A shoe melting through the ice – a scene that caught the attention of photographer and filmmaker Jimmy Chin. Looking closer, Jimmy and the team find the remains of a foot, which they believe is the foot of Andrew Comyn Irwin, affectionately known as Sandy, the famous mountaineer 100 years ago. George had disappeared with Mallory.
National Geographic described the moment in an exclusive report, saying, “I picked up the sock and there was a red label with A.C. Irwin stitched on it.”
In September, at the Central Rongbuk Glacier, below the northern face of Mount Everest, a National Geographic documentary team including photographer and director Jimmy Chin and filmmakers and climbers Erich Röpke and Mark Fischer investigated the boot.
100 years ago, on the morning of June 8, 1924, 22-year-old Andrew Comyn Irvine and George Mallory set off for the summit. Mallory’s remains were found in 1999, while Irwin’s remains were unidentified.
However, now the discovery of a boot may solve the mystery behind what happened at the summit a century ago. Did this pair reach the top? If so, he would have preceded Edmund Hillary and Tibetan mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, who are currently recorded as the first people to reach the summit on May 29, 1953.
“This is the first real evidence of where Sandy reached. There have been a lot of theories put forward,” Chin said of his discovery.
In 1999, when George Mallory’s body was found by climber Conrad Anker as part of the Mallory and Irwin research expedition, it yielded clues indicating that the two had completed the summit and were descending when they fell. Were staying.
“His (Mallory’s) dark snow goggles were in his pocket, leading to speculation that the fall may have occurred in the evening as the two were descending. The photograph of his wife that Mallory had planned to leave at the summit was missing from him,” Anker wrote in The Lost Explorer, which he co-authored with David Roberts, as quoted by National Geographic.
According to the exclusive report, Chin shared the news with Irwin’s niece, Julie Summers, 64, who wrote a 2001 biography of Irwin – Fearless on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irwin. “I consider it close to completion,” she said.
According to a report by National Geographic, family members have volunteered to share DNA samples to compare with the remains to confirm their identity.
