This story originally appeared in Outside Online.
German mountaineer and writer Jochen Hemmleb was scrolling through Facebook at his home in South Tyrol, Italy, on Friday when he saw a photograph that nearly made him fall out of his chair. The image showed acclaimed climbing filmmaker Jimmy Chin crouching over a weathered hobnailed boot protruding from melting ice. The boot, a photo caption proclaimed, belonged to British adventurer Andrew Comyn “Sandy” Irvine, who disappeared while attempting Mount Everest alongside George Mallory in 1924.
“My initial reaction was to think, ‘So Andrew, this is where you have been,’” Hemmleb told Outside. “After my feelings of excitement, my next feeling was of relief and then some closure.”
The discovery of Irvine’s boot sent shockwaves throughout the global mountaineering community when National Geographic published the news on Friday morning. Irvine and Mallory vanished on Everest’s upper slopes 31 years before Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people known to reach the top, in 1953. According to a press release accompanying the story, a team comprised of Chin and filmmakers Erich Roepke and Mark Fisher found the boot in Tibet on a section of the Central Rongbuk Glacier just below Everest’s imposing north face this past September. The boot contained a partial sock, and the garment had Irvine’s initials and last name stitched to it.
“Any expedition to Everest follows in the shadow of Irvine and Mallory,” Chin said in a release.
Hemmleb, 53, is a global authority on Irvine and Mallory, and told Outside he became obsessed with it when he was just 16 years old. He has written 20 books about the world’s highest peak and those who have sought to climb it, and three of his titles are about the missing mountaineers.
The discovery had an even greater impact on a small group of climbers, writers, and historians who—like Hemmleb—have fixated on Irvine and Mallory. The two were part of an expedition to become the first to reach the highest point on earth, and they vanished less than 1,000 feet from the top. Fellow expedition member Noel Odell said Mallory and Irvine were “going strong” to the top at the time of their disappearance. Nobody knows whether or not they reached the summit, or how, exactly, they died.
Much like the disappearances of Amelia Earhart or Jimmy Hoffa, the enigma of Mallory and Irvine has ballooned over the decades, at times drowning out Everest’s contemporary goings-on. It’s the focus of dozens of books and documentary films. And over the years, it has spurred more than a few debates.
“This discovery brings out my whole fascination with the story all over again,” Hemmleb said. “It’s just such an emotionally gripping tale.”
In 1999 Hemmleb was part of an American expedition to Everest to try and locate Mallory and Irvine for a documentary film produced by Nova. Following Hemmleb’s research into their route, a team led by legendary climber Conrad Anker found Mallory’s preserved remains on a ledge at 27,000 feet on the peak’s north face.
“The name tag etched onto the Irvine’s sock is nearly identical to the one Conrad found in 1999,” Hemmleb said. “It feels like Andrew is on the level with Mallory now, like he’s stepped out of the shadow.”
But Hemmleb told Outside that Irvine’s discovery, while significant, does not solve some of the remaining questions at the heart of the Mallory expedition—specifically, whether or not the men ever reached the top, and how, exactly, they died. Another inquiry left unanswered: whether their remains were originally discovered decades ago by Chinese climbers—and whether that discovery was kept secret.
“It’s a seminal find, for sure,” Hemmleb said. “But as far as solving the mysteries is concerned, I am doubtful this will tell us much.”
Like Hemmleb, American climber and author Mark Synnott was shocked by the discovery of Irvine’s boot. Synnott, whose wrote a 2021 book The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession, and Death on Mount Everest about Mallory and Irvine, said he awoke to a flurry of calls and text messages.
“It feels like another hugely important piece of the puzzle,” Synnott told Outside. “I feel like I’ve been waiting for a discovery like this.”
But Synnott echoed Hemmleb’s sentiment that the boot does little to answer the remaining questions that he and other historians have. In 2019, Synnott led a trip to the Chinese side of Everest. He brought aerial drones to scout the peak’s slopes, as well as GPS coordinates that suggested Mallory and Irvine’s final known location. He was hoping to locate Irvine’s body, and to find the pocket camera that the men were carrying, which could prove whether or not they reached the top. He came home empty-handed.
During his research, Synnott heard rumors that Chinese expeditions had come across a body high on the mountain’s flanks in the sixties and seventies, and that they had salvaged the camera and attempted to develop the film. After publishing his book, Synnott said he was contacted by a former U.S. State Department worker who told him that his wife, a former British diplomat, had heard directly from Chinese officials that early expeditions on Everest did locate the body of a foreigner dressed in 1920s climbing garb. Synnott wrote about the ordeal in the book’s postscript, and published a lengthy essay about the revelation on Salon.com
China has never acknowledged that its climbing teams found Irvine or Mallory. In 1960, a Chinese team led by Wang Fuzhou became the first to reach the summit via the Northeast ridge. Evidence that Mallory and Irvine reached the top would rob the Chinese of the first ascent of Everest’s north side, Synnott said.
“For me, this doesn’t change my theory that the Chinese found Irvine,” Synnott said. “There’s a lot of information out there—too much for people to just throw it away and say it’s not true.”
But not everyone agrees. British historian Mick Conefrey told Outside that the likeliest explanation is that Mallory and Irvine died in a fall while retreating from a storm, having never made it to the top. Over the years, their bodies were blown down the peak by winds or melting ice, and then deposited at lower elevations.
“I’ve never believed the theories involving the Chinese,” he said. “When there’s a vacuum, when something is unresolved, you can speculate about it.”
Earlier this year Conefrey published the book Fallen: George Mallory and the Tragic 1924 Everest Expedition, which is framed as a “myth-piercing study.” He examined documents and testimonies from the expedition, as well as news clippings afterward.
Conefrey said that the myths and rumors about the two climbers began several months after news of their deaths on the peak. “Once the last eyewitness said they were going strong, the story became supercharged,” he said. “They didn’t just die in an accident—they were on their way to the top.”
But Conefrey argues that the 1999 discovery of Mallory’s body is proof that the climbers died well shy of the summit—and that they were simply taken down the peak by natural forces. He also referenced the diaries of one of the other expedition members, Edward “Teddy” Norton, for his opinion.
“Norton said he thought Mallory had turned back because he realized it was too dangerous—he was well aware of the dangers and wouldn’t have taken undue risks,” Conefrey said. “That was Norton’s assessment, and people seem to have forgotten about that.”
While the discovery of Irvine’s boot may not quell the disagreements, it does lay bare an element of the mystery. Nearly 100 years since they went missing, Irvine and Mallory continue to stoke the passion and interest of anyone who comes across their story. Hemmleb, Conefrey, and Synnott told me that’s not likely to change anytime soon.
“The spirit of these men and how passionate they were about pushing the boundaries of human potential,” Synnott said. “You can still feel that spirit of adventure in us, and trace it back to them.”
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