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 ...
“Into the Silence” is a great book about these men. The author, Wade Davis, is probably a leftie but he put together an incredible account.
I would be both claustrophobic and acrophobic.
A Real Legacy -—
I’d say !
LOL! Hey, next time I will ping you.
Was it near the ashes of Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman?
“Yay, he’s saved”?
Snow big deal.
Irvine used to be a foot taller....
What a hellova way to go: Your foot gets cut off on Mt. Everest. I wonder if he cut off his own foot to get out of a life-threatening jam.
He was booted off the summit by the Abominable Snowman.......
Sorry your post shouldn’t have had this affect on me, don’t know why, but I am laughing so hard my ribs are hurting.
They're viewing it from a new ankle. No reason to be arch about the thing. Have you no sole? That region of Everest is socked in most of the time. Looks like they nailed it, though.
Poor sole.
Simon and Shoester was founded in 1924.
Coincidence?
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