Posted on 10/19/2024 6:13:18 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
It was the call the family of a young British climber who went missing on Everest 100 years ago had given up hope of ever getting.
Last month, a team of climbers filming a National Geographic documentary stumbled on a preserved boot, revealed by melting ice on a glacier.
This boot was believed to belong to Andrew Comyn "Sandy" Irvine, who disappeared while attempting to climb Everest in June 1924 with his partner George Mallory.
What's more, it could potentially help solve one of mountaineering's biggest mysteries: whether or not the pair succeeded in becoming the first people to summit Everest, 29 years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the top.
Well-known adventurer Jimmy Chin, who led the team for National Geographic, hailed the discovery of the boot - with a foot inside it - as a "monumental and emotional moment".
But for Irvine's great-niece Julie Summers it was simply "extraordinary".
"I just froze.... We had all given up any hope any trace of him would be found," she told the BBC.
A number of people have searched for Irvine's body over the years, partly because the 22-year-old is said to have been carrying a camera with an undeveloped film inside, potentially with a photograph of the pair at the summit.
Could the discovery of the boot be the first step to finding his body - and the camera?
The family have now given a DNA sample to help confirm the foot is indeed Irvine - but the filmmaking team is fairly confident it belongs to the mountaineer. The sock found inside the boot has a name tag stitched into it with the words "A.C. Irvine".
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
I guess you were thrown off by the mention of the need for DNA, so, from another source, “Inside, they discovered a foot...”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/sandy-irvine-body-found-everest
:-)
Family ‘relief’? 1924. Come on. Did the save a plate at the dinner table?
LOLOL
Apparently Dr Scholl is doing the DNA work.
Not anymore! And that shed out back where they’ve been saving his mail, including 150,000 AOL signup CDs and floppies from the 80s? Gone!
It’s just nice to see that the family *ties* remain strong.
Okay, so, that one could use some *polishing*...
Cryptobiology is hitting new all-time highs on the market, thanks to this discovery.
Great idea, except the studio will have to be kept really cold, and everyone but the star will have to be bundled up all the time.
Remarkable to think anyone with leather boots would attempt to summit Everest.
Just a mere foot short of his goal!
On a side note, the ice has receded to where it was 100 years ago. Therefore, can we say the ice has returned to normal? Once again, global warming is righting the wrongs of the world. Thank you, global warming. Thank you!
So sad, just when they had a toehold on Everlasting fame...
I loved him in Airplane.
His fiancé was so true and pure, she never married over these many years, and she returned to Everest as soon as she heard the news. She is there now waiting, and thanks to global warming, the rest of the body should be delivered from the glacier any day now.
/s
Ahemm.
Yes, now merely a footnote in the history of climbing.
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