Selects: Did Mallory Make it to the Top of Everest First?

George Mallory was a member of the first three European expeditions to Everest, world’s tallest mountain. He wanted to summit it so badly, he gave his life trying. Since that fateful day in 1924, climbers have wondered – was Mallory the first to summit? Listen as Josh and Chuck explore that question and lots more in this classic episode. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:39Josh Clark?

  Hey, everybody. It's your old pal, Josh. And for this week's SYSK Select, I've chosen our 2022 episode, Did Mallory Make It to the Top of Everest First? It's a clunky title, but an amazing episode. It talks about George Mallory, an unsung climber who may have been the first European to ever summit Everest a full three decades before Sir Edmund Hillary definitely did. The reason we don't know, the reason it's still a mystery, is because he was lost for years. And even once he was found, it still didn't quite answer the question. This is an amazing history mystery podcast that also has a lot of human spirit in it, and I hope you enjoy it.

• 2:22Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

• 2:32Josh Clark?

  Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and this is Stuff You Should Know, Lost on the Mountain Top Edition, but not in Tennessee, because this has nothing to do with the Beverly Hillbillies at all.

• 2:45Speaker 02

  Wow. That was a roundabout funny intro.

• 2:49Josh Clark?

  I didn't even know it was coming 30 seconds ago.

• 2:54Speaker 02

  No, we are not talking about Tennessee. We are talking about one of the heroes of mountaineering and mountain climbing, certainly, Mr. George Mallory and the great mystery, to me, unsettled mystery on whether or not he ever made it to the top of Everest.

• 3:14Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 3:15Speaker 02

  Everest.

• 3:17Josh Clark?

  So.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 3:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah, this is a tough start, Chuck, because I just realized what I referenced was the Davy Crockett theme, not Beverly Hillbillies. So, everybody, save your emails, okay?

• 3:27Speaker 02

  Oh, that's right.

• 3:28Josh Clark?

  All of you Beverly Hillbillies cosplayers, save your, save your emails. So, okay, we're talking about Mount Everest. We're not talking about Davy Crockett or the Beverly Hillbillies. We're talking about George Mallory and, to a lesser extent, kind of unfairly, but also kind of fairly, his climbing companion Sandy Irvine. And George Mallory is extraordinarily famous, not just in the climbing community. He's a legend in the climbing community, Chuck, but you and I know about him. And I knew about Mallory, didn't you, before all this?

• 4:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:01Josh Clark?

  At least heard his name had a general idea about him, right?

• 4:05Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 4:05Josh Clark?

  Name two other climbers. Exactly.

• 4:09Speaker 02

  The guy from that Free Solo documentary.

• 4:12Josh Clark?

  Does not count.

• 4:13Speaker 02

  And, well, all the Sherpa. I mean, Ed makes it great pains to point out the Sherpa, but suffice to say, all you have to do is go back and listen to our episode, Sherpa Warm, Friendly Living.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  In which we dedicate an entire episode to the usually nameless Sherpa who are usually standing just out of frame

• 4:36Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  of some white dude saying, "Yeah, I climbed Everest again, but here, go ahead and get your picture taken."

• 4:41Josh Clark?

  Right. And they just kind of slowly shoved them to the side.

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:46Josh Clark?

  But despite your best efforts, you still managed to prove my point.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:51Josh Clark?

  George Mallory is extremely famous, and up to his 30s, it did not look like it was going to go that way, because he started out this very famous mountain climber and mountaineer, and early mountain climber and mountaineer, too. That's something that I feel as a beat will hit throughout this episode, that these guys that Mallory was climbing with were using, like, they were making some of their own gear. They were figuring out mountaineering techniques as they went along. It was like a brand-new thing that people were doing, and George Mallory was among the earliest people doing that.

• 5:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's that one, I don't know if it was a journalist or somebody, was talking about pictures of the actual attempt to climb Everest, and he said, "These guys look like they had gone out for a picnic and were hit by a snowstorm."

• 5:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, right.

• 5:39Speaker 02

  And just in how they were dressed, you know, they were in like tweed jackets and stuff.

• 5:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and hobnail boots, so just like some leather boots with some spikes attached to them, like, just nothing you would even climb a hill in these days, let alone Mount Everest, but that's what they were wearing. So George Mallory didn't start out as showing signs he was going to be famous. He was a kind of a left-leaning, progressive, intellectual schoolteacher. He did rub elbows with John Maynard Keynes and Virginia Woolf from the Bloomsbury Group.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  Bloomsbury. Pretty cool.

• 6:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but that was probably the greatest brush with fame that he had up until he started hitting Mount Everest and making that basically his stated goal in life.

• 6:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, he got into hiking and mountaineering when he was in his late teens and really fell in love with it. But, you know, as Ed Keenly points out, it was, you know, it was such a new sport that people didn't even really know, like, they haven't even charted, like, the highest mountains in the world up into a very, I mean, what I consider a pretty late point, when you think about, like, expeditions that Lewis and Clark made. It was in 1852 when they finally, finally figured out that Everest was the tallest peak.

• 6:59Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like, up to 1852, they were basically at the point of, that one's tall. Oh, look at that one. That's a tall one, too.

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I wish we could put them next to each other.

• 7:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. So there was actually a guy named Radhan Sikdar, who was an Indian surveyor, who used data that the English had produced during their occupation of India to calculate just exactly how tall Mount Everest was, because they really did settle on Everest, just by sight. They're like, that might be the tallest mountain we've ever seen. And indeed, it turned out at 29,032 feet, Mount Everest was, in the mid 19th century, and still is today, the tallest mountain in the entire world. And they named Everest after the director of the survey in India.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  Of course, they did.

• 7:49Josh Clark?

  Sir George Everest. But if you asked a Tibetan, what's the name of that big old mountain over there, they would tell you Chomolungma, which means

• 7:57Speaker 02

  Right.

• 7:57Josh Clark?

  Mother goddess of the world in Tibetan. So even the Tibetans were like, this is clearly the world's tallest mountain.

• 8:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and of course, they had, you know, their own names for it. But we generally don't know those names, because they would come along later and just name it after just some dude.

• 8:14Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 8:14Speaker 02

  But we Some Englishman.

• 8:16Josh Clark?

  I mean, Chomolungma, that's definitely one of them.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  No, I know, but ask 10 people what Chomolungma is.

• 8:23Josh Clark?

  Right. And name two other famous climbers.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  Yes, but the long and short of it is, or I guess the tall and short of it is, they realized that Everest was the tallest thing in 1852, but big deal. They couldn't do anything about it. They could just kind of gaze upon it. It would be decades and decades before anyone even thought that they might be able to climb Everest, because here's the deal, getting to Everest and climbing it is, like ascending the peak is one thing, but just getting to that point is, I don't know, 90% of the battle.

• 9:00Josh Clark?

  I would say easily. Most people think you look at a mountain, you just climb up the base and go up to the side and you're done. But no, you have to basically traverse mountain ranges. Mountains just don't exist on their own. They're part of ranges. And you don't really think about it, but you have to climb all these other little mini mountains to get to the big mountain in the first place. And this can be walks of, you know, dozens or scores of miles. And not walk, it's not a straight walk over a plain and then you get to the edge of the mountain and you go up. Like you're going up and up and up and you're existing at higher and higher altitudes, which the English people who were, who were doing this at first were not used to. So they were doing this with basically altitude sickness and all the stuff that comes with that.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  All right. So let's go to 1920. And the stage is sort of set to where they feel like it might be possible to actually accomplish something like this. And the Royal Geographic Society got together with the Alpine Club to form, and they didn't like permanently come together, but they worked together to form the Mount Everest Committee, to say, all right, let's, let's, let's give this a go, old boy. And they got permission from Tibet in 1921 to go on a scouting trip. And this was a trip where they would just kind of figure out how to climb Everest. Like it wasn't like they just said, all right, let's give it a go and see if we can get to the top. Like they had to take several trips just to sort of map out

• 10:28Speaker 02

  what they thought would be a feasible way to even try to get to the top.

• 10:31Josh Clark?

  Right. Apparently, no one from Europe had been within 60 miles of Everest itself. So this was all new, uncharted territory, basically, for these guys. And again, it's really important to say, like, we're, we're going to be telling the story from the English point of view. And like you said, the Sherpa rarely figure into that. With the big exception of Tenzing Norgay, who officially was the first to summit Everest with Edmund Hillary. But these guys weren't doing this alone. They had, depending on the expedition and how much money it had, scores to hundreds of Sherpas like attending them, helping them climb, moving their stuff, and just basically making life much easier on these guys.

• 11:15Josh Clark?

  That said, I really don't want to undermine the amount of effort and strenuousness that these guys underwent in just figuring out how to get to Everest to start on that first 1921 expedition.

• 11:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's really cool to read contemporary, yes, contemporary, accounts of what modern climbers think of Mallory and his, not just tenaciousness, but his actual talent level and his climbing style was apparently very unique and just revered today by modern climbers. And you know, it's not to take anything away from what anyone does today, because what people can accomplish today is amazing. But they accomplish these things based generally on, you know, they can be taught by other people. And like, this is how it's done. Like Mallory and the gang were figuring this out for the first time. And by the way, I might have said Hillary instead of Mallory.

• 12:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Because I'm just thinking of climbing hills.

• 12:19Josh Clark?

  Right, and we should just go ahead and say, just to get any confusion out of the way, Edmund Hillary summited Everest in, I think, 1953. We're talking about the first expeditions to Everest again in 1920. Mallory and Hillary, I don't believe, ever met. They were of different generations of climbers. But Mallory was considered one of the pioneers, as were the other men in his expeditions that he went on.

• 12:43Speaker 02

  All right, so if I said Hillary, I meant Mallory. Are we all good?

• 12:47Josh Clark?

  I think we're good, yeah.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Okay. All right, so they got permission again for this trip in 1921, and Mallory was in his early 30s. He was included in this first group, and I think was really chomping at the bit to do so. He has a wife and three young kids at home, but really, nothing could stop him from going on this first scouting trip.

• 13:12Josh Clark?

  No, and he was 33 on the 1921 trip, and he says basically, "Hey, dear, I'm going to quit my job and leave you and the children for, I don't know, seven months at least, to go on this expedition. See ya." And that's where he went.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  But he did say to his wife, "Here's what I'll do. I'll take this picture of you, babe, and I will carry it with me always, and I will place you at the top of Everest to live there forever, more encased in ice when I get up there."

• 13:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I'm sure he probably took it with him on the first expedition, but the first expedition wasn't planning on summiting Everest. But from what I gather from Mallory, he would have been down to give it a shot that first time out. Like, that's how obsessed with Everest that man became.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 14:01Josh Clark?

  And he actually was really successful, the expedition was. This was, again, the first expedition by the English to map Everest, and they managed to do it. They managed to find a way onto Everest, what's called the North Col, which is a ridge that connects one mountain to another. And they found that North Col, which is the way, still today, if you're coming from the north, from the Tibetan side up Everest, you still use that route that these guys mapped in 1921.

• 14:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's important to point out which side that they would have gone up then, and what side you go up now, because there is a route that China kind of secured and basically has held that Americans can't go. And that'll be a key sort of later on in this mystery. So put it in that.

• 14:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because China invaded Tibet in 1950 and said, "This side of the mountain is closed." To Westerners, but this happened that happened three decades after Mallory and his expeditions. So they were using that north route and still to this day, the north route is considered technically more difficult because it requires you to spend more time at higher elevations with, you know, it's attendant, lower oxygen concentration, which makes the whole thing way harder. And then secondly, the way in through the north route requires 22 miles of walking just to get from base camp to the top, whereas the south route, which is what Westerners use today,

• 15:32Josh Clark?

  coming from the Nepalese side is about 12 and 3/4 miles of walking. Nothing to sneeze at still, but it just kind of underscores the, just how hard the, the things that these guys were doing with zero equipment.

• 15:47Speaker 02

  All right. So I think it's a good time for a break.

• 15:50Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  I'm gonna finally sort out the difference between Hillary and Mallory.

• 15:56Josh Clark?

  It's, it sounds like an 80s sitcom.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  No. All right. So I'm gonna work all that out and we'll be right back.

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• 18:31Josh Clark?

  Okay, we're back. And I want to go over a little more about when you, how you get to a mountain. We don't have to go in great detail, but you're basically going up one mountain to get to that ridge that connects that smaller mountain to Everest, the taller mountain, right? But to get there requires hiking, mountain climbing, ice climbing, rock climbing, every kind of climbing you can imagine. And one of the first things you have to do, no matter whether you come from the north route or the south route, is cross a glacier. And that is way harder than it sounds.

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, this thing is, you know, surrounded in part by glaciers. And like you said, you're, there are so many different disciplines if you're going to do something like Everest, and especially in 1921, 22, that...

• 19:19Speaker 02

  I just don't think we can overstate like the near impossibility of this feat at the time.

• 19:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, especially with the glacier, there's crevasses, they can be really deep, you know, 100 or more feet deep and you can fall into that and die. There can be ice slides, also known as avalanches, that can come and bury you. There's something called, I think, seacores, which are house-sized blocks of ice that you sometimes have to climb, that you could also topple and be crushed by. Like, that's just the glacier. That's like the first obstacle to get toward the mountain. And again, they were doing this with zero equipment.

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we did, we did a whole episode on ice climbing, right?

• 20:00Josh Clark?

  We totally did. And I remember thinking-

• 20:02Speaker 02

  That's why, that's why we talked about seacores.

• 20:04Josh Clark?

  Okay, good. All right. Yeah, I thought it sounded familiar. And I also was like, yeah, ice climbing's really hard. I know that from experience and researching it.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I mean, this one, the Sherpa episode was really good. Ice climbing was good. I believe we did one on dead bodies on Everest.

• 20:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 20:23Speaker 02

  Way long time ago.

• 20:25Josh Clark?

  We did one on altitude sickness, too.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, so this all comes together. Point is, it's really, really hard. And there are so many ways to die.

• 20:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, what else wants to kill you up there, Chuck, that they weren't aware of until that 1921 expedition?

• 20:40Speaker 02

  The Yeti?

• 20:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's where the Yeti was introduced, or at least the concept was introduced to Westerners who brought it back. And then, I believe on a later, like, 1951 expedition, a guy named Eric Shipton took some photos of what were supposed to be Yeti tracks. And that's when, like, the West really went wild for the Yeti.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  That's right. So, let's catch ourselves up. It's September 24th, 1921, when they reach the North Cole. And this is where they're like, all right, we think this is it. We think we have found a path that can actually get us. They didn't realize there would one day be an easier path, probably. But they said, we think this is the way to go. And it should be noted that not only these expedition trips to sort of map things out, but each subsequent attempt to ascend Everest that ended up in, I don't want to say failure, but I guess it is failure if they didn't accomplish it.

• 21:38Josh Clark?

  Devastation.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  But each one of, yeah, each one of those is really important, too, because-

• 21:44Speaker 02

  You know, every higher peak that you get to, you're able to sort of establish, of course, not everywhere, but you're able to establish camps along the way.

• 21:53Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 21:54Speaker 02

  And these camps are then used later on as, you know, base camps like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. In fact, it may have, 6 might have been the highest camp at the time, right?

• 22:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then, so-

• 22:06Speaker 02

  But it's super important to establish that for like, all the hikers to come. Just because it was a failed attempt doesn't mean a lot of great stuff wasn't accomplished.

• 22:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because if you are hiking, or you're climbing up a mountain and there's a higher camp that you're coming up to, you can make your way over the day to that camp and then just stay there for the night. If there's not a higher camp, you have to turn around at some point and make your way to that next lower camp to survive.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:34Josh Clark?

  Because you cannot be caught overnight on Everest, anywhere at these elevations that these guys are hiking at, without a tent and/or a sleeping bag, or you're going to die. That's all there is to it. A human being can't survive on the, you know, the higher altitudes of Everest without that kind of stuff. So yes, establishing a camp is an enormous thing. But also, they're learning stuff firsthand about how humans respond to low oxygen concentrations, what the weather conditions are like, what time of year you can hike. Like, every detail is a brand-new, novel detail that is really crucial in understanding how to get to the top eventually.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, what time of day you have to start out in order to get up there and safely get back down. Because some people, including Hillary, yes, Hillary, and it's a thorny subject, but some people, as far as the mystery of Mallory goes, some people don't consider it a successful ascent unless you come back down. And that's kind of the thing, and I think Hillary was one of those, and his family also said, hey, listen, not to slag anyone, but we kind of only consider it a success if you go up and you're able to come back down and live to tell about it, essentially.

• 23:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and I think that was-

• 23:49Speaker 02

  Which is an interesting point.

• 23:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but I think that point was made by Hillary himself.

• 23:54Speaker 02

  Oh, no, that's what I'm saying.

• 23:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he's, yeah, he's like, well, I mean, even if you've made it to the top, it doesn't count.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  I'm doing this interview right now.

• 24:02Josh Clark?

  Right, I'm sitting here. So there's one thing I want to point out that I don't know has become clear yet. It's clear to me because we did this research and I found out what the deal was. But you might be asking yourself, why was mountain climbing so big at this time? Why were these people doing this? And there's a really good explanation for that. Everest itself was considered the third pole because people had already made it to the South Pole and the North Pole. We didn't yet have the technology to explore the deep ocean or space, and we had been almost everywhere else on Earth. So this was like the last place for humans to, I guess, basically conquer or pit their endurance against. And that's why it was so attractive to people.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Yes, and that was a very eloquent way to say that. I think we should mention that Mallory himself is the very person who very famously coined the term because it's there when asked why they would try to do something like this. Why climb mountains? Because it's there.

• 25:01Josh Clark?

  That alone makes him just worth remembering, you know? What a cool response.

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 25:09Josh Clark?

  Why are you gonna eat that Big Mac? Because it's there. Everything that's ever come since then where somebody says because it's there, you're actually quoting George Mallory.

• 25:19Speaker 02

  That's right. All right, so let's talk for a second about oxygen. Low oxygen is no good for the human body. And we've mentioned several times that your oxygen levels are very low when you're ascending Everest. And these days, they make it really easy on you. It's all, you know, the kind of oxygen they take is very easy to take. They make it very user friendly. But back then, they had like glassed bottles of oxygen that were carried in like wooden crates, and it was a real pain to get there. It was super, super heavy. But they knew at the time, you know, well, they learned that they would absolutely need this stuff.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  But Mallory was sort of, I don't, I don't think indifferent. I think he was sort of annoyed by the whole thing that you actually had to take this stuff to the point where he didn't even use them. I believe in the 1921 test run, right?

• 26:17Josh Clark?

  No, I don't believe so. I don't think he did either in the 1922 expedition that followed where they actually did try to make summit. And it wasn't for years before he was like, okay, maybe oxygen's a good idea. Some of them even thought it was like a hindrance in general because it was an extra 30 pounds that you had to carry.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:37Josh Clark?

  Up this mountain. And if you watch, if you watch video of people climbing Everest today, especially as they get closer and closer to the top and there's less and less oxygen.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  They get less chatty.

• 26:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they do. Even they, they seem to like have regret for being where they. But even with oxygen on, if you watch them, they'll take a step. So one foot and then they'll bring the other foot up. And maybe they've traversed a foot of Everest right then. And then they have to wait like 15, 30 seconds before they make the next one because they're that tired. Because there's that little oxygen and that's with oxygen on. So these guys were trying these kind of ascents without oxygen. I can't imagine like, you know, how you would even do that. And it's actually, it's not clear whether you really could summit Everest without oxygen. Although I think people have tried and maybe even been successful. So I guess it would be clear.

• 27:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So in 22, I believe Mallory and a couple of other climbers hit 26,800 feet.

• 27:43Josh Clark?

  Man.

• 27:44Speaker 02

  Which is remarkable before they decided to turn back. And again, this is without using oxygen on that 22 try. And then this is the part where I was a little bit confused. Maybe you can clear it up. When did the avalanche happen? Was that in 21 where seven people were killed?

• 28:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so no, in 21, there was an avalanche that wiped out some of the camps they'd established, but didn't hurt anybody.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 28:11Josh Clark?

  In 22, they weren't as lucky, and seven Sherpa died in an avalanche.

• 28:16Speaker 02

  All right.

• 28:17Josh Clark?

  And Mallory kind of considered himself at least partially responsible, even though he wasn't the only person who pushed for this last attempt for the summit. He was one of them, and an avalanche was triggered by that third attempt and killed some of the people further down on the mountain when they were covered up by it.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, and there are people, you know, who have looked back and kind of poo-pooed Mallory's, poo-pooed his carelessness. And I don't know if it was carelessness, I don't think it was carelessness just because he was a careless person. I think it was a little more, his tenacious attitude sort of overrode good sense sometimes, is the way I took it. Is that how you took it?

• 29:01Josh Clark?

  I think that was part of it, but I also get the impression that he was like just downright flighty.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  Oh, was he?

• 29:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like there was, he was in charge of the camera for the 1922 expedition, and apparently he put the film in backwards, but was taking pictures the whole time. And they didn't turn out because he didn't have the film incorrectly. Like, that's classic Mallory.

• 29:21Speaker 02

  It's an honest mistake, though.

• 29:22Josh Clark?

  Sure, but if you do that, things like that over and over again, you start to develop a reputation as being flighty.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  I guess so. The thing I think is cameras, like operating a camera wasn't second nature at this point in history. And it's like, just give this guy a camera. I don't know, I could see him just being like, I don't even know what this thing is or how to really operate it. Like, don't, don't give it to me. And they're like, well, you kind of have to take it. And he's like, all right, I'll do my best.

• 29:50Josh Clark?

  I can't.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  I mean, I kind of created that narrative, but.

• 29:53Josh Clark?

  But it was a good one.

• 29:53Speaker 02

  He was good at mountain climbing. He may not have been a good photographer.

• 29:57Josh Clark?

  Okay, fair enough. But there's a very famous quote by a doctor, Tom Longstaff, who was the, the doctor on the expedition in 1922, who said Mallory was quite unfit to be placed in charge of anything, including himself. So, I mean, people definitely thought of him, I'm going to say flighty, and, and I'm not judging, I'm pretty flighty myself. You may would certainly tell you that. But, so I think I, I recognize it when I see it. Maybe that's what it is.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Is Yumi your Dr. Longstaff?

• 30:27Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 30:29Josh Clark?

  I'm gonna start calling her that now.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  She'll be like, what are you talking about?

• 30:32Josh Clark?

  I looked that up too. Remember our surnames episode? I was like, oh, is that a dirty last name?

• 30:37Speaker 02

  I know, that's what I thought.

• 30:38Josh Clark?

  It turns out if you were a bailiff or somebody involved in law enforcement, you would have carried like a long stick.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 30:46Josh Clark?

  To probably beat people with, and that's where they got that name. So his ancestor was involved in law enforcement. I looked it up. I went Longstaff, surname Penis?

• 30:56Speaker 02

  Dr. Longstaff definitely sounds like a porn name.

• 30:59Josh Clark?

  It definitely does.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  All right, so now let's go to 1924. The test runs had happened, the real attempts had happened. And then finally, 1924 rolls around. They didn't just take the year off in 1923 because they were tired. They didn't get funding. Like, it costs a lot of money. And these people aren't like bankrolling themselves. So the Mount Everest company could not raise the money in 23. So they waited until 1924, when Mallory jumped up in class and said, me, me, me, me, me, again.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  And almost didn't go though, because one of his mates, George Finch, a fellow climber, was, I believe, left off the list. And Mallory was like, if he's not gonna go, I'm not gonna go. And they said, okay. And then he went, well, I still wanna go.

• 31:48Josh Clark?

  He put on a fake mustache and put himself down as George Hallory.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 31:53Josh Clark?

  So there was a guy who went, who was kind of a surprise selection. His name was Andrew Sandy Irving, Irvine, sorry. And Sandy Irvine was a student still. He was an engineering student. And that's actually one of the reasons they brought him along. He wasn't a schlub as far as mountaineering goes. He just was not nearly as experienced as most of the people on that 1924 expedition. But being an engineering student, he could fiddle and fuss with the oxygen apparatus, which had in-

• 32:24Speaker 02

  And cameras, maybe?

• 32:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, probably. He knew how to put the film in the right direction. But- That since I get the impression that since the 1921 and 22 expeditions, it had become clear to these, these, um, these people on these expeditions on the 1924 expedition that oxygen was in fact like really important. And to have somebody who could make these, these rigs more efficient would be really, really valuable. So they brought Sandy Irving Irvine along.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I also saw that Irvine was, uh, you know, despite his fiddler's reputation was strong as an ox.

• 33:00Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's huge.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Another nice thing.

• 33:03Josh Clark?

  If you see, there's a famous picture of he and or him and Mallory next to each other facing the camera, like posing for a picture and he's easily a full head taller than Mallory was and about as wide too. So, um, he was a big, big boy.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Yeah. And Mallory was very handsome too, we should note.

• 33:23Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  Good looking dude.

• 33:25Josh Clark?

  He really was very pretty, I think you could say.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  A pretty man.

• 33:29Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm. And then one other note about Mallory on this, to start off this 1924 expedition. Again, this is the third expedition to Everest and he was the only member of this entire expedition who had been on all three expeditions, which again really underscores Mallory was obsessed with summiting Everest.

• 33:49Speaker 02

  That's right. So are you to June 1st now?

• 33:52Josh Clark?

  I think so, man.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  All right. Mallory and George Bruce make this first attempt. Uh, this one didn't work out when basically the Sherpas said, all right, we're not going any further. It's too dangerous. Uh, and they basically dropped their stuff and turned back. So again, this, um, this one didn't work out, but, uh, one of the positives is they established a camp at 25,000 feet, um, which I believe was, uh, was the tallest camp at the time or the highest camp.

• 34:22Josh Clark?

  Okay. Yeah. So that's again, that's a huge success for a summit attempt, right?

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Right. More groundwork.

• 34:29Josh Clark?

  The following day, another couple climbers, Edward Norton and T. Howard Somerville, um, made their own attempt on the summit. Norton kept going beyond Somerville and he made it within a thousand feet of the summit of Everest, which depending on your perspective, sounds really close, but actually isn't, or is actually super close, even though it sounds far away.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  I think it's pretty close.

• 34:54Josh Clark?

  It is, but if you look at a map and see where 28,000 feet is and then where 29,000 feet is.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I get you.

• 35:00Josh Clark?

  He had a way to go, but far and away, that was, that was the record and it was, uh, there was a record that stood, at least officially, until Hillary and Norgay, um, summited Everest in 1953. So it was a big deal, but Norton and Somerville really paid for their attempt. Somerville, uh, he almost suffocated from a high altitude cough. And then Norton developed snow blindness because they, they would wear, um, goggles that were like basically sunglass goggles and you had to wear them during the day, not just from the wind, but because the UV, um, was really, really, um, abundant because of the thin air up there.

• 35:42Josh Clark?

  So you would get what's called snow blindness. You would get, uh, keratitis on your corneas. And that's what happened to Norton. He burned his corneas from the reflected sunlight because he didn't keep his goggles on long enough. And on the way back down, from 25,000 feet back down, uh, he had to be helped. Every footstep had to be placed by Sherpas, uh, and the doctor, um, on the, on the trip. Every foot, every footstep he made all the way back down out of the, the Everest area.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  That's amazing.

• 36:15Josh Clark?

  It really is.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  All right. So on this third attempt, uh, Mallory, uh, brought Irving, I'm sorry. Why do you keep saying that? I said it because you said it.

• 36:23Josh Clark?

  Sorry.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Brought Irvine along and, uh, they were sending notes down, you know, they're sending messages back down with Sherpas along the way, basically.

• 36:33Josh Clark?

  Will you go with me?

• 36:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love you. Uh, they were sending notes back down to the other camps, basically giving reports on what's going on, saying things are going well. Uh, the weather looks like we should be able to do it. Um, we're gonna, we're gonna, you know, we're gonna try and do this like tomorrow, whatever. And so all the notes that were coming down were pretty positive. And, um, basically everything we know about this comes from a gentleman, uh, a geol-, a gentleman geologist named Noel Odell, who was actually a pretty big hero in this story too.

• 37:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, he was pretty awesome, actually. Um, and he lived to be a ripe old man. Sorry, ripe old age.

• 37:18Speaker 02

  He spelled really bad.

• 37:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and there's a really cool interview with him from a Nova episode. I can't remember what it's called, but it's from like the 80s. And they interviewed Noel Odell about this. So he factors in big time in a minute. But Odell was, um, he went up to one of the high camps. He wanted to look for fossils, being a geologist. He also brought up supplies of food and water to those higher camps to help the climbers on their way back down. And this was the third attempt. Remember, the first attempt didn't work, second attempt didn't work. It kind of resulted in disaster. And then this third attempt was going to be the last one. And Mallory said, hey, Irvine, why don't you come with me? We're going to try to make the Summit of Everest. And there's something that you need to know about this third attempt.

• 38:01Josh Clark?

  Mallory was, I think, 37 maybe by this time. And as far as mountaineers and climbers go, especially back then, he was old. This was probably going to be his last expedition to Everest. And this attempt for the summit was the last attempt on this expedition. Ergo, this was Mallory's last shot at summoning Everest. And he was setting out from the highest camp that had ever been established. Basically, I believe it's the highest camp still today on that north route.

• 38:32Speaker 02

  All right. That sounds like a great cliffhanger, no pun intended. So let's take our final break here and we'll wrap up the story right after this.

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• 41:08Speaker 02

  All right, so Mallory is on his last attempt as a human to do the thing that he was obsessed with since he was, you know, a young, late teenager.

• 41:18Josh Clark?

  Right, beautiful, late teenager.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Beautiful, so handsome. Geologist Noel Odell is up there again. He is, he is doing sort of the cool, groovy Appalachian trail hangout dude thing.

• 41:31Josh Clark?

  Trail magic?

• 41:32Speaker 02

  For people. Yeah, he's doing some trail magic up there. And at 12:50, he sees Mallory and Irvine on the northeast ridge. But they're a few hours, and this is really key, they're a few hours behind schedule from where they should be. And there's a very narrow window, again, for like, what time of day you can pull this off and then safely get back down. So to be a few hours behind schedule is a big deal on whether or not you're gonna survive, basically. So what he says, and we'll just go ahead and read the quote. What he says he saw is the following. "The entire summit ridge and final peak of Everest were unveiled.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  My eyes became fixed on one tiny black spot beneath a rock step in the ridge. The black spot moved. Another black spot became apparent and moved up the snow to join the other on the crest. The first then approached the great rock step and shortly emerged at the top. The second did likewise."

• 42:33Josh Clark?

  So right after that, Chuck, apparently the clouds came back and those two black spots that were, he took to be Irvine and Mallory disappeared from view. And that was, if that was Irvine and Mallory, the last time anybody saw them. And Odell would have been the last to see them, which will become a crucial thing later on, as we'll see. But Odell kind of waited for them to come back down to the camps. Remember, he was in the high camps and he waited, and he waited, and he waited, and then he started to get really worried. And here's where he became a hero, like you were saying earlier.

• 43:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, so Odell is, again, he's not down there at sea level. He is hanging out up there, trying to do the trail magic thing. He's all of a sudden worried. And he, he basically, from Camp Six, starts hiking around, trying to find these guys, and, and doesn't leave. He, he just keeps staying and he keeps making these ascents. And I believe, like, two days in a row, made an ascent over, what, like 26,000 feet?

• 43:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, a couple of them. And he'd go back to camp, because he had to, again, to survive. But then he would strike out, like, as soon as he could, the next day to look for them.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  I mean, that's why he's one of the heroes.

• 43:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. And like, again, I don't even know if he had oxygen at that point. So he spent a couple of days way up there looking for them. And finally, from the high camp, he signaled back down to the lower camps, the base camp. And there was apparently a prearranged signal that they had, they had come up with for this third summit attempt. And Odell laid it out. It was six sleeping bags laid out in a cross, which meant death, that they had died, that they hadn't made it. And so in reply, the guy who led the, the expedition had a return signal saying like, give up hope, come back down. And very sadly, Odell did as, as he was instructed and came back down without Irvine,

• 44:36Josh Clark?

  without Mallory, who remained up on the mountain, as far as anyone knew.

• 44:41Speaker 02

  Yeah. And at this point, he had been up there for, and this is over 23,000 feet. He had been up there for 11 days.

• 44:50Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 44:51Speaker 02

  And that's, I mean, surely no, I don't think that had been done before, right?

• 44:56Josh Clark?

  That's no picnic caught in a snowstorm. That's some serious stuff.

• 45:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. And there's no way that these guys, I mean, they were up there for two nights and you're not going to survive one night. So

• 45:05Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  It was, it was pretty clear those sleeping bags had to come out at that point.

• 45:09Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And so they said, you know, they were really kind of unhappy on that, on that way back down, which again, I don't think we said, if you're coming up a mountain, you have to acclimate over weeks, little by little. And I believe you have to do roughly the same thing coming back down. So these guys had to basically have this party where two people had been lost on their summit attempt and they were glummed. But at the same time, they realized like, you know, Mallory and Irvine had kind of embodied this spirit of adventure and just trying and even risking your life for, you know, this, this noble attempt that, that's something no one else had ever done. So it was kind of a bittersweet thing their loss was. It wasn't entirely nothing but tragic. There was some silver lining to it in the way that Mallory was remembered and thought of.

• 45:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. And from that moment forward there, you know, Ed kinda makes it sound like the consensus is that they never reached the top. And after reading all this stuff and a lot of other opinions, I don't think, I don't think that's true at all. I think there is still debate on whether or not they actually made it to the top and there are a bunch of cool little clues that kinda lead you down one way or the other along the way.

• 46:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, one of them Chuck was Odell and what he saw. And there's a couple of things you need to know about Odell. Number one, he was a geologist and a lot of people say he just mistook some rocks for Irvine and Mallory, the little tiny dots he thought he saw moving. He's a geologist, making him very unlikely to mistake rocks for people. And then secondly, he was well-known to have really good eyesight. Apparently, he didn't need glasses until he was in his 90s. So those two things combined make it seem like he was probably the best possible eyewitness around. And Odell went to his grave saying, "I saw them. They were moving. It was them." But exactly where he saw them kinda came up for grabs.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, so there are these three cliffs, sort of, you know, if you go this route, there are three cliffs to get to the top. And they call them steps, step one, step two, step three. They didn't know about these steps until they got there, obviously, because no one had done this yet. And from what he was talking about, he saw them on the second step. But there are a lot of people today that said, "No, I think he probably saw them on the first step." At one point in his life, he said that it was the first step, but then he went back and said, "No." And I don't know if he was just sort of a victim of kind of listening to what other people had to say. But apparently, later in life, he went back and was adamant that it was the second step that he saw them on.

• 47:48Josh Clark?

  Oh, really? Okay, cool. So here's the thing. If you were in the climbing community and you believe that, at the very least, Mallory, if not Mallory and Irvine, made it to the top of Everest on that 1924 expedition on that third attempt, the reason you think that is Because you believe that Odell did see them climb up that second step. Because that second step was the last great obstacle to the top. And had they made it up, the second step, nothing would have stopped Mallory from continuing on to hit the summit. Knowing that he probably would not ever make it down alive, he still would have kept going on. So that's what a lot of people think, and the people who think that he actually did make it, kind of point to Odell's eyewitness statements.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's in that interview when he was, what, he was 97 years old. Odell himself says that, you know, there would have been nothing that would have stopped Mallory and Irvine, he believes. Even though dusk was approaching and they probably knew it was, I guess, a suicide mission at that point.

• 48:51Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 48:51Speaker 02

  His feeling was that there's no way they would have stopped you.

• 48:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because we didn't say when those clouds came around, they brought with them a blizzard too. So it was really terrible conditions. They were way late in the day. There was basically no chance if they summited that they could get back to that highest camp in time for surviving the night. But that would not have stopped them because they just would, they just would have kept going. That's just what Mallory would have done. Pretty much everybody agrees on that. The distinction is whether he was on the first step or the second step. Because if he was just on the first step, he still had that second step ahead of him. He might not have made it. If he made the second step, he definitely summited. That seems to be what the consensus is.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  All right, so you've got that, we can park that to the side. In the subsequent years on different expeditions, there have been little bits and pieces of evidence found along the way. One in 1933, when Irvine's axe, his ice axe was found. And, you know, you're not gonna just leave your ice axe behind.

• 49:54Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 49:54Speaker 02

  So basically, they concluded that something happened that made Irvine drop this ice axe. But they recovered it in 33. And then in 1975, there were some Chinese climbers who made a successful summit all the way to the top. And they were the only ones that could have gone this way. Because like we said earlier, the Chinese route was shut down basically to Americans. And so it's not like that people before the 1975 would have been taking this route. I think there was one American group that snuck in and did so illegally. But one of the Chinese climbers said, "I found an English dead," to another climber.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  China has always denied this and said that that's not true, and that it was a misunderstanding. And then that climber, actually, his name was Wang Hungbao, died the next day in an avalanche. So there was never like any follow up with him.

• 50:54Josh Clark?

  In a really interesting ironic twist, Chuck, Hungbao translate to Solong Staff in English?

• 51:02Speaker 02

  No, really?

• 51:03Josh Clark?

  I thought I'd get a bigger laugh out of that. We'll just edit that out.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Well, it was believable enough to where I couldn't quite tell.

• 51:09Josh Clark?

  So, um, yeah, so there's all this intrigue that's kind of gathering around this, this idea that the Chinese had found at least one dead Englishman on their side of the mountain, the north side, the Tibetan side, where they shouldn't have been, which means that, yeah, it had to have been Irvine or Mallory. So there was an expedition that came, well, there's a 1991 expedition that found an old oxygen bottle that was almost certainly Mallory or Irvine's. And then all of that information kind of came together to support a 1999 Nat Geo expedition to actually find Irvine or Mallory. And they actually did. They found one of them. And at first, they thought it was Irvine, right?

• 51:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, they did. But they, they found Mallory. He was frozen. He was sun bleached. His body was very well preserved. The items on him were very well preserved. They found him severely injured. Well, they found a couple of things. They found that he had a severely broken leg and some, uh, some rope trauma, like ligature stuff around his waist. But what they really found that was severe was the cause of death, which was a golf ball sized hole in his forehead.

• 52:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they, and it was a puncture wound. So they think it's possible as he was falling that his ice axe bounced off of a rock and into his head, which that'd be pretty merciful on the way down, if you think about it, if that killed him instantly. Because they said that his- His foot was almost broken off, that that break was so bad. And then rope trauma too. Imagine a rope yanking on you, because they found the rope still tied around his waist.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  I've had that happen, actually. I can't imagine.

• 52:53Josh Clark?

  I mean, it's awful, right? It's like falling on your tailbone, but times a million. And the other end of the rope was snapped off, and I saw a climber say, because of that snap, it must have been tied to something really immobile, like a rock, rather than Irvine. So that suggested that Mallory had sent Irvine back and tried to make the summit himself, which a lot of people kind of give to his credit, that he wasn't willing to risk Irvine's life, only his own.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  I find it very strange that I said that that happened to me, and you didn't even ask what that was about.

• 53:24Josh Clark?

  I was on a roll.

• 53:27Speaker 02

  It's very strange.

• 53:28Josh Clark?

  What happened?

• 53:28Speaker 02

  I'm not even gonna, I'm not even gonna tell you now.

• 53:30Josh Clark?

  What happened?

• 53:31Speaker 02

  No one gets to know.

• 53:32Josh Clark?

  All right.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  That would be the great mystery of this episode.

• 53:35Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 53:36Speaker 02

  So, the two big clues here as to whether or not he made it are, well, one big clue was, he didn't have that picture of his wife on him. This is the picture that he took with him everywhere, that he vowed to place at the top of the mountain. And it wasn't on him. So, a lot of people look at that and say, "Well, it's not on him, because he actually did, maybe by himself, or maybe with Irvine, make it to the summit, and place that picture there." And it's not like you would have necessarily found that picture years later. It very probably would have blown away, or, you know, been destroyed by the elements over time. And, you know, I don't know how I feel about that clue.

• 54:16Speaker 02

  I think it's, considering everything was found really in good condition on him, and that he didn't have it, is pretty interesting to think about. I'll just say that.

• 54:26Josh Clark?

  I like that clue too. There's also a missing camera. They took a camera with them for that third attempt. A Kodak Vest Pocket Camera, VPK. And it's like one of those old... Cameras with the accordion that you pull out, but it is a really small, like, pocket-sized version. And had they made it to the summit, they absolutely would have taken a photograph from the summit. And if you could just find that camera, then you could conceivably, because it'd been in deep freeze conditions for all these years, it's possible, using modern techniques, that you could develop that film and solve this mystery once and for all. But the problem is this, Chuck, the camera's missing, and so is Irvine. Because there was an expedition not too long ago, a few years back,

• 55:10Josh Clark?

  that set out to look for Irvine, this other guy. Because where the Chinese expedition said that they found the dead English, that is nowhere near where Mallory was found. So they figured that they found Irvine. But when they went, when this expedition, I think a couple of years ago, went back to find Irvine, there was nothing there. His body was not exactly where it should be. Nothing there. And so this rumor has kind of come up over the years that the Chinese actually found him and brought him back down the mountain without telling anybody.

• 55:41Speaker 02

  That's right. That is the rumor. And that they got that camera, and they kind of botched the film, trying to get it developed and process those pictures. And that was a big embarrassment. And so they will take that secret to their graves.

• 55:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and another explanation is that the 1960 Chinese expedition to the top of the North Face was the first to summit the North Face, and that they were protecting national pride because they found evidence on that camera, on that film, when they did develop it, that Mallory had made it to the top. Who knows? The thing is, we'll never know, right? Ever. The thing that we will know, I think, eventually, though, Chuck, hopefully, is what happened with your rope trauma.

• 56:25Speaker 02

  That will go to the grave with me.

• 56:27Josh Clark?

  Oh, man, I really botched that, like, the Chinese mountain climbers botched processing that film.

• 56:34Speaker 02

  Okay, longstaff.

• 56:36Josh Clark?

  Long-winded's more like it. You got anything else?

• 56:40Speaker 02

  I got nothing else.

• 56:41Josh Clark?

  All right, everybody. Well, since Chuck refuses to tell us about his rope trauma story, I guess we have nothing left but listener mail.

• 56:50Speaker 02

  This is from the Silly String app. This is Myth Busted. Hey, guys. Just wanted to point out that Josh repeated a widely spread myth about telegrams in the Silly String episode that "stop" was used because punctuation cost extra. This myth has been busted. The real story is Morse code originally had only capital letters and no punctuation. It's generally not much of a problem, but during the First World War, when the telegrams were widely used in the military, a misunderstood messages message could be disastrous. So the custom arose of using the word "stop" between sentences in military telegrams so that any ambiguous phrases could not be misinterpreted.

• 57:31Speaker 02

  Called on with the public, even after punctuation was introduced, people continued fashionably using "stop" between sentences, even though they didn't have to. I thought this was kind of interesting. Thanks for the great show. And that is from Dave.

• 57:44Josh Clark?

  It is very interesting, Dave. I like both stories. Okay?

• 57:49Speaker 02

  You're both great.

• 57:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, everyone wins. And also, I'm going to posit that you have mentioned before that you've gone repelling as a Boy Scout and that it happened somewhere on Stone Mountain.

• 58:01Speaker 02

  Not true. The mystery continues.

• 58:04Josh Clark?

  Whatever. If you want to get in touch with us like Dave did and maybe take a crack at what happened with Chuck and the rope and the trauma, you can send us an email to [email protected].

• 58:18Speaker 00

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 58:34Josh Clark?

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• 59:06Speaker 03

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• 59:29Speaker 06

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.