سؤال نهایی

Chapter twelve

The final question

By 1999, many people, both men and women, had climbed Everest. They came from the USA, India, China, Japan, Italy, and many more countries.

One climber, Goran Kropp from Sweden, rode his bicycle to Everest, climbed the mountain without oxygen, and rode home again. But still nobody had found an answer to the question: what happened to Mallory and Irvine?

A climber called Jochen Hemmleb became interested in this problem in 1988. He studied the problem for years, and his bedroom was full of books and photos of Everest. But with every new piece of information, there were new questions.

In 1924, Odell was at 7,926 metres, climbing up behind Mallory and Irvine towards Camp 6. At 12/50 p.m. the clouds cleared, and Odell could see the summit ridge of Everest above him.

High up on the ridge, he saw two tiny black dots moving on the snow. They were moving quickly. He saw them climb a rock step on the ridge. Then the clouds came back and they disappeared.

There are three rock steps on the north-east ridge: the First Step, the Second Step, and the Third Step. The Second Step is much harder to climb than the First and Third Steps.

It is a steep rock wall, like the front of a ship. But it is only about 250 vertical metres from the summit; and the Third Step is even closer. So the first question is: which of the three steps were Mallory and Irvine climbing when Odell last saw them?

In 1924, Odell said it was the ‘rock step at a very short distance from the base of the final pyramid.’ And both of them climbed quickly to the top of it. It is difficult to climb the Second Step, but much easier to climb the Third Step. And the First Step is quite a long distance from the summit.

So at 12/50 p m Mallory and Irvine were probably at either the Second Step or the Third Step - only ‘a very short distance’ from the summit.

If that is right, did they stop there? Probably not. All the difficult parts of the climb were behind them. They had oxygen, and Odell said they were ‘moving quickly.’

So did they reach the summit, before they died? Many people think it is quite possible. But others think Odell made a mistake. ‘He only saw them for a moment,’ they say. ‘He probably saw them climb the First Step - much further from the summit.’

Reinhold Messner agrees. ‘Mallory did not climb the Second Step,’ he says. ‘Odell saw them on the First Step.’

So who is right? And how can we know?

In 1933, a British climber found Irvine’s ice axe at 8,460 metres, just below the First Step. But why was it there? Did he put it down, or drop it in an accident? And did this happen on the way up, or the way down? No one knows.

In 1960, a Chinese climber found an old wooden tent post and rope, like those used in 1924, just below the Second Step. And in 1979 a Japanese climber met another Chinese climber, Wang Hongbao, on the mountain, and heard a strange story.

Four years earlier, Wang said, he had found a body - ‘an English dead’ - near the Chinese Camp 6, at 8,100 metres. Was this Mallory, perhaps, or Irvine? The Japanese climber wanted to ask more questions, but the very next day, Wang himself was killed in an avalanche.

So the questions continued. In 1999, Jochen Hemmleb was part of an expedition that set out to find some answers.

From Tibet, they climbed slowly up the East Rongbuk Glacier to Camp 5, just under the North East Ridge.

At 7,900 metres, one climber, Andy Politz, reached the place where Odell had last seen Mallory and Irvine far above him. Where had they actually been, when he saw them? Politz looked up. He could clearly see each of the First, Second and Third Steps.

‘You are really close to them at that point,’ he said. ‘And there was only one place that (was) “a very short distance from the base of the final pyramid”, and that was the Third Step - the one nearest the summit.’ He took a lot of photographs and video film to make this clear.

The five climbers reached Camp 6, near the place where Wang Hongbao had seen the ‘English dead.’ On 1 May 1999, they set out to find the body again. They climbed across a steep snow slope, some going up, others down.

It was a dangerous, frightening place. A strong wind made it easy to fall. After half an hour, they had found the bodies of not one but six dead climbers. All the dead bodies had broken arms or legs. And the climbers knew that at any moment they could fall and die too, like the men before them.

But the dead bodies wore modern clothes, in bright red or orange colours - very different from the clothes that climbers wore in 1924. Then Conrad Anker saw something white on the rocks below him. He climbed down carefully towards it. Then he called the others on his radio. ‘Come down here,’ he said. ‘Look at this.’

As soon as they saw it, they knew this body was different. This was no modern climber. This man had been here for seventy-five years. Some of his clothes were gone, blown away by the wind, and his skin was white.

There was no oxygen equipment. The rope around his waist had cut into the skin, and was broken at one end where he had fallen. One leg was broken in two places. His head and arms were cut.

They stood and looked at the body quietly for a while. They took photographs. Then, very gently, they began to look in the pockets of the man’s clothes.

One thing they hoped to find was a camera. In 1924, when Mallory and Irvine set out for the summit, Somervell gave Mallory a small camera to take with him. Did Mallory take photos at the summit, or not? The camera could give the answer.

In Mallory’s pockets they found some sweets, some letters from his brother and sister, a knife, a broken watch, his snow goggles - but no camera. They looked carefully all around, but the camera was not there.

It was too cold and dangerous to stay there long. But they did not want to leave the body as it was. For all of them, Mallory was a great man - one of the first and bravest of all the men who tried to climb Everest. So, before they left, they decided to bury his body. They covered the body with big stones. Then they said prayers over the body.

They had found one body, but they were still looking for answers. It was clear, though, that Mallory had stopped using oxygen. There was no oxygen equipment on his body, so he probably threw it away when he had used all the oxygen.

That means Mallory and Irvine did not turn back early - like Bourdillon and Evans in 1953 - when they still had enough oxygen to get back to Camp 6. Probably they went on, trying to reach the summit even when they knew it was dangerous.

Mallory’s snow goggles were in his pocket, so perhaps he was coming down after dark. The broken rope round Mallory’s waist shows that the two men were probably still climbing down together.

The moon went down early that night, at 11/25 p m after that there was only starlight to help them. They were tired, thirsty, and had no oxygen. But they were only 400 metres from the tiny tent at Camp 6, where Odell had left food. They were almost safe.

And then - something happened. Perhaps something like this:

They are climbing down together in the dark. Irvine is going first, Mallory is behind. Suddenly, Mallory slips and falls. Irvine tries to save him but the rope breaks. Mallory falls faster and faster. When he hits the ground his leg breaks in two places. But he does not stop.

He is sliding down the steep slope, towards the Rongbuk Glacier thousands of feet below. He has dropped his ice axe, but he turns on his face and digs his fingers into the snow above his head, trying to slow down. He stops, but he has hit his head on a rock. He lies there, unable to move, dying alone in the dark.

Somewhere far above him, Irvine is injured too. He calls to Mallory, again and again, but there is no answer. Slowly, he tries to crawl towards Camp 6, but he cannot find it. Alone, and lost in the dark and icy cold at 8,200 metres, Irvine dies too.

Did they reach the summit before they died? Only Mallory’s camera can answer that question, and no one has found it.

But there is one other important thing which no one has found. When Mallory left England in 1924, he took a photo of his wife, Ruth, with him. And he made a promise to her, in words like these.

‘I’ll look at your photo every day. But I will not bring it back. I’m going to take it with me to the summit of Everest.

When I get there, I’m going to bury your photograph in the snow, on top of the highest mountain in the world.’

The five climbers searched carefully for the photograph of Mallory’s wife in his pockets.

But it was not there.