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Did Mallory Make it to the Top of Everest First? · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and this is Stuff you should Know
0:16
Speaker 1: lost on the Mountain Top edition, but not in Tennessee
0:19
Speaker 1: because this has nothing to do with the Beverly Hillbillies
0:22
Speaker 1: at all. Wow, that was a roundabout funny intro. I
0:29
Speaker 1: didn't even know it was coming thirty seconds ago. Uh No,
0:33
Speaker 1: we're not talking about Tennessee. We were talking about um
0:37
Speaker 1: one of the heroes of of mountaineering and mountain climbing,
0:42
Speaker 1: certainly Mr George Mallory, and the great mystery to me
0:48
Speaker 1: unsettled mystery on whether or not he ever made it
0:52
Speaker 1: to the top of Edvers. Yes, Edvers right. So boy, yeah,
0:58
Speaker 1: this is a tough start, Chuck, because I just realized
1:00
Speaker 1: what I referenced was the Davy Crockett theme, not Beverly Hillbilly.
1:04
Speaker 1: So everybody save your emails. Okay, all you Beverly Hillbillies,
1:08
Speaker 1: cause players save your savior emails. So, okay, we're talking
1:12
Speaker 1: about Mount Everest. We're not talking about Davy Crockett or
1:16
Speaker 1: the Beverly Hillbillies. We're talking about Um. George Mallory and
1:20
Speaker 1: to a lesser extent kind of unfairly but also kind
1:24
Speaker 1: of fairly his climbing companions, Sandy Irvine and George Mallory
1:28
Speaker 1: is extraordinarily famous. Not just in the climbing community. He's
1:31
Speaker 1: a legend in the climbing community, Chuck. But you and
1:35
Speaker 1: I know about him. I knew about Mallory, didn't you
1:37
Speaker 1: before all this? Uh? Yeah, at least heard his name,
1:41
Speaker 1: had a general idea about him, right, sure, named two
1:45
Speaker 1: other climbers exactly, the guy from that free solo documentary
1:51
Speaker 1: count and um, and well all the sherpa. I mean
1:56
Speaker 1: we it makes great pains to point out the sherpa,
1:59
Speaker 1: but uh, suffice to say, all you have to do
2:02
Speaker 1: is go back and listen to our episode sharp a
2:05
Speaker 1: Warm Friendly Living, in which we dedicate an entire episode
2:10
Speaker 1: to the usually nameless serpa, who are usually standing just
2:14
Speaker 1: out of frame of some white dude saying, yeah, I
2:17
Speaker 1: climbed Everest again, but here, go ahead and get your
2:19
Speaker 1: picture taken, right, And they just kind of slowly shoved
2:23
Speaker 1: them to the side. But yeah, but um, despite your
2:27
Speaker 1: best efforts, you still managed to prove my point. Yeah,
2:30
Speaker 1: George Mallory is extremely famous and up to his thirties,
2:35
Speaker 1: it did not look like it was going to go
2:37
Speaker 1: that way because he started out this very famous mountain
2:40
Speaker 1: climber and mountaineer and early mountain climber mountaineer too. That's
2:44
Speaker 1: something that I feel as a beat will hit throughout
2:47
Speaker 1: this episode that these guys that Mallory was climbing with,
2:51
Speaker 1: we're using like they were making some of their own gear.
2:54
Speaker 1: They were figuring out mountaineering techniques as they went along.
2:58
Speaker 1: It was like a brand new thing that people were doing.
3:01
Speaker 1: And George Mallory was among the earliest people doing that. Yeah,
3:05
Speaker 1: there's that one. Uh, I don't know if it was
3:07
Speaker 1: a journalist or somebody was talking about pictures of the
3:11
Speaker 1: actual attempt to climb Everest and he said, these guys
3:14
Speaker 1: look like they had gone out for a picnic and
3:16
Speaker 1: were hit by a snowstorm, right, and just in how
3:19
Speaker 1: they were dressed. You know, they were in like tweed
3:21
Speaker 1: jackets and stuff. Yeah, and um, hobnail boots, so just
3:25
Speaker 1: like some leather boots with some spikes attached to him.
3:28
Speaker 1: Like just nothing you would even climb a hill in
3:32
Speaker 1: these days, let alone Mount Everest. But that's what they
3:35
Speaker 1: were wearing. So George Mallory didn't start out as showing
3:40
Speaker 1: signs he was going to be famous. He was kind
3:42
Speaker 1: of a left leaning, progressive intellectual school teacher. Um, he
3:47
Speaker 1: did rub elbows with John Maynard Keynes and Virginia Woolf
3:51
Speaker 1: from the Bloomberry group Bloomsberry. Yeah, but that was probably
3:55
Speaker 1: the greatest brush with fame that he had up until
3:59
Speaker 1: he started hitting Mount Everest and making that basically his
4:03
Speaker 1: stated goal in life. Yeah. I mean, he got into
4:06
Speaker 1: hiking and mountaineering when he was in his late teens
4:10
Speaker 1: and really fell in loved with it. But you know,
4:13
Speaker 1: as Ed Keenly points out, it was, you know, it
4:17
Speaker 1: was such a new sport that people didn't even really know,
4:21
Speaker 1: Like they haven't even charted like the highest mountains in
4:24
Speaker 1: the world up into a very i mean what I
4:27
Speaker 1: consider a pretty late point when you think about like
4:29
Speaker 1: expeditions that Lewis and Clark made. It was, uh in
4:32
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty two when they finally finally figured out that
4:36
Speaker 1: Everest was the tallest peak. Yeah, like up to eighteen
4:40
Speaker 1: fifty two, they were basically at the point of that
4:42
Speaker 1: one's tall. Oh look at that one. That's a tall
4:45
Speaker 1: one too. Yeah, I wish we could put him next
4:47
Speaker 1: to each other exactly. So there was actually a guy
4:51
Speaker 1: named uh right On Sigtar who was an Indian surveyor
4:55
Speaker 1: who used data that the English had um produced during
4:59
Speaker 1: their occupy and of India um to calculate just exactly
5:03
Speaker 1: how tall Mount Everest was, because they really did settle
5:06
Speaker 1: on Everest just by sight. They're like, that might be
5:09
Speaker 1: the tallest mountain we've ever seen, and indeed it turned
5:12
Speaker 1: out at twenty nine thousand, thirty two ft. Mount Everest
5:17
Speaker 1: was in the mid nineteenth century and still is today
5:19
Speaker 1: the tallest mountain in the entire world. And they named
5:23
Speaker 1: it Everest after the director of the survey in India.
5:27
Speaker 1: Of course they did, Sir George Everest. But if you
5:30
Speaker 1: asked it Tibetan, what's the name of that big old
5:32
Speaker 1: mountain over there, they would tell you Chomo Lugma, which
5:36
Speaker 1: means mother goddess of the world in Tibetan. So even
5:39
Speaker 1: the Tibetans were like, this is clearly the world's tallest mountain. Yeah,
5:43
Speaker 1: And of course they had, you know, their own names
5:46
Speaker 1: for it, but we generally don't know those names because
5:50
Speaker 1: they would come along later and just name it after
5:52
Speaker 1: just some dude, but we some some englishman. I mean Chomlongma.
5:56
Speaker 1: That's definitely one of them. No, I know, but to
6:00
Speaker 1: tend people what m Longa is, right, and name two
6:03
Speaker 1: other famous climbers. Yes, but the long and short of
6:07
Speaker 1: it is, I guess the tall and short of it is.
6:09
Speaker 1: They realized that Everest was the tallest thing in eighteen
6:13
Speaker 1: fifty two, but big deal. They couldn't do anything about it.
6:16
Speaker 1: They could just kind of gaze upon it. It would
6:19
Speaker 1: be decades and decades before anyone even thought that they
6:23
Speaker 1: might be able to climb Everest. Because here's the deal.
6:27
Speaker 1: Getting to Everest and climbing it is, uh like, ascending
6:32
Speaker 1: the peak is one thing, but just getting to that
6:34
Speaker 1: point is I don't know, the battle. I would say easily.
6:40
Speaker 1: Most people think you look at the mountain, you just
6:42
Speaker 1: climb up the base and go up to the side
6:44
Speaker 1: and you're done. But no, you have to basically traverse
6:47
Speaker 1: mountain ranges. Mountain mountains just don't exist on their own.
6:50
Speaker 1: They're part of ranges and you don't really think about it.
6:53
Speaker 1: But you have to climb all these other little mini
6:55
Speaker 1: mountains to get to the big mountain in the first place,
6:58
Speaker 1: and this can be walks of you know, dozens or
7:01
Speaker 1: scores of miles and not walk it's not a straight
7:04
Speaker 1: walk over a plane. And then you get to the
7:05
Speaker 1: edge of the mountain, you go up like you're going
7:08
Speaker 1: up and up and up, and you're existing at higher
7:11
Speaker 1: and higher altitudes, which the English people who were um
7:14
Speaker 1: who are doing this at first are we're not used to.
7:17
Speaker 1: So they were doing this with basically altitude sickness and
7:20
Speaker 1: all the stuff that comes with that. Alright, so let's
7:24
Speaker 1: go to and the stage is sort of set to
7:28
Speaker 1: where they feel like it might be possible to actually
7:31
Speaker 1: accomplish something like this. And the Royal Geographic Society got
7:35
Speaker 1: together with the Alpine Club UH to form and they
7:39
Speaker 1: didn't like permanently come together, but they worked together to
7:42
Speaker 1: form the Mount Everest Committee to say, all right, let's
7:44
Speaker 1: let's let's give this a go, old boy. And they
7:48
Speaker 1: got permission from Tibet in ninety one to go on
7:51
Speaker 1: a scouting trip. And this was a trip where they
7:55
Speaker 1: would just kind of figure out how to climb Everest.
7:58
Speaker 1: Like it wasn't like they just said all right, let's
7:59
Speaker 1: give it a go and see if we can get
8:01
Speaker 1: to the top, Like they had to take uh several
8:04
Speaker 1: trips just to sort of map out what they thought
8:07
Speaker 1: would be a feasible way to even try to get
8:09
Speaker 1: to the top. Right, Apparently no one from Europe had
8:13
Speaker 1: been within sixty miles of Everest itself, so this was
8:17
Speaker 1: all new, uncharted territory basically for these guys. And again
8:21
Speaker 1: it's really important to say, like we're we're going to
8:23
Speaker 1: be telling the story from the English point of view,
8:26
Speaker 1: and like you said, the sherpa rarely figure into that. Um,
8:30
Speaker 1: with the big exception of Tenzing Norgay, who's who officially
8:33
Speaker 1: was the first to summit Everest with um Edmund Hillary.
8:37
Speaker 1: But um, these guys weren't doing this alone. They had,
8:41
Speaker 1: depending on the expedition and how much money it had,
8:44
Speaker 1: scores two hundreds of sherpas like attending them, helping them climb,
8:48
Speaker 1: moving their stuff, um, and just basically making life much
8:52
Speaker 1: easier on these guys. That said, I really don't want
8:56
Speaker 1: to um undermine the amount of effort and strenuousness that
9:03
Speaker 1: talent these guys. Yeah, and talent that these guys underwent
9:06
Speaker 1: and just figuring out how to get to Everest, to
9:10
Speaker 1: start on that first expedition. Yeah, it's really cool to
9:14
Speaker 1: read um contemporary, yes, contemporary accounts of what modern climbers
9:21
Speaker 1: think of Mallory and his um not not just tenaciousness,
9:26
Speaker 1: but his actual talent level and his climbing style. Uh,
9:30
Speaker 1: was apparently very unique and just revered today by modern climbers.
9:34
Speaker 1: Is And you know, it's not to take anything away
9:38
Speaker 1: from what anyone does today, because what people can accomplish
9:41
Speaker 1: the day is amazing. But they accomplished these things based
9:44
Speaker 1: generally on you know, they can be taught by other people,
9:47
Speaker 1: and like this is how it's done, like Mallory and
9:49
Speaker 1: the King. We're figuring this out for the first time.
9:52
Speaker 1: And by the way, I might have said Hillary instead
9:54
Speaker 1: of Mallory because I'm just thinking of climbing hills, right,
9:58
Speaker 1: and we should just go ahead and just to get
10:00
Speaker 1: any confusion out of the way, Um Edmund Hillary Summited Everston,
10:04
Speaker 1: I think nineteen fifty three, we're talking about the first
10:08
Speaker 1: expeditions to Everest again in n Mallory and Hillary I
10:11
Speaker 1: don't believe ever met. They were of different generations of climbers,
10:15
Speaker 1: but Mallory was considered one of the pioneers as were
10:19
Speaker 1: the other men in his expeditions that he went on. Alright,
10:23
Speaker 1: So if I said Hillary, I meant Mallory. Are we
10:26
Speaker 1: all good? I think we're good? Yeah, okay, all right.
10:29
Speaker 1: So they got permission again for this trip in nineteen
10:34
Speaker 1: twenty one, and Mallory was in his early thirties. He
10:38
Speaker 1: was included in this first group and I think was
10:41
Speaker 1: really chomping at the bit to do so. He has
10:44
Speaker 1: a wife and three young kids at home, but really
10:47
Speaker 1: nothing could stop him from from going on this first
10:50
Speaker 1: scouting trip. No, and he was thirty three on the trip,
10:54
Speaker 1: and he says basically, hey, um dear, I'm going to
10:58
Speaker 1: quit my job and leave you in the children for
11:01
Speaker 1: I don't know, seven months at least to go on
11:03
Speaker 1: this expedition see you. And that's where he went. But
11:07
Speaker 1: he did say to his wife, here's what I'll do.
11:10
Speaker 1: I'll take this picture of you, babe, and I will
11:13
Speaker 1: carry it with me always and I will put I
11:15
Speaker 1: will place you at the top of Everest to live
11:18
Speaker 1: there forevermore encased in ice when I get up there. Yeah,
11:21
Speaker 1: and I'm sure he probably took it with him on
11:23
Speaker 1: the first expedition, but the first expedition wasn't planning on
11:27
Speaker 1: submitting Everest, but from what I gather from Mallory, he
11:32
Speaker 1: would he would have been down to give it a
11:33
Speaker 1: shot that first time out. Like that's how obsessed with
11:36
Speaker 1: Everest that that man became right and he actually was
11:41
Speaker 1: really successful. That the expedition was this was again the
11:44
Speaker 1: first expedition by the English to map um Everest, and
11:49
Speaker 1: they managed to do it. They managed to find a
11:51
Speaker 1: way onto Everest what's called the North Call, which is
11:56
Speaker 1: a ridge that connects one mountain to another. And they
11:59
Speaker 1: found that north which is the way still today. If
12:02
Speaker 1: you're coming from the north from the Tibetan side up Everest,
12:05
Speaker 1: do you still use that route that these guys mapped in. Yeah,
12:10
Speaker 1: And it's it's important to point out um which side
12:13
Speaker 1: that they would have gone up then and what side
12:15
Speaker 1: you go up now? Because uh, there is a route
12:19
Speaker 1: that China kind of secured and basically has held that
12:24
Speaker 1: Americans can't go, and that'll that'll be a key sort
12:28
Speaker 1: of later on in this mystery. Pould have been in that, yeah,
12:30
Speaker 1: because China invaded Tibetan nineteen fifty and said this side
12:34
Speaker 1: of the mountain is closed to Westerners. But this happened,
12:38
Speaker 1: That happened to three decades after Mallory and his expeditions. Um,
12:43
Speaker 1: so they were using that north route, and still to
12:45
Speaker 1: this day, the north route is considered technically more difficult
12:49
Speaker 1: because it requires you to spend more time at higher
12:52
Speaker 1: elevations with you know, it's attendant lower oxygen concentration, which
12:57
Speaker 1: makes the whole thing way harder. And then secondly, the
13:01
Speaker 1: way in through the north route requires twenty two miles
13:04
Speaker 1: of walking just to get from base camp to the top,
13:08
Speaker 1: whereas the South route, which is what Westerners used today
13:11
Speaker 1: coming from the Nepalese side, is about twelve and three
13:15
Speaker 1: quarter miles of walking. Nothing to sneeze at still, but
13:18
Speaker 1: it just kind of underscores the just how hard the
13:22
Speaker 1: things that these guys were doing with zero equipment. All Right,
13:26
Speaker 1: so I think it's a good time for a break. Sure,
13:30
Speaker 1: I'm gonna finally sort out the difference between Hillary and Mallory.
13:35
Speaker 1: It sounds like a eighties sitcom. No, al right, So
13:40
Speaker 1: I'm gonna work all that out and we'll be right back.
13:45
Speaker 1: Stuff you should know. Okay, we're back, Um, and I
14:07
Speaker 1: want to go over a little more about when you
14:09
Speaker 1: how you get to a mountain, And we don't have
14:11
Speaker 1: to go in great detail, but you're basically going up
14:14
Speaker 1: one mountain to get to that ridge that connects that
14:16
Speaker 1: smaller mountain to Everest, the taller mountain, right, But to
14:20
Speaker 1: get there requires hiking, mountain climbing, ice climbing, rock climbing, um,
14:27
Speaker 1: every kind of climbing you can imagine. And one of
14:29
Speaker 1: the first things you have to do, no matter whether
14:31
Speaker 1: whether you come from the North route or the South route,
14:33
Speaker 1: is cross the glacier. And that is way harder than
14:36
Speaker 1: it sounds. Yeah, I mean, this thing is, you know,
14:41
Speaker 1: surrounded in part by glaciers, and like you said, you're
14:44
Speaker 1: you're there are so many different disciplines if you're going
14:47
Speaker 1: to do something like Everest, and especially in nineteen two that, uh,
14:54
Speaker 1: I just don't think we can overstate like the near
14:58
Speaker 1: impossibility of this feat the time. Yeah, especially with the glacier.
15:02
Speaker 1: There's crevasses. They can be really deep, um, you know,
15:05
Speaker 1: a hundred or more feet deep, and you can fall
15:07
Speaker 1: into that and die. There can be ice slides it's
15:10
Speaker 1: also known as avalanches. They can come and bury you.
15:14
Speaker 1: There's something called I think sea corps, which are house
15:17
Speaker 1: size blocks of ice that you sometimes have to climb
15:20
Speaker 1: that you could also topple and be crushed by. Like,
15:24
Speaker 1: that's just the glacier. That's like the first obstacle to
15:27
Speaker 1: get toward the mountain. And again they were doing this
15:30
Speaker 1: with zero equipment. Yeah, I mean we did. We did
15:34
Speaker 1: a whole episode on ice climbing, right, we totally did.
15:37
Speaker 1: And I remember thinking that's so we talked about sea
15:39
Speaker 1: corps okay, good, all right? Yeah, I thought it sounded familiar,
15:43
Speaker 1: and I also was like, yeah, ice climbing is really hard.
15:45
Speaker 1: I know that from experience and researching it. Yeah. Well,
15:51
Speaker 1: I mean this one, the Shrip episode was really good.
15:54
Speaker 1: Ice climbing was good. I believe we did one on
15:57
Speaker 1: dead bodies on Everest. Yeah, and the one time ago
16:00
Speaker 1: we did one on altitude sickness too. Yeah, so this
16:04
Speaker 1: all comes together. Uh. The point is it's really really
16:08
Speaker 1: hard and there are so many ways to die. Yeah,
16:10
Speaker 1: what else wants to kill you up there, chuck that
16:12
Speaker 1: they weren't aware of until that expedition. The YETI. Yeah,
16:17
Speaker 1: that's where the YETI was introduced, or at least the
16:20
Speaker 1: concept was introduced to Westerners, who brought it back. Um,
16:23
Speaker 1: and then I believe on a later like nineteen fifty
16:27
Speaker 1: one expedition, a guy named Eric Shipton took some photos
16:32
Speaker 1: of what we're supposed to be YETI tracks, and that's
16:34
Speaker 1: when like the west really went wild for the YETI.
16:38
Speaker 1: That's right, So let's catch ourselves up. It's September one
16:43
Speaker 1: when they reach the North Coal and this is where
16:47
Speaker 1: they're like, all right, we think this is it. We
16:49
Speaker 1: think we have found a path that can actually get us.
16:53
Speaker 1: They didn't realize there would one day be an easier path, probably,
16:56
Speaker 1: but they said, we think this is the way to go.
16:58
Speaker 1: And it should be noted that not only these expedition
17:02
Speaker 1: trips to sort of map things out, but each subsequent
17:05
Speaker 1: attempt to ascend Everest that ended up in I don't
17:10
Speaker 1: know what. I don't want to say failure, but I
17:11
Speaker 1: guess it is failure if they didn't accomplish it. But
17:14
Speaker 1: each one of yet each one of those is really
17:16
Speaker 1: important too, because you know, every higher peak that you
17:21
Speaker 1: get to, you're able to sort of establish uh of
17:25
Speaker 1: course not everywhere, but you're able to establish camps along
17:28
Speaker 1: the way, and these camps are then used later on
17:32
Speaker 1: uh as you know, base camps like one, five, six,
17:35
Speaker 1: et cetera. In fact, it maybe six might have been
17:38
Speaker 1: the highest camp at the time, right, Yeah, yeah, for
17:40
Speaker 1: sure and then so but but it's super important to
17:43
Speaker 1: establish that for like all the hikers to come. Just
17:47
Speaker 1: because it was a failed attempt doesn't mean a lot
17:49
Speaker 1: of great stuff wasn't accomplished. Yeah, because if you are
17:52
Speaker 1: hiking or you're climbing up a mountain and there's a
17:56
Speaker 1: higher camp that you're coming up to, you can make
17:59
Speaker 1: your way over the day to that camp and then
18:01
Speaker 1: just stay there for the night. If there's not a
18:03
Speaker 1: higher camp, you have to turn around at some point
18:06
Speaker 1: and make your way to that next lower camp to survive,
18:08
Speaker 1: because you cannot be caught overnight on Everest anywhere at
18:14
Speaker 1: these elevations that these guys are hiking at um without
18:17
Speaker 1: a tent and or a sleeping bag, or you're going
18:19
Speaker 1: to die. That's all there is to it. You can,
18:21
Speaker 1: a human being can't survive on the you know, the
18:24
Speaker 1: higher altitudes of Everest without that kind of stuff. So yes,
18:27
Speaker 1: establishing a camp is an enormous thing. But also they're
18:30
Speaker 1: learning stuff firsthand about how humans respond to low oxygen concentrations,
18:36
Speaker 1: what the weather conditions are, like what time of year
18:39
Speaker 1: you can hike? Like every detail is a brand new
18:42
Speaker 1: novel detail that is really crucial in understanding how to
18:45
Speaker 1: get to the top eventually. Yeah, like what time of
18:48
Speaker 1: day you have to start out, uh, in order to
18:52
Speaker 1: get up there and safely get back down because some people,
18:55
Speaker 1: including Hillary, Yes, Hillary, um, and it's a thorny so object.
19:00
Speaker 1: But some peoples, as far as the Mystery of Mallory goes,
19:03
Speaker 1: some people don't consider it a successful assent unless you
19:07
Speaker 1: come back down. Um. And that's kind of the thing.
19:10
Speaker 1: And I think Hillary was one of those and his
19:12
Speaker 1: family also said, hey, listen, not to slag anyone, but
19:16
Speaker 1: we kind of only consider it a success if you
19:19
Speaker 1: go up and you're able to come back down and
19:21
Speaker 1: and live to tell about it, essentially. Yeah, And I
19:24
Speaker 1: think that was which is an interesting point. Yeah, but
19:26
Speaker 1: I think that point was made by Hillary himself, which
19:30
Speaker 1: saying yeah, he's yeah, He's like, well, I mean, even
19:33
Speaker 1: if you've made it to the top, it doesn't count.
19:36
Speaker 1: Like I'm I'm doing this interview right now, right, I'm
19:38
Speaker 1: sitting here, so, um, there's one thing I want to
19:41
Speaker 1: point out that I don't know has become clear. Yet
19:43
Speaker 1: it's clear to me because we did this research and
19:45
Speaker 1: I found out what the deal was. But you might
19:48
Speaker 1: be asking yourself, why was mountain climbing so big at
19:50
Speaker 1: this time? Why were these people doing this? And um,
19:54
Speaker 1: there's a really good explanation for that. Everest itself was
19:57
Speaker 1: considered the third pole because people had already made it
20:01
Speaker 1: to the South Pole and the North Pole. We didn't
20:03
Speaker 1: yet have the technology to explore the deep ocean or space,
20:06
Speaker 1: and we had been almost everywhere else on Earth, so
20:09
Speaker 1: this was like the last place for humans too, I guess,
20:13
Speaker 1: basically conquer or pit their endurance against. And that's why
20:17
Speaker 1: it was so attractive to people. Yes, and that was
20:20
Speaker 1: a very uh eloquent way to say that. I think
20:24
Speaker 1: we should mention that Mallory himself is the very person
20:28
Speaker 1: who very famously coined the term because it's there when
20:32
Speaker 1: asked why they would try to do something like this,
20:34
Speaker 1: why climb mountains? Because it's there? That alone makes him
20:39
Speaker 1: just worth remembering. You know what a cool response, Absolutely,
20:44
Speaker 1: are you going to eat that big mac? Because it's there?
20:47
Speaker 1: Everything that's ever come since then where somebody says because
20:50
Speaker 1: it's there, you're actually quoting George Mallory, that's right, um,
20:57
Speaker 1: all right, so let's talk for a second about oxygen
21:00
Speaker 1: and um. Low oxygen is no good for the human body.
21:03
Speaker 1: And we've mentioned several times that your oxygen levels are
21:07
Speaker 1: very low when you're ascending everest. And these days they
21:11
Speaker 1: make it really easy on you, it's all um. You know,
21:16
Speaker 1: the kind of oxygen they take is very easy to uh,
21:19
Speaker 1: to take. They make it very user friendly. But back
21:22
Speaker 1: then they had like glassed bottles of oxygen that were
21:27
Speaker 1: carried in like wooden crates, and it was a real
21:29
Speaker 1: pain to get there. It was super super heavy. UM.
21:33
Speaker 1: But they knew at the time, you know, while they
21:35
Speaker 1: learned that they would absolutely need this stuff. UM. But
21:39
Speaker 1: Mallory was sort of, I don't I don't think indifferent.
21:42
Speaker 1: I think he was sort of annoyed by the whole
21:45
Speaker 1: thing that you actually had to take this stuff, to
21:47
Speaker 1: the point where he didn't even use them, I believe
21:50
Speaker 1: in the nineteen one test run, right, No, I don't believe.
21:54
Speaker 1: So I don't think he did either in the expedition
21:57
Speaker 1: that followed where they actually did try to make some um.
22:00
Speaker 1: And it wasn't for years before he was like Okay,
22:03
Speaker 1: maybe oxygen is a good idea. UM. Some of them
22:06
Speaker 1: even thought it was like a hindrance in general because
22:08
Speaker 1: it was an extra thirty pounds that you had to
22:11
Speaker 1: carry up this mountain. And if you watch, um, if
22:15
Speaker 1: you watch video of people climbing Everest today, especially as
22:20
Speaker 1: they get closer and closer to the top and there's
22:23
Speaker 1: less and less oxygen, even yeah, they do, even they
22:28
Speaker 1: seem to like have regret for being where they but
22:31
Speaker 1: even with oxygen on, if you watch them, they'll take
22:35
Speaker 1: a step so one foot and then they'll bring the
22:37
Speaker 1: other foot up and maybe they've traversed a foot of
22:40
Speaker 1: Everest right then, and then they have to wait like
22:44
Speaker 1: fifteen thirty seconds before they make the next one because
22:47
Speaker 1: they're that tired because there's that little oxygen. And that's
22:51
Speaker 1: with oxygen on. So these guys were trying these kind
22:54
Speaker 1: of a sense without oxygen, I can't imagine, like, you know,
22:59
Speaker 1: how you would even do that. And it's actually it's
23:01
Speaker 1: not clear whether you really could summit Everest without oxygen,
23:05
Speaker 1: although I think people have tried and maybe even been successful,
23:08
Speaker 1: so I guess it would be clear. Yes, So in
23:11
Speaker 1: twenty two, UM, I believe Mallory and a couple of
23:14
Speaker 1: other climbers hit twenty six thousand, eight hundred feet, which
23:20
Speaker 1: is remarkable, before they decided to turn back. Uh. And
23:23
Speaker 1: again this is without using oxygen on that twenty to try.
23:27
Speaker 1: And then this is the part where I was a
23:29
Speaker 1: little bit confused. Maybe you can clear it up. When
23:31
Speaker 1: did the avalanche happen? Was that in twenty one where uh,
23:36
Speaker 1: seven people were killed? Yeah? So No, in twenty one
23:41
Speaker 1: there was an avalanche that wiped out some of the
23:43
Speaker 1: camps they had established but didn't hurt anybody. Twenty two
23:47
Speaker 1: they weren't as lucky, and seven sherpa died in an avalanche,
23:52
Speaker 1: and Mallory kind of considered himself at least partially responsible,
23:56
Speaker 1: even though he wasn't the only person who pushed for
23:58
Speaker 1: this last attempt for the summit, um, he was one
24:01
Speaker 1: of them. And an avalanche was triggered by that third
24:04
Speaker 1: attempt and killed some of the people further down on
24:07
Speaker 1: the mountain when they were covered up by it. Yeah,
24:10
Speaker 1: and there are people you know who have looked back
24:12
Speaker 1: in kind of poop pooed Mallori's um, poop pooed his carelessness.
24:20
Speaker 1: And I don't know if it was carelessness. I don't
24:22
Speaker 1: think it was carelessness just because he was a careless person.
24:26
Speaker 1: I think it was a little more his tenacious attitude
24:29
Speaker 1: sort of overrode good sense sometimes. Is the way I
24:33
Speaker 1: took it? Is that how you took it? I think
24:36
Speaker 1: that was part of it. But I also get the
24:38
Speaker 1: impression that he was like just downright flighty. Oh was he? Yeah?
24:43
Speaker 1: Like there was. He was in charge of the camera
24:45
Speaker 1: for the expedition, and apparently he put the film in
24:48
Speaker 1: backwards but was taking pictures the whole time and they
24:51
Speaker 1: didn't turn out because he didn't have the film incorrectly.
24:54
Speaker 1: Like that's classic. Sure, but if you do that things
24:59
Speaker 1: like that over and over again, you start to develop
25:01
Speaker 1: a reputation as being flighty. I guess. So the thing
25:06
Speaker 1: I think is cameras, Like operating the camera wasn't second
25:10
Speaker 1: nature at this point in history, and it's like, just
25:14
Speaker 1: give this guy a camera. I don't know. I could
25:16
Speaker 1: see him just being like I don't even know what
25:18
Speaker 1: this thing is or how to really operate it, Like
25:20
Speaker 1: don't don't give it to me. They're like, well, you
25:22
Speaker 1: kind of have to take it, and he's like, all right,
25:24
Speaker 1: I'll do my best. I mean I kind of created
25:27
Speaker 1: that narrative, but it was a good one. He was
25:29
Speaker 1: good at mountain climbing. He may not have been a
25:31
Speaker 1: good photographer. Okay, fair enough. But there's a very famous
25:35
Speaker 1: um quote by a doctor Tom Longstaff, who was the
25:38
Speaker 1: doctor on the expedition in said Mallory was quite unfit
25:43
Speaker 1: to be placed in charge of anything, including himself. So
25:47
Speaker 1: I mean people definitely thought of him. I'm gonna say
25:49
Speaker 1: flight again, and I'm not judging. I'm pretty flighting myself. Um.
25:52
Speaker 1: You me would certainly tell you that. Um. But so
25:56
Speaker 1: I think I recognize it when I see it. Maybe
25:58
Speaker 1: that's what it is as you meet your doctor Longstaff. Yep,
26:04
Speaker 1: I'm gonna start calling her that now, should be like,
26:07
Speaker 1: what are you talking about? I looked that up to
26:09
Speaker 1: remember our surnames episode. I was like, oh, is that
26:11
Speaker 1: a dirty last name? I know. That's what it turns out.
26:14
Speaker 1: If you were a bailiff or somebody involved in law enforcement,
26:17
Speaker 1: you would have been carried like a long stick okay,
26:21
Speaker 1: to probably beat people with. And that's where they got
26:23
Speaker 1: that name. So his ancestor was involved in law enforcement.
26:27
Speaker 1: I looked it up. I went long Staff surname Penis
26:31
Speaker 1: and Dr long Staff definitelyast since like a born name.
26:34
Speaker 1: Definitely all right, So now let's go to nineteen twenty four,
26:40
Speaker 1: the the test runs had happened, the real attempts had happened,
26:44
Speaker 1: and then finally nineteen rolls around. Uh, they didn't just
26:48
Speaker 1: take the year off in nineteen three because they were tired.
26:51
Speaker 1: They didn't get funding, like it costs a lot of
26:53
Speaker 1: money and these people aren't like bank rolling in themselves,
26:56
Speaker 1: so the Mount Everest Company could not raise the money
26:59
Speaker 1: in twenty three, so he waited until nineteen four when
27:03
Speaker 1: Mallory jumped up in class and said me, me, Me,
27:06
Speaker 1: Me me again. Um. And almost didn't go though, because
27:10
Speaker 1: one of his mates, George Finch, a fellow climber, was
27:14
Speaker 1: I believe left off the list, and Mallory was like,
27:17
Speaker 1: if he's not gonna go, I'm not there gonna go
27:19
Speaker 1: And they said okay, and then he went, well, I
27:21
Speaker 1: still want to go. He put on a fake mustache
27:25
Speaker 1: and put himself down as George Hallary exactly. So um.
27:30
Speaker 1: There was a guy who went um who was kind
27:32
Speaker 1: of a surprise selection. His name was Andrew Sandy Irving
27:36
Speaker 1: Irvine Sorry and um, Sandy Irvine was a student still,
27:41
Speaker 1: he was an engineering student. That's actually one of the
27:43
Speaker 1: reasons they brought him along. He wasn't a shlub as
27:45
Speaker 1: far as mountaineering goes. He just was not nearly as
27:48
Speaker 1: experienced as most of the people on that expedition. But
27:53
Speaker 1: being an engineering student, he could fiddle and fuss with
27:57
Speaker 1: the oxygen apparatus which had in cameras. Maybe yeah, probably
28:01
Speaker 1: he knew how to put the film in the right direction.
28:04
Speaker 1: But um that since I get the impression that since
28:07
Speaker 1: the NTE and twenty two expeditions, it had become clear
28:11
Speaker 1: to these these um these people on these expeditions, on
28:14
Speaker 1: the expedition that oxygen was in fact, like really important
28:18
Speaker 1: and to have somebody who could make these these um
28:22
Speaker 1: rigs more efficient would be really, really valuable. So they
28:26
Speaker 1: brought Sandy Irving Irvine along. Yeah. I also saw that
28:30
Speaker 1: Irvine was, you know, despite his fiddler's reputation, was strong
28:35
Speaker 1: as an ox Yeah. Yeah, he's us. Another nice thing,
28:38
Speaker 1: if you see there's a famous picture of he and
28:41
Speaker 1: or him and um Mallory next to each other facing
28:44
Speaker 1: the camera like posing for a picture, and he's easily
28:48
Speaker 1: a full head taller than Mallory was and about his
28:52
Speaker 1: wide too, so um, he was a big, big boy. Yeah.
28:56
Speaker 1: And Mallory was very handsome too. We should note yes,
29:00
Speaker 1: good looking dude. He really was very pretty. I think
29:02
Speaker 1: you could say pretty bad. And then one other note
29:06
Speaker 1: about Mallory on this to start off this expedition. Again,
29:10
Speaker 1: this is the third expedition to Everest, and he was
29:14
Speaker 1: the only member of this entire expedition who had have
29:16
Speaker 1: been on all three expeditions, which again really underscores Mallory
29:20
Speaker 1: was obsessed with summiting Everest. That's right, So to June one, now,
29:28
Speaker 1: I think so man, alright, Mallory and George Bruce make
29:32
Speaker 1: this first attempt. Uh, this one didn't work out when
29:36
Speaker 1: basically the sherpas said all right, we're not going any
29:39
Speaker 1: further is too dangerous. Uh, and they basically dropped their
29:42
Speaker 1: stuff and turned back. So again this um, this one
29:47
Speaker 1: didn't work out. But one of the positives is they
29:50
Speaker 1: established a camp at five thousand feet UM, which I
29:54
Speaker 1: believe was was the tallest camp at the time or
29:56
Speaker 1: the highest camp. Okay, yeah, so that's again that the
30:00
Speaker 1: huge success for a summit attempt, right, even when the
30:05
Speaker 1: following day, another couple of climbers, Edward Norton and t
30:08
Speaker 1: Howard Summerville Um, made their own attempt on the summit.
30:13
Speaker 1: Norton kept going beyond Summerville and he made it within
30:16
Speaker 1: a thousand feet of the summit of Everest, which depending
30:20
Speaker 1: on your perspective, sounds really close but actually isn't or
30:24
Speaker 1: is actually super close even though it sounds far away.
30:28
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty close. It is, but if you
30:30
Speaker 1: look at a map and see where twenty eight thousand
30:33
Speaker 1: feet is and then we're twenty nine thousand feet is
30:36
Speaker 1: she had a way to go, but far and away.
30:37
Speaker 1: That was. That was the record, and it was Uh
30:40
Speaker 1: there was a record that stood at least officially until
30:43
Speaker 1: Hillary in Norgay Um summited Everest in so it was
30:48
Speaker 1: a big deal. But Norton in Summerville really paid for
30:52
Speaker 1: their attempt. Um Summerville Uh he almost suffocated from a
30:58
Speaker 1: high altitude cough, and the Norton developed snowblindness because they
31:03
Speaker 1: would wear um goggles that were like basically sunglass goggles,
31:07
Speaker 1: and you had to wear them during the day, not
31:09
Speaker 1: just from the wind, but because the uv um was
31:13
Speaker 1: really really um abundant because of the thin air up there,
31:17
Speaker 1: so you would get what's called snowblindness, you would get
31:20
Speaker 1: carotitus on your cornias. And that's what happened to Norton.
31:24
Speaker 1: He burned his corneas from the reflected sunlight because he
31:29
Speaker 1: didn't keep his goggles on long enough. And on the
31:31
Speaker 1: way back down from twenties five thousand feet back down, uh,
31:36
Speaker 1: he had to be helped. Every footstep had to be
31:38
Speaker 1: placed by sherpas uh and the doctor um on the
31:43
Speaker 1: on the trip, every foot, every footstep he made all
31:45
Speaker 1: the way back down out of the everst area. That's amazing,
31:50
Speaker 1: it really is. Alright, So on this third attempt, Mallory
31:55
Speaker 1: is brought Irving. I'm sorry, why do you keep saying that?
31:58
Speaker 1: I said because you said it brought Irvine along? And Uh,
32:03
Speaker 1: they were sending notes down you know, they're sending messages
32:06
Speaker 1: back down with srpos along the way basically yeah, I
32:11
Speaker 1: love you. Uh. They're sending notes back down to the
32:15
Speaker 1: other camps, basically giving reports on what's going on, saying
32:19
Speaker 1: things are going well, the weather looks like we should
32:22
Speaker 1: be able to do it. Um, we're gonna, we're gonna,
32:26
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna try and do this like tomorrow
32:28
Speaker 1: or whatever. And so all the notes that were coming down,
32:31
Speaker 1: we're pretty positive and um, basically everything we know about
32:36
Speaker 1: this comes from a gentleman uh geology, a gentleman geologist
32:41
Speaker 1: named Noel O'Dell. It was actually a pretty big hero
32:44
Speaker 1: in this story too. Yeah, he was pretty awesome actually, um.
32:48
Speaker 1: And he lived to be ripe old man. Sorry, ripe
32:52
Speaker 1: old age. Um. He spelled really bad. Yeah. And there's
32:55
Speaker 1: a really cool interview with him from a Nova episode.
32:58
Speaker 1: I can't remember what's called. It's from like the eighties
33:01
Speaker 1: and they interviewed Noel Odell about this. So he factors
33:03
Speaker 1: in big time in a minute. But O'Dell was um.
33:07
Speaker 1: He went up to one of the high camps. He
33:09
Speaker 1: wanted to look for fossils. Being a geologist, he also
33:12
Speaker 1: brought up supplies of food and water to those higher
33:15
Speaker 1: camps to help the climbers on their way back down.
33:18
Speaker 1: And this is the third attempt. Remember, the first attempt
33:20
Speaker 1: didn't work, second attempt didn't work. It kind of resulted
33:23
Speaker 1: in disaster. And then this third attempt was going to
33:25
Speaker 1: be the last one. And Mallory said, hey, Irvine, why
33:29
Speaker 1: don't you come with me? We're going to try to
33:31
Speaker 1: make the summit of Everest. And there's something that you
33:34
Speaker 1: need to know about this third attempt. Mallory was I
33:37
Speaker 1: think thirty seven maybe by this time, and as far
33:41
Speaker 1: as mountaineers and climbers go, especially back then, he was old.
33:45
Speaker 1: This is probably going to be his last expedition to Everest,
33:49
Speaker 1: and this attempt for the summit was the last attempt
33:52
Speaker 1: on this expedition. Ergo, this was Mallory's last shot at
33:56
Speaker 1: summiting Everest, and he was setting out from the high
34:00
Speaker 1: as camp that had ever been established. Basically, I believe
34:04
Speaker 1: it's the highest camp still today on that north route.
34:08
Speaker 1: Al Right, it sounds like a great cliffhanger, no pun intended.
34:11
Speaker 1: So let's take our final break here and we'll wrap
34:14
Speaker 1: up the story right after this stuff you should know, alright, So, uh,
34:42
Speaker 1: Mallory is on his last attempt as a human to
34:45
Speaker 1: do the thing that he was obsessed with since he was,
34:48
Speaker 1: you know, a young late teenager. Beautiful, beautiful, so so handsome. Uh.
34:55
Speaker 1: Geologist Noel O'Dell is up there again. He is he
34:59
Speaker 1: is doing sort of the cool, groovy Appalachian trail hang
35:02
Speaker 1: out dude thing to people Yeah, he's doing some trail
35:06
Speaker 1: magic up there. Um, and at twelve fifty he sees
35:11
Speaker 1: Mallory and Irvine on the northeast ridge. But there are
35:16
Speaker 1: a few hours and this is really key, there are
35:18
Speaker 1: a few hours behind schedule from where they should be,
35:21
Speaker 1: and there's a very narrow window again for like what
35:25
Speaker 1: time of day you can pull this off and then
35:26
Speaker 1: safely get back down. So to be a few hours
35:29
Speaker 1: behind schedule is a big deal on whether or not
35:32
Speaker 1: you're gonna survive basically. So what he says, and we'll
35:36
Speaker 1: just go ahead and read the quote. What he says
35:38
Speaker 1: he saw is the following. Uh, the entire summit Ridge
35:42
Speaker 1: and final peak of Everest were unveiled. My eyes became
35:45
Speaker 1: fixed on one tiny black spot beneath a rock step
35:49
Speaker 1: in the ridge. The black spot moved. Another black spot
35:53
Speaker 1: became apparent and moved up the snow to join the
35:56
Speaker 1: other on the crest. The first then approached the great
35:59
Speaker 1: rocks up and shortly emerged at the top. The second
36:03
Speaker 1: did likewise. So right after that, Chuck, apparently the clouds
36:07
Speaker 1: came back, and those two black spots that were he
36:11
Speaker 1: took to be Irvine and Mallory disappeared from view, and
36:15
Speaker 1: that was if that was Irvine and Mallory the last
36:17
Speaker 1: time anybody saw them, and O'Dell would have been the
36:20
Speaker 1: last to see them, which will become a crucial thing
36:22
Speaker 1: later on, as we'll see. But um O'Dell uh kind
36:27
Speaker 1: of waited for them to come back down to the camps.
36:29
Speaker 1: Remember he was in the high camps, and he waited
36:31
Speaker 1: and he waited and he waited, and then he started
36:34
Speaker 1: to get really worried. And here's where he became a hero,
36:37
Speaker 1: like you were saying earlier. Yeah, so O'Dell is again,
36:41
Speaker 1: he's not down there at at sea level. He is
36:44
Speaker 1: hanging out up there trying to do the trail magic thing.
36:48
Speaker 1: He's all of a sudden worried and he he basically
36:53
Speaker 1: from Camp six, starts hiking around trying to find these
36:57
Speaker 1: guys and and doesn't leave. He does. He just keeps
37:01
Speaker 1: staying and he keeps making these assents. And I believe,
37:06
Speaker 1: like two days in a row, made an assent over
37:10
Speaker 1: what like twenty s feet, Yeah, a couple of them,
37:13
Speaker 1: and he go back to camp because he had to
37:14
Speaker 1: again to survive. But then he would strike out like
37:17
Speaker 1: as soon as he could. The next day to look
37:19
Speaker 1: for them. I mean, that's why he's one of the heroes. Yeah, exactly,
37:24
Speaker 1: and like again, I don't even know if he had
37:26
Speaker 1: oxygen at that point. So he spent a couple of
37:28
Speaker 1: days way up there looking for them, and finally from
37:32
Speaker 1: the high camp he signaled back down to the lower camps,
37:36
Speaker 1: to the base camp, and there was apparently a pre
37:38
Speaker 1: arranged signal that they had they had come up with
37:42
Speaker 1: for this third summit attempt, and um O'Dell laid it out.
37:47
Speaker 1: It was six sleeping bags laid out in a cross,
37:50
Speaker 1: which meant death, that they had died, that they hadn't
37:53
Speaker 1: made it. And so in reply, the guy who led
37:56
Speaker 1: them the expedition had a return signal saying like give up, hope,
38:01
Speaker 1: come back down, And very sadly O'Dell did as as
38:04
Speaker 1: he was instructed and came back down without Irvine, without Mallory,
38:09
Speaker 1: who remained up on the mountain as far as anyone knew. Yeah,
38:13
Speaker 1: and at this point, um, he had been up there
38:16
Speaker 1: for and this is over twenty three thousand feet. He
38:20
Speaker 1: had been up there for eleven days, and that's I mean,
38:24
Speaker 1: surely no, uh, I don't think that had been done
38:27
Speaker 1: before right, that's no picnic caught in a snowstorm. That's
38:30
Speaker 1: some serious stuff. Yeah, and there's no way that these guys,
38:34
Speaker 1: I mean, they were up there for two nights and
38:35
Speaker 1: you're not going to survive one night. So it was
38:38
Speaker 1: it was pretty clear those sleeping bags had to come
38:40
Speaker 1: out at that point. Yeah, and so they said, you know, um,
38:42
Speaker 1: they were really kind of unhappy on that done that
38:45
Speaker 1: way back down, which again I don't think we said
38:47
Speaker 1: that if you're coming up a mountain, you have to
38:49
Speaker 1: acclimate over weeks little by little, and I believe you
38:52
Speaker 1: have to do roughly the same thing coming back down.
38:54
Speaker 1: So these guys had to basically have this party where
38:57
Speaker 1: two people have been lost on there's summit attempt. They
39:00
Speaker 1: were glowam but at the same time they realized, like
39:02
Speaker 1: you know, Mallory and Irvine had kind of embodied the
39:05
Speaker 1: spirit of adventure and just trying and even risking your
39:09
Speaker 1: life for you know this, this this noble attempt at
39:13
Speaker 1: It's something no one else had ever done. So it
39:16
Speaker 1: was kind of a bittersweet thing their loss was. It
39:18
Speaker 1: wasn't entirely nothing but tragic. There was some silver lining
39:22
Speaker 1: to it in the way that Mallory was remembered and
39:25
Speaker 1: thought of yeah, absolutely, uh and from that moment forward,
39:29
Speaker 1: there you know ed. Kind of makes it sound like
39:32
Speaker 1: the consensus is that they never reached the top, And
39:36
Speaker 1: after reading all this stuff and a lot of other opinions,
39:38
Speaker 1: I don't think I don't think that's true at all.
39:40
Speaker 1: I think there's still debate on whether or not they
39:44
Speaker 1: actually made it to the top. And there or a
39:47
Speaker 1: bunch of cool little clues that kind of leads you
39:49
Speaker 1: down one way or the other along the way. Yeah,
39:51
Speaker 1: one of them, Chuck was Odell and what he saw.
39:56
Speaker 1: And there's a couple of things you need to know
39:57
Speaker 1: about Odell. Number one, he was a geologist, and a
40:00
Speaker 1: lot of people say he just mistook some rocks for
40:03
Speaker 1: Irvine and Mallory, the little tiny dots he thought he
40:05
Speaker 1: saw moving. He's a geologist, making him very unlikely to
40:10
Speaker 1: mistake rocks for people. And then secondly, he was well
40:13
Speaker 1: known to have really good eyesight. Apparently he didn't need
40:17
Speaker 1: glasses until he was in his nineties. So those two
40:20
Speaker 1: things combined make it seem like he was probably the
40:23
Speaker 1: best possible eye witness around. And O'Dell went to his
40:27
Speaker 1: grave saying I saw them. They were moving, it was them,
40:30
Speaker 1: but exactly where he saw them kind of came up
40:33
Speaker 1: for grabs. Yeah, so there are these uh three cliffs
40:39
Speaker 1: sort of you know, if you go this route, there
40:42
Speaker 1: are three cliffs to get to the top, and they
40:44
Speaker 1: called them steps step one, step two, step three. They
40:47
Speaker 1: didn't know about these steps until they got there, obviously,
40:49
Speaker 1: because no one had done this yet. And from what
40:52
Speaker 1: he was talking about, he saw them on the second step.
40:57
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of people today that said no.
41:00
Speaker 1: I think he probably saw them on the first step.
41:03
Speaker 1: At one point in his life he said that it
41:05
Speaker 1: was the first step, but then he went back and
41:08
Speaker 1: said no. And I don't know if he was just
41:10
Speaker 1: sort of a victim of kind of uh listening to
41:13
Speaker 1: what other people had to say. But apparently later in
41:16
Speaker 1: life he went back and was adamant that it was
41:18
Speaker 1: the second step that he saw them on. Really okay, cool.
41:21
Speaker 1: So here's the thing. If you were in the climbing
41:23
Speaker 1: community and you believe that um, at the very least Mallory,
41:27
Speaker 1: if not Mallory and Irvine made it to the top
41:30
Speaker 1: of Everest on that expedition on that third attempt. The
41:34
Speaker 1: reason you think that is because you believe that Odell
41:37
Speaker 1: did see them climb up that second step, because that
41:40
Speaker 1: second step was the last great obstacle to the top,
41:44
Speaker 1: and had they made it up the second step, nothing
41:48
Speaker 1: would have stopped Mallory from continuing on to hit the summit.
41:52
Speaker 1: Knowing that he probably would not ever make it down alive,
41:55
Speaker 1: he still would have kept going on. So that's that's
41:58
Speaker 1: what a lot of people think. The people who think
42:00
Speaker 1: that he actually did make it. Uh kind of point
42:03
Speaker 1: to Odell's eyewitness statements. Yeah, and that's in that interview
42:07
Speaker 1: when he was what he was ninety seven years old,
42:10
Speaker 1: O'Dell himself says that, you know, there would have been
42:14
Speaker 1: nothing that would have stopped Mallory and Irvine. He believes
42:17
Speaker 1: um even though dusk was approaching and they probably knew
42:20
Speaker 1: it was a I guess a suicide mission at that point,
42:23
Speaker 1: his feeling was that there's no way they would have
42:25
Speaker 1: stopped too. Yeah, because we didn't say when those clouds
42:28
Speaker 1: came around, they brought with them a blizzard too, so
42:30
Speaker 1: it was really terrible conditions. They were way late in
42:33
Speaker 1: the day. There was basically no chance if they summited
42:36
Speaker 1: that they could get back to that highest camp in
42:39
Speaker 1: time for surviving the night. But that would not have
42:42
Speaker 1: stopped them because they just would They just would have
42:44
Speaker 1: kept going. That's just what Mallory would have done. Pretty
42:47
Speaker 1: much everybody agrees on that. The distinction is whether he
42:50
Speaker 1: was on the first step or the second step, because
42:52
Speaker 1: if he was just on the first step, he still
42:54
Speaker 1: had that second step ahead of him, he might not
42:56
Speaker 1: have made it. If he made the second step, he
42:58
Speaker 1: definitely summited that seems to be what the consensus is.
43:03
Speaker 1: All right, so you've got that. We can park that
43:05
Speaker 1: to the side. In the subsequent years, on different expeditions,
43:10
Speaker 1: there have been little bits and pieces of evidence UH
43:13
Speaker 1: found along the way. One in nineteen thirty three when
43:18
Speaker 1: irvines acts as ice acts was found, and you know,
43:23
Speaker 1: you're not gonna just leave your ice ax behind. So
43:26
Speaker 1: basically they concluded that, um, something happened that that made
43:30
Speaker 1: Irvine drop this ice ax, but they recovered it in
43:33
Speaker 1: thirty three, And then in nineteen seventy five, UH there
43:38
Speaker 1: were some Chinese Chinese climbers who made a successful summit
43:42
Speaker 1: all the way to the top, and they were the
43:45
Speaker 1: only ones that could have gone this way because, like
43:47
Speaker 1: we said, earlier, the Chinese route was shut down basically
43:50
Speaker 1: two Americans, and so it's not like that people before
43:54
Speaker 1: the nineteen would have been taking this route. I think
43:58
Speaker 1: there was one American group that that snuck in and
44:00
Speaker 1: did so illegally. But one of the Chinese climbers said
44:06
Speaker 1: I found an English dead to another climber. Um. China
44:10
Speaker 1: has always denied this and said that that's not true, uh,
44:14
Speaker 1: and that it was a misunderstanding. And the um that climber,
44:17
Speaker 1: actually his name was Wang Hung Bao died the next
44:22
Speaker 1: day in an avalanche, so there was never like any
44:25
Speaker 1: follow up with him. In a really interesting ironic twist,
44:28
Speaker 1: Chuck Hung boo translate to so long staff in English.
44:33
Speaker 1: No really, I thought i'd get a bigger laugh out
44:35
Speaker 1: of that. We'll just get well, it was believable enough
44:39
Speaker 1: to where I quite go so um. Yeah. So there's
44:42
Speaker 1: all this intrigue that's kind of gathering around this, this
44:44
Speaker 1: idea that the Chinese had found at least one dead
44:50
Speaker 1: Englishman on their side of the mountain, the north side
44:53
Speaker 1: of the Tibetan side, where they shouldn't have been, which
44:55
Speaker 1: means that yeah, it had to have been Irvine or Mallory.
44:59
Speaker 1: So there was an expedition UM that came well, there's
45:04
Speaker 1: expedition that found an old oxygen bottle that was almost
45:07
Speaker 1: certainly Mallory or Irvines, And then all of the information
45:11
Speaker 1: kind of came together to um support a geo expedition
45:16
Speaker 1: to actually find Irvine or Mallory, and they actually did.
45:20
Speaker 1: They found one of them, and at first they thought
45:22
Speaker 1: it was Irvine, right, yeah, they did, but they they
45:26
Speaker 1: found Mallory. He was frozen, he was sun bleached, his
45:32
Speaker 1: body was very well preserved. The items on him were
45:36
Speaker 1: very well preserved. Uh, they found him severely injured. Well,
45:41
Speaker 1: they found a couple of things. They found that he
45:42
Speaker 1: had a severely broken leg and some uh some rope
45:47
Speaker 1: trauma like ligature stuff around his waist. But what they
45:50
Speaker 1: really found, um that was severe was the cause of death,
45:54
Speaker 1: which was a golf ball size hole in his forehead. Yeah,
45:58
Speaker 1: they and it was a puncture wound. So they think
46:00
Speaker 1: it's possible as he was falling that his ice ax
46:03
Speaker 1: bounced off of a rock and into his head, which
46:06
Speaker 1: that'd be pretty merciful on the way down if you
46:08
Speaker 1: think about it, if that killed it instantly. Because they
46:11
Speaker 1: said that his his foot was almost broken off. That
46:14
Speaker 1: that break was so bad, and then rope trauma to
46:18
Speaker 1: imagine a rope yanking on you, because they found the
46:20
Speaker 1: rope still tied around his waist um. But the head
46:23
Speaker 1: that happened, actually, I mean, it's awful, right, It's like
46:26
Speaker 1: falling on your tailbone at times a million. And the
46:29
Speaker 1: other end of the rope was snapped off, and I
46:31
Speaker 1: saw a climber say, because of that snap, it must
46:35
Speaker 1: have been tied to something really immobile, like a rock,
46:38
Speaker 1: rather than Irvine. So that suggested that Mallory had sent
46:41
Speaker 1: Irvine back and tried to make the summit himself, which
46:44
Speaker 1: a lot of people kind of give to his credit
46:48
Speaker 1: that he wasn't willing to risk Irvine's life, only his own.
46:52
Speaker 1: I found it very strange that I said that that
46:54
Speaker 1: happened to me, and you didn't even ask what that
46:56
Speaker 1: was about. I was on a roll. It's very strange. Well,
47:00
Speaker 1: I'm not even gonna I'm gonna tell you now what happened.
47:02
Speaker 1: No one gets to know. That would be the great
47:05
Speaker 1: mystery of this episode. Okay, uh So, the two big
47:10
Speaker 1: clues here as to whether or not he made it
47:12
Speaker 1: are well, one big clue was he didn't have that
47:15
Speaker 1: picture of his wife on him. This is the picture
47:17
Speaker 1: that he took with him everywhere that he vowed to
47:20
Speaker 1: place at the top of the mountain, and it wasn't
47:23
Speaker 1: on him. So a lot of people look at that
47:25
Speaker 1: and say, well, it's not on them, because he actually did,
47:29
Speaker 1: maybe by himself or maybe with Irvine, make it to
47:31
Speaker 1: the summit and place that picture there. And it's not
47:34
Speaker 1: like you would have necessarily found that picture years later.
47:37
Speaker 1: It very probably would have blown away or you know,
47:40
Speaker 1: been destroyed by the elements over time. Uh. And you know,
47:45
Speaker 1: I don't know how I feel about that clue. Um.
47:48
Speaker 1: I think it's considering everything was found really uh in
47:51
Speaker 1: good condition on him, and that that he didn't have
47:54
Speaker 1: it is pretty interesting to think about. I'll just say
47:57
Speaker 1: that I like that clue too. Um. There's also missing camera.
48:02
Speaker 1: They took a camera with them for that third attempt,
48:05
Speaker 1: Kodak vest pocket camera VPK, and it's like one of
48:09
Speaker 1: those old cameras with the accordion that you pull out,
48:12
Speaker 1: but it is a really small, like pocket sized version,
48:15
Speaker 1: And had they made it to the summit, they absolutely
48:19
Speaker 1: would have taken a photograph from the summit, and if
48:21
Speaker 1: you could just find that camera, then you could conceivably,
48:25
Speaker 1: because it's been in deep freeze conditions for all these years,
48:28
Speaker 1: it's possible using modern techniques that you could develop that
48:31
Speaker 1: film and solve this mystery once and for all. But
48:34
Speaker 1: the problem is this chuck. The camera's missing, and so
48:38
Speaker 1: is Irvine. Because there was an expedition not too long
48:41
Speaker 1: ago a few years back that set out to look
48:43
Speaker 1: for Irvine, this other guy. Because where the Chinese um
48:47
Speaker 1: expedition said that they found the dead English that is
48:51
Speaker 1: nowhere near where Mallory was found. So they figured that
48:54
Speaker 1: they found Irvine. But when they went when this expedition
48:57
Speaker 1: I think a couple of years ago went back to
48:58
Speaker 1: find Irvine, there was nothing there. His body was not
49:02
Speaker 1: exactly where it should be. Nothing there. And so this
49:05
Speaker 1: rumor has kind of come up over the years that
49:07
Speaker 1: the Chinese actually found him and brought him back down
49:10
Speaker 1: the mountain without telling anybody. That's right, That is the rumor,
49:14
Speaker 1: and that they got that camera and they kind of
49:18
Speaker 1: botched uh the film trying to get it developed and
49:22
Speaker 1: processes pictures, and that was a big embarrassment. And so
49:25
Speaker 1: they will take that secret to their Graves. Yeah. And
49:28
Speaker 1: another explanation is that the the nineteen sixty Chinese expedition
49:32
Speaker 1: to the top of the North Face was the first
49:35
Speaker 1: to summit the North Face and that they were protecting
49:38
Speaker 1: national pride because they found evidence on that camera, on
49:42
Speaker 1: that film when they did develop it that that um
49:45
Speaker 1: mallory had made it to the top. Who knows. The
49:47
Speaker 1: thing is, we'll never know right ever. The thing that
49:51
Speaker 1: we will know, I think eventually, though, Chuck, hopefully, is
49:54
Speaker 1: what happened with your rope trauma. That will go to
49:58
Speaker 1: the grave with me. Man. I really botched that, like
50:01
Speaker 1: the Chinese mountain climbers botched processing that film. Okay, long staff,
50:08
Speaker 1: long wind, It's more like it. You got anything else?
50:12
Speaker 1: I got nothing else? All right, everybody? Well, since Chuck
50:15
Speaker 1: refuses to tell us about his rope trauma story, I
50:17
Speaker 1: guess we have nothing left but listener mail. Uh. This
50:23
Speaker 1: is uh from the Silly String up. This is myth busted. Hey, guys,
50:28
Speaker 1: I just wanted to point out that Josh repeated a
50:30
Speaker 1: widely spread myth about telegrams in the Silly String episode
50:34
Speaker 1: that stop was used because punctuation cost extra Uh. This
50:38
Speaker 1: myth has been busted. The real story is Morse code
50:41
Speaker 1: originally had only capital letters and no punctuation. It's generally
50:44
Speaker 1: not much of a problem, but during the First World War,
50:47
Speaker 1: when the telegrams were widely used in the military, a
50:50
Speaker 1: misunderstood messages message could be disastrous, So the custom arose
50:55
Speaker 1: of using the words stop between sentences and military telegrams
50:59
Speaker 1: so that any biguous phrases could not be misinterpreted. Caught
51:02
Speaker 1: on with the public. Even after punctuation was introduced, people
51:06
Speaker 1: continued fashionably using stock between sentences even though they didn't
51:10
Speaker 1: have to. I thought this was kind of interesting. Thanks
51:14
Speaker 1: for the great show, and that is from Dave. It
51:16
Speaker 1: is very interesting, Dave. I like both stories. Okay, they're
51:21
Speaker 1: both great. Yeah, everyone wins. And also I'm going to
51:25
Speaker 1: pose it that you have mentioned before that you've gone
51:27
Speaker 1: repelling as a boy scout and that it happened somewhere
51:31
Speaker 1: on Stone Mountain. Not true. The mystery continues. Whatever. If
51:37
Speaker 1: you want to get in touch with us like Dave
51:38
Speaker 1: did and maybe take a crack at what happened with
51:41
Speaker 1: Chuck and the rope and the trauma, you can send
51:43
Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff Podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
51:50
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51:52
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51:58
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