Sandy Irvine and the Rongbuk Glacier
Andrew Irvine was last seen high on the north ridge of Everest on June 8, 1924, going strongly toward the summit. A hundred years later a boot with his name stitched into the sock came out of the glacier below.
Field Guide Entry
June 8, 1924
George Mallory and Andrew Comyn Irvine left their high camp on the north ridge. Irvine was 22 and had been picked for the summit attempt partly because he could keep the oxygen sets working. Noel Odell, climbing below, looked up through a break in the cloud and saw two figures moving on a step high on the ridge, going strongly. The cloud closed over them. Nobody saw them again.
Whether they reached the top first, 29 years before Hillary and Tenzing, has been argued ever since on the strength of that one sighting and a few minutes of Odell's memory.
What the mountain has given back
An ice axe was found in 1933 at around 27,700 feet, almost certainly Irvine's. An oxygen cylinder turned up in 1991. Mallory's body was found in 1999 by an expedition looking for exactly that, face down and frozen into the scree at 26,760 feet, a snapped rope still around his waist. The photograph of his wife that he had said he would leave on the summit was not in his pockets.
In September 2024 a National Geographic team led by Jimmy Chin was on the Central Rongbuk Glacier, a long way below the north face, and found a boot with a foot still inside it. The sock carried a stitched name tape reading A.C. IRVINE. DNA comparison against his relatives is under way.
The camera
Irvine was carrying a Kodak Vestpocket. If the film survived a century in the cold it could answer the question outright, and the hope of finding it is most of why people keep looking. It was not with the boot.
The glacier moves. Whatever is left of the 1924 expedition is coming down slowly, in pieces, in no order at all.
Visiting Information
This is the Tibetan side of the mountain rather than the Nepalese one, and the access rules are different. Foreign visitors cannot travel independently in Tibet. You need a Tibet Travel Permit and an Aliens' Travel Permit for the Everest area, both arranged through a registered agency, and you travel with a guide as part of an organized group.
Rongbuk Monastery sits at about 16,300 feet and is reached by road, two to three hours off the Friendship Highway from Old Tingri or Shelkar. It is the highest monastery in the world, and there is basic guesthouse accommodation there and at the tourist base camp beyond it.
Altitude is the real constraint. Going up from Lhasa without several days of acclimatization is how people end up ill at 16,000 feet with a long drive back down. On a clear morning the north face stands at the head of the valley, which is the view most visitors come for.
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