Mount Everest: They find the foot of a legendary mountaineer who disappeared 100 years ago

The famous adventurer Jimmy Chenwho led the team National GeographicHe described the discovery as a “huge and emotional moment.”

For Irvine’s niece, Julie Summers, it was simply “extraordinary.”

“I froze (…) We all lost hope of finding any trace of him.”He told the BBC.

Several people have searched for Irvin’s body over the years, in part because the 22-year-old carried a camera with unfinished film inside, possibly containing a photo of the two at the summit.

Could the discovery of the shoe be the first step to finding his body and the camera?

The family provided a DNA sample to help confirm it was indeed Irvin, but the filmmaking team is pretty sure it’s his because The sock inside the shoe has “AC Irvine” embroidered on it..

“I mean, buddy, there’s a poster over there,” said Chen, best known for directing the Oscar-winning climbing documentary. Free solo With his wife.

The team made this discovery while descending from… Rongbuk Glacier The Central Route along the north face of Mount Everest in September.

Along the way, they found an oxygen cylinder bearing the date 1933. An expedition to Mount Everest that year found something that belonged to Irvine.

Encouraged by this potential sign that Irvin’s body might be nearby, the team searched the glacier for several days, before one of them discovered a shoe emerging from the melting ice.

It was a serendipitous discovery: they appreciated it The ice had melted just a week before it was discovered.

The foot has since been removed from the mountain over fears of being chased by crows, according to reports, and handed over to Chinese mountaineering authorities who govern the north face of Mount Everest.

For Irvine’s descendants, the discovery is an emotional one, especially this year, which marks the 100th anniversary of his disappearance.

Summers grew up hearing stories about her grandmother’s adventurous, Oxford-educated younger brother, who was known as… “Uncle Sandy”.

“My grandmother had a picture of him by her bed until the day she died,” he recalls.

“He said he was a better man than anyone else,” he added.

Irvine – born in Birkenhead, a city neighboring Liverpool – was just 22 when he disappeared, the youngest member of the group. An expedition that has intrigued the mountaineering world for a century.

He and Mallory were last seen alive on June 8, 1924, when they left for the summit.

Mallory’s body was found in 1999 by an American mountaineer.

In recent decades, the search for the climbers’ remains has been mired in controversy amid doubts about transporting the bodies.

Summers has always dismissed such stories and suspicions as highly unlikely, and revealed he felt “relieved” after Chen called him to say he was “still up there on the mountain”.

What if it could now be proven that Irvine and Mallory reached the summit, being the first to do so, an idea that Summers appreciated: “It will turn the history of mountaineering upside down.”?

“It will be wonderful, and we will all feel very proud,” he said.

“But the family always maintained the mystery, and it was the story of how far they had come and how brave they were that really mattered,” he added.

“The only way we know is If we find an image in the camera He warned his niece that he thought he was carrying it.

Summers assumes the search for that camera will now continue. “I think it will be irresistible,” he said.

It remains to be seen whether they will find it.

For his part, Chen hopes that the discovery of the shoe — “a huge and emotional moment for us and our entire team on the ground” — “will bring peace of mind to his family and the climbing world in general.”

For Summers, it’s a chance to remind the world of that young man who “took life and lived it,” making the most of every opportunity and, above all, “having fun.”

But perhaps surprisingly, she and her cousins ​​are grateful that the older generation wasn’t here for this discovery.

“For them, Everest is his graveHe explained.

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