doubtful" that it would have been visible from where he stood. If it was the Second Step, he noted, Mallory's schedule had them reaching it by 8 am at the latest. They were moving, he wrote, "as if endeavouring to make up for lost time".

No return. Mallory and Irvine did not come back. Odell climbed back up to Camp VI, found no sign of them, and laid out two sleeping bags in the form of a T on a snow patch, the agreed signal that no trace of the missing party could be found.

The ice axe, 1933. On 30 May 1933, on the first summit attempt of that year's British expedition, Percy Wyn Harris found an ice axe about 60 feet below the crest of the Northeast Ridge and 250 yards east of the First Step. It lay free on smooth, sloping slabs and, in the expedition leader's account, looked "quite new". Only Mallory and Irvine were known to have climbed there, and the axe is generally attributed to Irvine.

The "English dead", 1975. A Chinese climber, Wang Hongbao, came upon an old body during a short walk from the Chinese high camp in 1975. He spoke of it only in 1979, during a Japanese expedition, describing it to a fellow climber as an old "English dead". He was killed in an avalanche the next day.

Mallory, 1999. On 1 May 1999 Conrad Anker of the Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition found Mallory's body on the North Face, face down, in the area known as the Snow Terrace, roughly 1,000 feet below where the ice axe had lain. Two labels in the clothing read "G.L. Mallory". A broken leg and rope marks showed that he had fallen, and the expedition concluded that he had been roped to Irvine when he fell. Snow goggles were in his pocket rather than on his face, which the team read as a sign that he may have fallen after dark. Letters from his brother and sister were among his papers. No camera was found.

Irvine, 2024. In September 2024 a National Geographic documentary team, the climber and film-maker Jimmy Chin with Erich Roepke and Mark Fisher, found a hobnailed boot emerging from the ice of the Central Rongbuk Glacier, below the North Face. Inside were the remains of a foot and a sock with a label stitched "A.C. IRVINE". Days earlier the team had found an oxygen bottle dated 1933 in the area. Chin carried the remains down and handed them to the China Tibet Mountaineering Association, which oversees the north side of the mountain. The find was announced on 11 October 2024. Chin declined to give the exact location, to discourage trophy hunters. Irvine's relatives volunteered DNA samples for comparison; the registry has found no published result. No camera was found.

The camera. The pair are believed to have carried at least one Vest Pocket Kodak camera. Accounts differ over which of them had it. In 1999 Kodak specialists set out how its black-and-white film should be kept frozen and processed if it were ever recovered. It has not been.

Leading explanations

Mallory died in a fall while roped to Irvine (supported by the 1999 evidence; the place and time of the fall are unknown). The injuries, the rope marks and the position of the body support a fall. Where on the ridge it began, and whether the two were climbing up or down, cannot be read from the body.

They reached the summit before they died (a hypothesis; unproven). Its supporters point to Odell's sighting, if it was the Second Step, and to the goggles in Mallory's pocket, which the 1999 team read as a sign that he fell late in the day. After seeing the body, Anker said he now thought Mallory "may have reached the summit before he fell". The expedition itself reached no verdict: its dispatch of 25 May 1999 said the evidence "neither proves" that Mallory reached the summit, "nor proves conclusively that he did not".

They turned back or fell before reaching it (a hypothesis; unproven). At 12.50 pm they were nearly five hours behind Mallory's own schedule even on the most favourable reading of Odell's sighting, and Odell himself later doubted that reading.

Irvine's body was found by Chinese climbers and secretly removed (argued by the writer Mark Synnott; rejected by Irvine's biographer after the 2024 find). In April 2024 Synnott said that multiple sources indicated the Chinese had found Irvine and removed the body. Irvine's great-niece and biographer, Julie Summers, wrote after the find that the theory was "well and truly put to bed".

Current status

Partially explained. Where both men ended up is now partly known: Mallory's body lies on the North Face, and part of Irvine was recovered from the Central Rongbuk Glacier in 2024. How Mallory died is broadly understood. Whether they reached the summit, and where and how Irvine died, are not known. The camera, if it is found with usable film, is the one object that could show how high they climbed. A published DNA match would confirm what the name label already indicates. A 2026 book by Julie Summers and the Everest historian Jochen Hemmleb revisits the evidence.

Last reviewed: September 2026. Records are provisional. Where the evidence changes, the entry changes. Found an error? Tell us.