Did Mallory Make it to the Top of Everest First?

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: Did Mallory Make it to the Top of Everest First?

iHeartPodcasts | May 16, 2026
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the enduring mystery of whether British mountaineer George Mallory, along with his companion Sandy Irvine, was the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1924—decades before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s verified ascent. Josh and Chuck delve deep into the human spirit of exploration, the pioneering days of high-altitude mountaineering, and the clues left behind by Mallory’s expeditions. Throughout, they unpack the technological, physical, and cultural challenges faced, and leave the question open—did Mallory conquer Everest first?

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Mallory’s Legendary Status and Early Climbing

• Mallory’s Early Life and Background:
  Mallory started as a "left-leaning, progressive, intellectual school teacher" and mingled with figures like John Maynard Keynes and Virginia Woolf. His transformation into an iconic mountaineer was unexpected.
  “George Mallory is extraordinarily famous, not just in the climbing community... He started out this very famous mountain climber and mountaineer... They were making some of their own gear, they were figuring out mountaineering techniques as they went along.” (Josh, 04:00)
• The Newness of Mountaineering:
  Everest and other high peaks were still being charted in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Mountaineering as a sport was only just developing.
  “It was such a new sport that people didn’t even really know... It was in 1852 when they finally figured out that Everest was the tallest peak.” (Chuck, 06:26)

2. Everest: The Setting and Its Challenges

• Naming and Significance:
  Everest, or "Chomolungma" to Tibetans (“Mother Goddess of the World”), was cemented as the world’s tallest mountain in 1852.
  “If you ask a Tibetan, what’s the name of that big old mountain over there? They would tell you Chomolungma, which means Mother Goddess of the World in Tibetan.” (Josh, 07:50)
• The Trek to Everest:
  Simply reaching the base of Everest is an ordeal—requiring traversing other mountain ranges, glaciers, and enduring altitude sickness.
  “You have to basically traverse mountain ranges... They were doing this with basically altitude sickness and all the stuff that comes with that.” (Josh, 09:00)

3. The Earliest Everest Expeditions

• Formation of the Everest Committee:
  By 1920, the Royal Geographic Society and the Alpine Club team up to plan expeditions, finally gaining permission from Tibet in 1921 for a scouting trip.
• Role of the Sherpa:
  British and European records often minimize the critical work of Sherpas; nevertheless, these expeditions relied on their expertise and physical labor extensively.
• Mapping and First Approaches:
  The British expeditions pioneered the north route, still in use today but technically more difficult than the south (Nepal) route.
  “Still today, the north route is considered technically more difficult because it requires you to spend more time at higher elevations with its attendant lower oxygen concentration.” (Josh, 14:51)

4. Mallory’s Obsession and Early Attempts: 1921 & 1922

• Mallory's Motivation and Experience:
  His obsession leads him to leave behind family and career, carrying a picture of his wife with the intention of leaving it at the summit.
  “He has a wife and three young kids at home, but really nothing could stop him from going on this first scouting trip.” (Chuck, 12:50)
• 1921 Expedition:
  Focused on reconnaissance and mapping; successful in charting the north route and establishing high camps despite primitive gear.
• 1922 Expedition & Tragedy:
  The first attempt to summit. Without modern oxygen, Mallory’s party reaches 26,800 ft—an astonishing feat. Disaster during a subsequent attempt causes an avalanche, killing seven Sherpas.
  “I think it was a little more his tenacious attitude sort of overrode good sense sometimes, is the way I took it.” (Chuck, 29:17)
  Mallory’s reputation for being “flighty” is discussed, including a story of botched camera film (30:13).

5. Why Climb Everest at All?

• Everest: The ‘Third Pole’
  With the North and South Poles conquered, climbing Everest became the ultimate challenge for adventurers of the era.
  “Everest itself was considered the third pole... This was like the last place for humans to, I guess, basically conquer or pit their endurance against.” (Josh, 24:19)
• The Iconic Quote:
  Chuck: “Mallory himself is the very person who very famously coined the term ‘because it’s there’ when asked why they would try to do something like this.” (25:15)

6. Climbing Technology and Danger

• Primitive Gear:
  Early expeditions used tweed jackets, hobnail boots, and rudimentary oxygen equipment, which Mallory at first resisted.
  “Back then they had, like, glassed bottles of oxygen that were carried in, like, wooden crates. And it was a real pain to get there. It was super, super heavy.” (Chuck, 25:35)
• Extreme Risks:
  Glaciers, avalanches, crevasses, and even the yeti (first introduced to Westerners during these expeditions) were just some of the obstacles.
  “Glacier... That’s like the first obstacle to get toward the mountain. And again, they were doing this with zero equipment.” (Josh, 20:14)

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The 1924 Expedition: The Heart of the Mystery

7. Expedition Overview and Key Players

• Mallory’s Last Chance:
  Now 37, Mallory knows this is likely his final attempt. "This was Mallory's last shot at summiting Everest." (Josh, 38:49)
• Sandy Irvine:
  Brought on as a young engineering student (and physically strong) to "fiddle and fuss" with the oxygen equipment.
  “He wasn’t a schlub as far as mountaineering goes... he could fiddle and fuss with the oxygen apparatus.” (Josh, 33:10)

8. Summit Attempts and Final Sighting

• Successive Attempts:
  Early attempts in June 1924 set up camps at unprecedented heights but fell short of the summit, suffering from altitude, exhaustion, and injury (notably, Norton’s snow blindness; 36:17).
• The Last Ascent – June 8, 1924:
  Mallory and Irvine begin their final summit bid, sending positive notes back down via Sherpas.
• Odell’s Eyewitness Account:
  Geologist Noel Odell claims to see “two black spots” surmounting a key rock step at 12:50 PM, just before a snowstorm obscures his view—this is the last sighting ever of Mallory and Irvine.

  “The entire summit ridge and final peak of Everest were unveiled. My eyes became fixed on one tiny black spot beneath a rock step in the ridge. The black spot moved. Another black spot became apparent and moved up the snow to join the other on the crest. The first then approached the great rock step and shortly emerged at the top. The second did likewise.” — Noel Odell (Chuck, reading, 42:55)

9. The Search and Aftermath

• Odell’s Heroic Efforts:
  Odell searches for them over multiple days at extreme altitude, ultimately laying out a distress signal with sleeping bags indicating death (44:22).
• Impact on Climbing Legacy:
  Mallory and Irvine’s loss became both a somber tragedy and an inspiration for generations, embodying the "spirit of adventure" (46:27).

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The Mallory Mystery: Did He Reach the Summit?

10. Clues, Debate, and Modern Expeditions

• Eyewitness Debate:
  Odell’s sighting is highly credible—geologist, keen eyesight—but whether he saw them surmount the infamous “Second Step” (the last true obstacle before the summit) or the “First Step” remains disputed.
• **If Mallory surmounted the Second Step, most modern climbers believe he could have reached the summit, though odds of survival for the descent were essentially nil.
• Later Physical Evidence:
  • Irvine’s Ice Axe: Discovered in 1933, suggesting a fall or mishap at high altitude.
  • 1975 Chinese Claim: A report of “an English dead” found near the summit; Chinese authorities have long denied this, and the climber who made the report died in an avalanche shortly after.
• Mallory’s Body:
  Found in 1999 at 26,760ft by a National Geographic-supported team. His injuries indicated a fatal fall: broken leg, rope trauma, and a puncture wound to the skull, possibly from his own ice axe (52:58).
• The Missing Photo and Camera:
  The famous photograph of his wife—left, he promised her, at the summit—was missing from his possessions, fueling theories he reached the top. Also missing is a camera that, if found and developed, could hold the answer. “…they absolutely would have taken a photograph from the summit. And if you could just find that camera, then you could conceivably…solve this mystery once and for all.” (Josh, 54:57)

11. Rumors and Unanswered Questions

• Chinese Expeditions:
  Persistent rumors that the Chinese found and removed Irvine’s body (and the camera) in the 1960s or 70s, and possibly sabotaged the photographic evidence.
• Open-Ended Conclusion:
  No definitive proof has emerged. The question remains one of adventure’s great unsolved mysteries. “The thing is, we’ll never know, right?” (Josh, 56:50)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Why climb Everest?
  “Because it’s there.” — George Mallory (referenced by Chuck, 25:16)
• On the danger and hardship faced:
  “I don’t think we can overstate, like, the near impossibility of this feat at the time.” (Chuck, 19:19)
• On Mallory's character:
  “Mallory was quite unfit to be placed in charge of anything, including himself.” — Dr. Tom Longstaff, quoted by Josh (30:09)
• Summing up the legacy:
  “Mallory and Irvine had kind of embodied this spirit of adventure and just trying and even risking your life for...this noble attempt at something no one else had ever done.” (Josh, 46:27)

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Recommended Timestamps for Key Segments

• Mallory’s Introduction and Mountaineering’s Early Days: 01:38–07:07
• Climbing Gear & Techniques of the 1920s: 05:26–07:50, 14:51–19:19
• First Everest Expeditions, Sherpas’ Role: 09:44–14:30
• 1924 Ascent and Last Sighting: 34:06–43:39
• Odell’s Search and Signal for Death: 43:39–45:13
• Debate on Whether Mallory Summited: 46:27–50:03
• Clues Found Over the Years: 50:03–54:57
• Closing Discussion on the Enduring Mystery: 56:13–56:50

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Tone & Style

Conversational, witty, and reverent—Josh and Chuck discuss Mallory’s obsession and the harrowing quest for Everest’s summit with equal parts dry humor, historical curiosity, and respectful awe for the courage (and sometimes the impulsiveness) of early climbers.

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Final Takeaway

While we may never know for certain if George Mallory and Sandy Irvine reached Everest’s summit first, their story remains one of the most compelling in exploration history—blending mystery, tragedy, and the unyielding human drive “because it’s there.”

Transcript

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[Josh Clark]

Hey everybody, it's your old pal Josh. And for this week's Sysk Select, I've chosen our 2022 episode, did Mallory make it to the Top of Everest First? It's a clunky title, but an amazing episode. It talks about George Mallory, an unsung climber who may have been the first European to ever summit Everest a full three decades before Sir Edmund Hillary definitely did. The reason we don't know the reason it's still a mystery is because he was lost for years and even once he was found, still didn't quite answer the question. This is an amazing history mystery podcast that also has a lot of human spirit in it and I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is stuff you should know. Lost on the Mountaintop edition, but not in Tennessee, because this has nothing to do with the Beverly Hillbillies at all.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow, that was a roundabout, funny intro.

[Josh Clark]

I didn't even know it was coming 30 seconds ago.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, we are not talking about Tennessee. We are talking about one of the heroes of mountaineering and mountain climbing, certainly Mr. George Mallory. And the great mystery to me, unsettled mystery, on whether or not he ever made it to the top of Edvorus. Oh, boy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, this is a tough start, Chuck, because I just realized what I referenced was the Davy Crockett theme, not Beverly Hillbillies. So everybody save your emails, okay? Oh, that's right, all of you Beverly Hillbillies cosplayers, save your emails. So, okay, we're talking about Mount Everest. We're not talking about Davy Crockett or the Beverly Hillbillies. We're talking about George Mallory, and to a lesser extent, kind of unfairly, but also kind of fairly, his climbing companion, Sandy Irvine. And George Mallory is extraordinarily famous, not just in the climbing community. He's a legend in the climbing community, Chuck. But you and I know about him. I knew about Mallory, didn't you? Before all this?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

At least heard his name, had a general idea about him. Right, sure. Name two other climbers. Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

The guy from that free solo documentary and, well, all the Sherpa. I mean, Ed makes great pains to point out the Sherpa, but suffice to say, all you have to do is go back and listen to our episode, Sherpa Warm, Friendly Living, in which we dedicate an entire episode to the usually nameless Sherpa who are usually standing just out of frame of some white dude saying, yeah, I climbed Everest again, but here, go ahead and get your picture taken.

[Josh Clark]

Right? And they just kind of slowly shove them to the side. But, yeah, but despite your best efforts, you still managed to prove my point. George Mallory is extremely famous and up to his 30s. It did not look like it was going to go that way because he started out this very famous mountain climber and mountaineer, an early mountain climber and mountaineer, too. That's something that I feel is a beat will hit throughout this episode that these guys that Mallory was climbing with were using, like they. They were making some of their own gear, they were figuring out mountaineering techniques as they went along. It was like a brand new thing that people were doing, and George Mallory was among the. The earliest people doing that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, there's that one. I don't know if it was a journalist or somebody was talking about pictures of the actual attempt to climb Everest. And he said, these guys look like they had gone out for a picnic and were hit by a snowstorm.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And just in how they were dressed, you know, they were in like tweed jackets and stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And hobnail boots. So just like some leather boots with some spikes attached to them. Like just nothing. You would even climb a hill in these days, let alone Mount Everest. But that's what they were wearing. So George Mallory didn't start out as showing signs he was going to be famous. He was kind of a left leaning, progressive, intellectual school teacher. He did rub elbows with John Maynard Keynes and Virginia Woolf from the Bloomsbury Group. Bloomsbury Group.

[Chuck Bryant]

Pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But that was probably the greatest brush with fame that he had up until he started hitting Mount Everest and making that basically his stated goal in life.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, he got into hiking and mountaineering when he was in his late teens and really fell in love with it. But, you know, as Ed keenly points out, it was, you know, it was such a new sport that people didn't even really know. Like, they haven't even charted like the highest mountains in the world up into a very. I mean, what I consider a pretty late point when you think about, like expeditions that Lewis and Clark made. It was in 1852 when they finally, finally figured out that Everest was the tallest peak.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Like up to 1852, they were basically at the point of that one's tall. Oh, look at that one. That's a tall one too. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I wish we could put them next to each other.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. So there was actually a guy named Radhan Sikdar who was an Indian surveyor who used data that the English had produced during their occupation of India to calculate just exactly how tall Mount Everest was. Because they really did settle on Everest just by sight. They're like, that might be the tallest mountain we've ever seen. And indeed, it turned out at 29,032ft, Mount Everest was in the mid 19th century and still is today, the tallest mountain in the entire world. And they named it Everest after the director of the survey in India.

[Chuck Bryant]

Of course they did, Sir George Everest.

[Josh Clark]

But if you asked a Tibetan, what's the name of that big old mountain over there? They would tell you Chomo Lungma, which means Mother Goddess of the World in Tibetan. So even the Tibetans were like, this is clearly the world's tallest mountain.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And of course they had, you know, their own names for it, but we generally don't know those names because they would come along later and just name it after just some dude.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But we Some Englishman.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, Chomolungma. That's definitely one of them.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, I know, but ask ten people what Chomolunga is, right?

[Josh Clark]

And name two other famous climbers.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, but the long and short of it is. Or I guess the tall and short of it is they realized that Everest was the tallest thing in 1852. But big deal, they couldn't do anything about it. They could just kind of gaze upon it. It would be decades and decades before anyone even thought that they might be able to climb Everest. Because here's the deal. Getting to Everest and climbing it is like ascending the peak is one thing, but just getting to that point is, I don't know, 90% of the battle,

[Josh Clark]

I would say, easily. Most people think you look at a mountain, you just climb up the base and go up to the side and you're done. But no, you have to basically traverse mountain ranges. Mountains just don't exist on their own. They're part of ranges, and you don't really think about it. But you have to climb all these other little mini mountains to get to the big mountain in the first place. And this can be walks of, you know, dozens or scores of miles and not walk. It's not a straight walk over a plane. And then you get to the edge of the mountain, you go up. Like, you're going up and up and up. And you're existing at higher and higher altitudes, which the English people who were. Who were doing this at first were not used to. So they were doing this with basically altitude sickness and all the stuff that comes with that.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so let's go to 1920. And the stage is sort of set to where they feel like it might be possible to actually accomplish something like this. And the Royal Geographic Society got together with the Alpine Club to form. And they didn't, like, permanently come together, but they worked together to form the Mount Everest Committee to say, all right, let's give this a go, old boy. And they got permission from Tibet in 1921 to go on a scouting trip. And this was a trip where they would just kind of figure out how to climb Everest. Like, it wasn't like they just said, all right, let's give it a go and see if we can get to the top. Like, they had to take several trips just to sort of map out what they thought would be a feasible way to even try to get to the top.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Apparently, no one from Europe had been within 60 miles of Everest itself. So this was all new, uncharted territory, basically, for these guys. And again, it's really important to say, like, we're. We're going to be telling the story from the English point of view. And like you said, the Sherpa rarely figure into that, with the big exception of Tenzing Norgay, who. Who officially was the first to summit Everest with Edmund Hillary. But these guys weren't doing this alone. They had, depending on the expedition and how much money it had, scores to hundreds of Sherpas, like, attending them, helping them climb, moving their stuff, and just basically making life much easier on these guys. That said, I really don't want to undermine the amount of effort and strenuousness that these guys. Yeah. And talent that these guys underwent in just figuring out how to get to Everest to start on that first 1921 expedition.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it's really cool to read contemporary. Yes. Contemporary accounts of what modern climbers think of Mallory and his not just tenaciousness, but his actual talent level. And his climbing style was apparently very unique and just revered today by modern climbers. And, you know, it's not to take anything away from what anyone does today, because what people can accomplish today is amazing. But they accomplish these things based generally on, you know, they can be taught by other people. And, like, this is how it's done. Like, Mallory and the King were figuring this out for the first time. And by the way, I might have said Hillary instead of Mallory, because I'm just thinking of climbing hills.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And we should just go ahead and say, just to get any confusion out of the way. Edmund Hillary summited Everest in, I think, 1953. We're talking about the first expeditions to everest again in 1920. Mallory and Hillary, I don't believe ever met. They were of different generations of climbers, but Mallory was considered one of the pioneers, as were the other men in his expeditions that he went on.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so if I said Hillary, I meant Mallory. Are we all good?

[Josh Clark]

I think we're good. Yeah. Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. So they got permission again for this trip in 1921, and Mallory was in his early 30s. He was included in this first group and I think was really chomping at the bit to do so. He has a wife and three young kids at home, but really nothing could stop him from going on this first scouting trip.

[Josh Clark]

No. And he was 33 on the 1921 trip. And he says, basically, hey, dear, I'm going to quit my job and leave you and the children for, I don't know, seven months at least to go on this expedition. See ya. And that's where he went.

[Chuck Bryant]

But he did say to his wife, here's what I'll do. I'll take this picture of you, babe, and I will carry it with me always, and I will place you at the top of Everest to live there forevermore, encased in ice when I get up there.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I'm sure he probably took it with him on the first expedition. But the first expedition wasn't planning on summiting Everest. But from what I gather from Mallory, he would have been down to give it a shot that first time out. Like, that's how obsessed with Everest that man became.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And he actually was really successful. The expedition was. This was again, the first expedition by the English to map Everest. And they managed to do it. They managed to find a way onto Everest, what's called the. The north call, which is a ridge that connects one mountain to another. And they found that north Cole, which is the way still today, if you're coming from the north, from the Tibetan side up Everest, do you still use that route that these guys mapped in 1921?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And it's important to point out which side that they would have gone up then and what side you go up now, because there is a route that China kind of secured and basically has held that Americans can't go. And that'll be a key sort of later on in this mystery. So put a pin in that.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because China invaded Tibet in 1950 and said this side of the mountain is closed to Westerners. But this happened. That happened three decades after Mallory and his expeditions. So they were using that north route. And still to this day, the north route is considered technically more difficult because it requires you to spend more time at higher elevations with, you know, its attendant lower oxygen concentration, which makes the whole thing way harder. And then secondly, the way in through the north route requires 22 miles of walking just to get from Base Camp to the top. Whereas the south route, which is what Westerners use today, coming from the Nepalese side, is about 12 and 3/4 miles of walking. Nothing to sneeze at still. But, oh, yeah, it just kind of underscores the. Just how hard the things that these guys were doing with zero equipment.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so I think it's a good time for a break.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm going to finally sort out the difference between Hillary and Mallory.

[Josh Clark]

It sounds like an 80s sitcom. No.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so I'm going to work all that out, and we'll be right back.

[Josh Clark]

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[Josh Clark]

Okay, we're back and I want to go over a little more about when you how you get to a mountain. And we don't have to go in great detail, but you're basically going up one mountain to get to that ridge that connects that smaller mountain to Everest, the taller mountain. Right. But to get there requires hiking, mountain climbing, ice climbing, rock climbing, every kind of climbing you can imagine. And one of the first things you have to do, no matter whether you come from the north route or the south route, is cross a glacier. And that is way harder than it sounds.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, this thing is, you know, surrounded in part by glaciers. And like you said, there are so many different disciplines. If you're going to do something like Everest, and especially in 1921, 22, that I just don't think we can overstate, like the near impossibility of this feat at the time.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Especially with the glacier. There's crevasses, they can be really deep, you know, 100 or more feet deep, and you can fall into that and die. There can be ice slides, also known as avalanches, that can come and bury you. There's something called, I think, secors, which are house sized blocks of ice that you sometimes have to climb that you could also topple and be crushed by. Like, that's just the glacier. That's like the first obstacle to get toward the mountain. And again, they were doing this with zero equipment.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, we did. We did a whole episode on ice climbing. Right?

[Josh Clark]

We totally did.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I remember that's why we talked about C cores.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, good. All right. Yeah, I thought it sounded familiar. And I also was like, yeah, ice climbing is really hard. I know that from experience in researching it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Well, I mean, this one, the Sherpa episode, was really good. Ice climbing was good. I believe we did one on dead bodies on Everest.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Way long time ago.

[Josh Clark]

We did one on altitude signals sickness, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So this all comes together. Point is, it's really, really hard and there are so many ways to die.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. What else wants to kill you up there, Chuck, that they weren't aware of until that 1921 expedition?

[Chuck Bryant]

The Yeti.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. That's where the yeti was introduced. Or at least the concept was introduced to westerners who brought it back. And then I believe on A later, like 1951 expedition, a guy named Eric Shipton took some photos of what were supposed to be yeti tracks. And that's when, like, the west really went wild for the yeti.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. So let's catch ourselves up. It's September 24, 1921, when they reach the north, Cole. And this is where they're like, all right, we think this is it. We think we have found a path that can actually get us. They didn't realize there would one day Be an easier path, probably, but they said, we think this is the way to go. And it should be noted that not only these expedition trips to sort of map things out, but each subsequent attempt to ascend Everest that ended up in, I don't want to say failure, but I guess it is failure if they didn't accomplish it.

[Josh Clark]

Devastation.

[Chuck Bryant]

But each one of. Yeah, each one of those is really important, too, because, you know, every higher peak that you get to, you're able to sort of establish. Of course, not everywhere, but you're able to establish camps along the way. And these camps are then used later on as, you know, base camps like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, et cetera. In fact, it may have 6 might have been the highest camp at the time. Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, but, but it's super important to establish that for, like, all the hikers to come. Just because it was a failed attempt doesn't mean a lot of great stuff wasn't accomplished.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Because if you are hiking or you're climbing up a mountain and there's a higher camp that you're coming up to, you can make your way over the day to that camp and then just stay there for the night. If there's not a camp, you have to turn around at some point and make your way to that next lower camp to survive. Because you cannot be caught overnight on Everest anywhere at these elevations that these guys are hiking at without a tent and, or a sleeping bag, or you're going to die. That's all there is to it. A human being can't survive on the, you know, the higher altitudes of Everest without that kind of stuff. So, yes, establishing a camp is an enormous thing, but also they're learning stuff firsthand about how humans respond to low oxygen concentrations, what the weather conditions are, like, what time of year you can hike. Like, every detail is a brand new, novel detail that is really crucial in understanding how to get to the top eventually.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, like what time of day you have to start out in order to get up there and safely get back down. Because some people, including Hillary. Yes, Hillary. And it's a thorny subject, but some people, as far as the mystery of Mallory goes, some people don't consider it a successful ascent unless you come back down. And that's kind of the thing. And I think Hillary was one of those. And his family also said, hey, listen, not to slag anyone, but we kind of only consider it a success if you go up and you're able to come back down and live to tell about it, essentially.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I think that was.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which is an interesting point.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. But I think that point was made by Hillary himself, which is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, no, that's what I'm saying.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. He's. Yeah, he's like, well, I mean, even if you've made it to the top, it doesn't count.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, I'm. I'm doing this interview right now, Right.

[Josh Clark]

I'm sitting here. So there's one thing I want to point out that I don't know has become clear yet. It's clear to me because we did this research and I found out what the deal was. But you might be asking yourself, why was mountain climbing so big at this time? Why were these people doing this? And there's a really good explanation for that. Everest itself was considered the third pole because people had already made it to the South Pole and the North Pole. We didn't yet have the technology to explore the deep ocean or space, and we had been almost everywhere else on Earth. So this was like the last place for humans to, I guess, basically conquer or pit their endurance against. And that's why it was so attractive to people.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes. And that was a very eloquent way to say that. I think we should mention that Mallory himself is the very person who very famously coined the term because it's there. When asked why they would try to do something like this.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Why climb mountains? Because it's there.

[Josh Clark]

That alone makes him just worth remembering. You know? What a cool response.

[Chuck Bryant]

Absolutely.

[Josh Clark]

Why are you gonna eat that Big Mac? Because it's there. Everything that's ever come since then, where somebody says because it's there, you're actually quoting George Mallory.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. All right, so let's talk for a second about oxygen. Low oxygen is no good for the human body, and we've mentioned several times that your oxygen levels are very low when you're ascending Everest. And these days, they make it really easy on you. It's all, you know, the kind of oxygen they take is very easy to take. They make it very user friendly. But back then they had, like, glassed bottles of oxygen that were carried in, like, wooden crates. And it was a real pain to get there. It was super, super heavy. But they knew at the time, you know, well, they learned that they would absolutely need this stuff. But Mallory was sort of, I don't think, indifferent. I think he was sort of annoyed by the whole thing that you actually had to take this stuff to the point where he didn't even use them. I believe in the 1921 test run, right?

[Josh Clark]

No, I don't believe so. I don't think he did either. In the 1922 expedition that followed where they actually did try to make summit. And it wasn't for years before he was like, okay, maybe oxygen's a good idea. Some of them even thought it was like a hindrance in general because it was an extra 30 pounds that you had to carry up this mountain. And if you watch. If you watch video of people climbing Everest today, especially as they get closer and closer to the top and there's less and less oxygen, they get less chatty. Yeah, they do. Even they. They seem to, like, have regret for being where they. But even with oxygen on, if you watch them, they'll take a step. So one foot, and then they'll bring the other foot up, and maybe they've traversed a foot of Everest right then. And then they have to wait, like, 15, 30 seconds before they make the next one because they're that tired because there's that little oxygen, and that's with oxygen on. So these guys were trying these kind of ascents without oxygen. I can't imagine, like, you know, how you would even do that. And it's actually. It's not clear whether you really could summit Everest without oxygen. Although I think people have tried and maybe even been successful, so I guess it would be clear.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So in 22, I believe Mallory and a couple of other climbers hit 26,800ft, which is remarkable, before they decided to turn back. And again, this is without using oxygen on that 22 try. And then this is the part where I was a little bit confused. Maybe you can clear it up. When did the avalanche happen? Was that in 21, where seven people were killed?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So, no, in 21, there was an avalanche that wiped out some of the camps they'd established but didn't hurt anybody. In 22, they weren't as lucky. And seven Sherpa died in an avalanche.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right.

[Josh Clark]

And Mallory kind of considered himself at least partially responsible, even though he wasn't the only person who pushed for this last attempt for the summit. He was one of them. And. And an avalanche was triggered by that third attempt and killed some of the people further down on the mountain when they were covered up by it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And there are people, you know, who have looked back and kind of pooh poohed Mallory's pooh poohed his carelessness. And I don't know if it was carelessness. I don't think it was carelessness, just because he was a Careless person. I think it was a little more his tenacious attitude sort of overrode good sense sometimes, is the way I took it. Is that how you took it?

[Josh Clark]

I think that was part of it. But I also get the impression that he was, like, just downright flighty.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, was he?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, like there was a. He was in charge of the camera for the 1922 expedition, and apparently he put the film in backwards but was taking pictures the whole time, and they didn't turn out because he didn't have the film incorrectly. Like, that's classic malady.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

But if you do that, things like that, that over and over again, you start to develop a reputation as being flighty, I guess.

[Chuck Bryant]

So. The thing I think is cameras. Like, operating a camera wasn't second nature at this point in history. And it's like, just give this guy a camera. I don't know. I could see him just being like, I don't even know what this thing is or how to really operate it. Like, don't give it to me. And they're like, well, you kind of have to take it. And he's like, all right, I'll do my best. I mean, I kind of created that narrative, but.

[Josh Clark]

But it was a good one.

[Chuck Bryant]

He was good at mountain climbing. He may not have been a good photographer.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, fair enough. But there's a very famous quote by a Dr. Tom Longstaff, who was the. The doctor on the expedition in 1922, who said Mallory was quite unfit to be placed in charge of anything, including himself. So, I mean, people definitely thought of him. I'm gonna say flighty again, and I'm not judging. I'm pretty flighty myself. Yumi would certainly tell you that, but. So I think I recognize it when I see it. Maybe that's what it is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is Yumi your Dr. Longstaff?

[Josh Clark]

Yep. I'm gonna start calling her that now.

[Chuck Bryant]

She'll be like, what are you talking about?

[Josh Clark]

I looked that up too. Remember our Surnames episode? I was like, oh, is that a dirty last name?

[Chuck Bryant]

I know, that's what I thought.

[Josh Clark]

It turns out if you were a bailiff or somebody involved in law enforcement, you would have carried, like, a long stick to probably beat people with, and that's where they got that name. So his ancestor was involved in law enforcement. I looked it up. I went, Longstaff, surname penis.

[Chuck Bryant]

Dr. Longstaff definitely sounds like a porn name.

[Josh Clark]

It definitely does.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so now let's go to 1924. The test runs had happened, the real attempts had happened, and then finally 1924 rolls around. They didn't just take the year off in 1923 because they were tired. They didn't get funding. Like, it costs a lot of money and these people aren't like, bankrolling themselves. So the Mount Everest Company could not raise the money in 23. So they waited until 1924 when Mallory jumped up in class and said, me, me, me, me, me again. And almost didn't go, though, because one of his mates, George Finch, a fellow climber, was, I believe, left off the list. And Mallory was like, if he's not gonna go, I'm not gonna go. And they said, okay. And then he went, well, I still want to go.

[Josh Clark]

He put on a fake mustache and put himself down as George. Hallo.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly.

[Josh Clark]

So there was a guy who went who was kind of a surprise selection. His name was Andrew Sandy Irving Irvine. Sorry. And Sandy Irvine was a student still. He was an engineering student. And that's actually one of the reasons they brought him along. He wasn't a schlub as far as mountaineering goes. He just was not nearly as experienced as most of the people on that 1924 expedition. But being an engineering student, he could fiddle and fuss with the oxygen apparatus, which had him cameras, maybe. Yeah, probably. He knew how to put the film in the right direction. But since I get the impression that since the 1921 and 22 expeditions, it had become clear to these people on these expeditions, on the 1924 expedition, that oxygen was in fact really important and to have somebody who could make these rigs more efficient would be really, really valuable. So they brought Sandy Irvine along.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I also saw that Irvine was, you know, despite his fiddler's reputation, was strong as an ox.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, yeah, he's huge.

[Chuck Bryant]

Another nice thing, if you see there's

[Josh Clark]

a famous picture of he and, or him and Mallory next to each other facing the camera, like posing for a picture. And he's easily a full head taller than Mallory was and about as wide too. So he was a big, big boy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And Mallory was very handsome too, we should note.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Good looking dude.

[Josh Clark]

He really was very pretty, I think you could say a pretty man. And then one other note about Mallory on this. To start off this 1924 expedition, again, this is the third expedition to Everest and he was the only member of this entire expedition who had been on all three expeditions, which again, really underscores Mallory was obsessed with summiting Everest.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. So to June 1st now, I think so, man. All right, Mallory and George Bruce make this first attempt. This one didn't work out. When basically the Sherpas said, all right, we're not going any further. It's too dangerous. And they basically dropped their stuff and turned back. So, again, this one didn't work out, but one of the positives is they established a camp at 25,000ft, which I believe was the tallest camp at the time, or the highest camp.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, yeah. So again, that's a huge success for a summit attempt. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Even when more groundwork.

[Josh Clark]

The following day, another couple climbers, Edward Norton and T. Howard Somervell, made their own attempt on the summit. Norton kept going beyond Somervell, and he made it within 1,000ft of the summit of Everest, which, depending on your perspective, sounds really close, but actually isn't, or is actually super close, even though it

[Chuck Bryant]

sounds far away, I think it's pretty close.

[Josh Clark]

It is. But if you look at a map and see where 28,000ft is and then where 29,000ft is.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, I get.

[Josh Clark]

You had a way to go, but far and away, that was a. That was the record. And it was. It was a record that stood, at least officially, until Hillary and Norgay summited Everest in 1953. So it was a big deal. But Norton and Somerville really paid for their attempt. Somerville, he almost suffocated from a high altitude cough. And then Norton developed snow blindness because they would wear goggles that were like, basically sunglass goggles. And you had to wear them during the day, not just from the wind, but because the UV was really, really abundant because of the thin air up there. So you would get what's called snow blindness. You would get keratitis on your corneas. And that's what happened to Norton. He burned his corneas from the reflected sunlight because he didn't keep his goggles on long enough. And on the way back down from 25,000ft back down, he had to be helped. Every footstep had to be placed by Sherpas and the doctor on the trip. Every foot, every footstep, he made all the way back down out of the Everest area.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's amazing.

[Josh Clark]

It really is.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so on this third attempt, Mallory brought Irving. I'm sorry, why do you keep saying that? I said it because you said it.

[Josh Clark]

Sorry.

[Chuck Bryant]

Brought Irvine along, and they were sending notes down. You know, they're sending messages back down with Sherpas along the way, basically. Will you go with me saying, yeah, I love you. They were sending notes back down to the other camps, basically giving Reports on what's going on, saying things are going well, the weather looks like we should be able to do it. We're going to try and do this, like tomorrow or whatever. And so all the notes that were coming down were pretty positive. And basically everything we know about this comes from a gentleman, a gentleman geologist named Noel o', Dell, who was actually a pretty big hero in this story, too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he was pretty awesome, actually. And he lived to be a ripe old man. Sorry, ripe old age. He spelled really bad. Yeah. And there's a really cool interview with him from a Nova episode. I can't remember what it's called, but it's from like the 80s. And they interviewed Noel O' Dell about this, so he factors in big time in a minute. But Odell was. He went up to one of the high camps. He wanted to look for fossils. Being a geologist, he also brought up supplies of food and water to those higher camps to help the climbers on their way back down. And this is the third attempt. Remember, the first attempt didn't work. Second attempt didn't work. It kind of resulted in disaster. And then this third attempt was going to be the last one. And Mallory said, hey, Irvine, why don't you come with me when going to try to make the summit of Everest? And there's something that you need to know about this third attempt. Mallory was, I think, 37 maybe by this time. And as far as mountaineers and climbers go, especially back then, he was old. This is probably going to be his last expedition to Everest. And this attempt for the summit was the last attempt on this expedition. Ergo, this was Mallory's last shot at summiting Everest. And he was setting out from the highest camp that had ever been established. Basically, I believe it's the highest camp still today on that north route.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, that sounds like a great cliffhanger, no pun intended. So let's take our final break here and we'll wrap up the story right after this

[Josh Clark]

stuff. You should know.

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so Mallory is on his last attempt as a human to do the thing that he was obsessed with since he was, you know, a young, late teenager.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Beautiful. Late teenager.

[Chuck Bryant]

Beautiful. So, so handsome. Geologist Noel Odell is up there again. He is. He is doing sort of the cool, groovy Appalachian Trail hangout dude thing. That is for people. Yeah, he's doing some trail magic up there. And at 1250, he sees Mallory and Irvine on the northeast ridge. But they're a few hours, and this is really key. They're a few hours behind schedule from where they should be. And there's a very narrow window again for like, what time of day you can pull this off and then safely get back down. So to be a few hours behind schedule is a big deal on whether or not, you're gonna survive, basically. So what he says, and we'll just go ahead and read the quote, what he says he saw is the following. The entire summit ridge and final peak of Everest were unveiled. My eyes became fixed on one tiny black spot beneath a rock step in the ridge. The black spot moved. Another black spot became apparent and moved up the snow to join the other on the crest. The first then approached the great rock step and shortly emerged at the top. The second did likewise.

[Josh Clark]

So right after that, Chuck, apparently the clouds came back and those two black spots that he took to be Irvine and Mallory disappeared from view. And that was if that was Irvine and Mallory the last time anybody saw them. And Odell would have been the last to see them, which will become a crucial thing later on as we'll see. But Odell kind of waited for them to come back down to the camps. Remember he was in the high camps and he waited and he waited and he waited and then he started to get really worried. And here's where he became a hero, like you were saying earlier.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So Odell is again, he's not down there at sea level. He is hanging out up there trying to do the trail magic thing. He's all of a sudden worried and he basically from Camp 6 starts hiking around trying to find these guys and doesn't leave. He just keeps staying and he keeps making these ascents. And I believe like two days in a row made an ascent over what, like 26,000ft?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, a couple of them. And he'd go back to camp because he had to again to survive, but then would strike out like as soon as he could the next day to look for them.

[Chuck Bryant]

I mean, that's why he's one of the heroes.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, exactly. And like again, I don't even know if he had oxygen at that point. So he spent a couple of days way up there looking for them. And finally from the high camp he signaled back down to the lower camps, the base camp. And there was apparently a pre arranged signal that they had, they had come up with for this third summit attempt. And Odell laid it out, it was six sleeping bags laid out in a cross, which meant death, that they had died, that they hadn't made it. And so in reply, the guy who led the the expedition had a return signal saying like, give up hope, come back down. And very sadly, Odell did as as he was instructed and came back down without Irvine, without Mallory, who remained up on the mountain as far as anyone knew.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And at this point he had Been up there for. And this is over 23,000ft. He had been up there for 11 days. And that's. I mean, surely. No, I don't think that had been done before. Right.

[Josh Clark]

That's no picnic. Caught in a snowstorm. That's some serious stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And there's no way that these guys, I mean, they were up there for two nights and you're not going to survive one night. So it was pretty clear those sleeping bags had to come out at that point.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And so they said, you know, they were really kind of unhappy on that way back down, which, again, I don't think we said if you're coming up a mountain, you have to acclimate over weeks, little by little, and I believe you have to do roughly the same thing coming back down. So these guys had to basically have this party where two people had been lost on their summit attempt. And they were glum, but at the same time, they realized, like, you know, Mallory and Irvine had kind of embodied this spirit of adventure and just trying and even risking your life for, you know, this. This noble attempt at something no one else had ever done. So it was kind of a bittersweet thing. Their loss was. It wasn't entirely nothing but tragic. There was some silver lining to it in the way that Mallory was remembered and thought of.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, absolutely. And from that moment forward there, you know, Ed kind of makes it sound like the consensus is that they never reach the top. And after reading all this stuff and a lot of other opinions, I don't think that's true at all. I think there's still debate on whether or not they actually made it to the top. And there are a bunch of cool little clues that kind of lead you down one way or the other along the way.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. One of them, Chuck, was Odell, and what he saw. And there's a couple things you need to know about Odell. Number one, he was a geologist, and a lot of people say he just mistook some rocks for Irvine and Mallory, the little tiny dots he thought he saw moving. He's a geologist, making him very unlikely to mistake rocks for people. And then secondly, he was well known to have really good eyesight. Apparently he didn't need glasses until he was in his 90s. So those two things combined make it seem like he was probably the best possible eyewitness around. And Odell went to his grave saying, I saw them. They were moving. It was them. But exactly where he saw them kind of came up for grabs.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So there are these three cliffs sort of you know, if you go this route, there are three cliffs to get to the top, and they call them Steps. Step One, Step Two, Step Three. They didn't know about these steps until they got there, obviously, because no one had done this yet. And from what he was talking about, he saw them on the Second Step, but there are a lot of people today that said no. I think he probably saw them on the First Step. At one point in his life, he said that it was the First Step, but then he went back and said no. And I don't know if he was just sort of a victim of kind of listening to what other people had to say, but apparently later in life, he went back and was adamant that it was his Second Step that he saw them on.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really? Okay, cool. So here's the thing. If you were in the climbing community and you believe that at the very least, Mallory, if not Mallory and Irvine made it to the top of everest on that 1924 expedition, on that third attempt. The reason you think that is because you believe that Odell did see them climb up that Second Step, because that Second Step was the last great obstacle to the top. And had they made it up the Second Step, nothing would have stopped Mallory from continuing on to hit the summit, knowing that he probably would not ever make it down alive. He still would have kept going on. So that's. That's what a lot of people think. The people who think that he actually did make it kind of point to Odell's eyewitness statements.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, and that's in that interview when he was, what, he was 97 years old. Odell himself says that, you know, there would have been nothing that would have stopped Mallory and Irvine. He believes even though dusk was approaching and they probably knew it was, I guess, a suicide mission at that point, his feeling was that there's no way they would have stopped, too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, because we didn't say when those clouds came around, they brought with them a blizzard, too. So it was really terrible conditions. They were way late in the day. There was basically no chance, if they summited that they could get back to that highest camp in time for surviving the night. But that would not have stopped them because they just would have kept going. That's just what Mallory would have done. Pretty much everybody agrees on that. The distinction is whether he was on the First Step or the Second Step, because if he was just on the First Step, he still had that Second Step ahead of him. He might not have made it. If he made the Second Step, he definitely summited that seems to be what the consensus is.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so you've got that, we can park that to the side. In the subsequent years, on different expeditions, there have been little bits and pieces of evidence found along the way. One in 1933 when Irvine's axe, his ice axe was found. And you know you're not going to just leave your ice axe behind. So basically they concluded that something happened that made Irvine drop this ice axe, but they recovered it in 33. And then in 1975 there were some Chinese climbers who made a successful summit all the way to the top. And they were the only ones that could have gone this way because like we said earlier, the Chinese route was shut down basically to Americans. And so it's not like that people before the 1975 would have been taking this route. I think there was one American group that, that snuck in and did so illegally. But one of the Chinese climbers said, I found an English dead to another climber. China has always denied this and said that that's not true and that it was a misunderstanding. And then that climber, actually his name was Wang Hungbao, died the next day in an avalanche. So there was never like any follow up with him.

[Josh Clark]

In a really interesting ironic twist, Chuck Hung Bao TRANSLATE TO Long STAFF IN ENGLISH no, really, I thought I'd get a bigger laugh out of that. We'll just edit that out.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, it was believable enough to where I couldn't quite tell.

[Josh Clark]

So yeah, so there's all this intrigue that's kind of gathering around this, this idea that the Chinese had found at least one dead Englishman on their side of the mountain, the north side, the Tibetan side, where they shouldn't have been, which means that, yeah, it had to have been Irvine or Mallory. So there was an expedition that came. Well, There was a 1991 expedition that found an old oxygen bottle that was almost certainly Mallory or Irvine's. And then all of that information kind of came together to support a 1999 Nat Geo expedition to actually find Irvine or Mallory. And they actually did. They found one of them. And at first they thought it was Irvine, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they did. But they found Mallory. He was frozen, he was sun bleached. His body was very well preserved. The items on him were very well preserved. They found him severely injured. Well, they found a couple of things. They found that he had a severely broken leg and some rope trauma, like ligature stuff around his waist. But what they really found that was severe was the cause of death, which was a golf ball size Hole in his forehead.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, and it was a puncture wound. So they think it's possible as he was falling, that his ice axe bounced off of a rock and into his head, which that'd be pretty merciful on the way down, if you think about it. If that killed him instantly, maybe because they said that his foot was almost broken off, that break was so bad. And then rope trauma too. Imagine a rope yanking on you because they found the rope still tied around his waist.

[Chuck Bryant]

I've had that happen, actually. I can't imagine.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, it's awful, right? It's like falling on your tailbone, but times a million. And the other end of the rope was snapped off. And I saw a climber say, because of that snap, it must have been tied to something really immobile like a rock, rather than Irvine. So that suggested that Mallory had sent Irvine back and tried to make the summit himself, which a lot of people kind of give to his credit that he wasn't willing to risk Irvine's life, only his own.

[Chuck Bryant]

I find it very strange that I said that that happened to me and you didn't even ask what that was about.

[Josh Clark]

I was on a roll. It's very strange what happened.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm not even gonna. I'm not even gonna tell you now what happened. No one gets to know. All right. That would be the great mystery of this episode. Okay, so the two big clues here as to whether or not he made it are. Well, one big clue was he didn't have that picture of his wife on him. This is the picture that he took with him everywhere that he vowed to place at the top of the mountain, and it wasn't on him. So a lot of people look at that and say, well, it's not on him because he actually did maybe by himself or maybe with Irvine, make it to the summit and place that picture there. And it's not like you would have necessarily found that picture years later. It very probably would have blown away or been destroyed by the elements over time. And, you know, I don't know how I feel about that clue. I think it's, considering everything was found really in good condition on him and that he didn't have it is pretty interesting to think about.

[Josh Clark]

I'll just say that I like that clue too. There's also a missing camera. They took a camera with them for that third attempt. Kodak vest, pocket camera, vpk. And it's like one of those old cameras with the accordion that you pull out, but it is a really small, like pocket sized version. And had they made it to the summit, they absolutely would have taken a photograph from the summit. And if you could just find that camera, then you could conceivably, because it had been in deep freeze conditions for all these years, it's possible, using modern techniques, that you could develop that film and solve this mystery once and for all. But the problem is this, Chuck. The camera's missing, and so is Irvine. Because there was an expedition not too long ago, a few years back, that set out to look for Irvine, this other guy, because where the Chinese expedition said that they found the dead English, that is nowhere near where Mallory was found. So they figure that they found Irvine, but when they went, when this expedition, I think, a couple years ago, went back to find Irvine, there was nothing there. His body was not exactly where it should be. Nothing there. And so this rumor has kind of come up over the years that the Chinese actually found him and brought him back down the mountain without telling anybody.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. That is the rumor. And that they got that camera and they kind of botched the film trying to get it developed and process those pictures. And that was a big embarrassment. And so they will take that secret to their graves.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And another explanation is that the 1960 Chinese expedition to the top of the north face was the first to summit the north face, and that they were protecting national pride because they found evidence on that camera, on that film when they did develop it, that. That Mallory had made it to the top. Who knows? The thing is, we'll never know, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Ever.

[Josh Clark]

The thing that we will know, I think eventually, though, Chuck, hopefully, is what happened with your rope trauma.

[Chuck Bryant]

That will go to the grave with me.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, man, I really botched that. Like the Chinese mountain climbers botched processing that film.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, long staff.

[Josh Clark]

Long winded's more like it. You got anything else?

[Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing else.

[Josh Clark]

All right, everybody. Well, since Chuck refuses to tell us about his rope trauma story, I guess we have nothing left but listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is from the Silly String app. This is myth busted. Hey, guys. I just wanted to point out that Josh repeated a widely spread myth about telegrams. In the Silly String episode, that stop was used because punctuation cost extra. This myth has been busted. The real story is Morse code. Originally had only capital letters and no punctuation. It's generally not much of a problem. But during the First World War, when the telegrams were widely used in the military, a misunderstood messages message could be disastrous. So the custom arose of using the word stop between sentences in military telegrams so that any ambiguous phrases could not be misinterpreted, caught on with the public. Even after punctuation was introduced, people continued fashionably using stop between sentences, even though they didn't have to. I thought this was kind of interesting. Thanks for the great show. And that is from Dave.

[Josh Clark]

It is very interesting, Dave. I like both stories. Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

They're both great.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, everyone wins. And also, I'm going to posit that you have mentioned before that you've gone rappelling as a Boy Scout and that it happened somewhere on Stone Mountain.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not true. The mystery continues.

[Josh Clark]

Whatever. If you want to get in touch with us like Dave did and maybe take a crack at what happened with Chuck and the rope and the trauma, you can send us an email to stuff [e-mail] Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

[Chuck Bryant]

For more podcasts My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, everyone, it's Kal Penn. I'm inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with my podcast, Hearsay, The Audible, and iHeart Audiobook Club. Every episode, I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks available on Audible. It's the book club for your ears. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart audiobook club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Chuck Bryant]

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