When Edmund Hillary stepped onto the summit of Mount Everest at 11.30 on 29th May 1953 he didn’t admire the view, or dance a jig of triumph. No, he reported that the first thing he did was to look for traces of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine. The mystery of what happened to Mallory and … Read more
Andrew “Sandy” Irvine was the youngest mountaineer in the British team that took part in the third, 1924 Mount Everest expedition. He disappeared into clouds near the summit on June 8th, 1924, climbing strongly for the top with his companion George Mallory. His body has never been found. Or has it? Rumours persist that Irvine’s … Read more
Many people are unaware that it was a British expedition that first climbed Mount Everest, in 1953. Or that this was after no less than eight previous British attempts on the mountain. In this article, I will look at the strange British obsession with the world’s highest mountain. Even though the first people to climb … Read more
When I climbed Mount Everest in 1993 I saw five dead bodies in the snow along the route. And on my descent, a fellow climber fell to his death. Dead bodies on the mountain are sadly nothing new. But whose was the oldest body on Everest? Norbu Sherpa was the first climber to be killed … Read more
