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

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