The discovery of the shoe and foot of Andrew Comyn Irvine, the ill-fated explorer from 1924, could unlock one of the greatest mysteries in mountaineering.
In 1924, Andrew Comyn “Sandy” Irvine embarked on the journey of a lifetime—traveling through India, Tibet, and the Himalayas as the youngest member of the British expedition aiming to become the first to reach the summit of Everest.
However, that goal was never realized.
Irvine, then a 22-year-old student at Oxford University, and his climbing partner George Mallory perished somewhere near the summit of Everest in June 1924.
A shoe belonging to British mountaineer Andrew Irvine was found. (Photo: National Geographic).
Whether they reached the world’s highest peak remains the biggest mystery in mountaineering history.
The Unsolved Mystery
Any evidence that Irvine and Mallory reached Everest’s summit would rewrite history: New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay are credited with being the first to summit Everest in 1953. If correct, Irvine and Mallory achieved this nearly three decades earlier.
Historians believe the Kodak camera they carried might contain evidence of their successful summit.
But when Mallory’s body was discovered in 1999, the camera was not found with it. Since then, hopes of finding Irvine’s body and the camera have faded.
Last week, the century-old mystery resurfaced when a documentary crew from National Geographic stumbled upon an old boot on the Rongbuk Glacier.
Inside was a frozen human foot and a sock with the unmistakable red inscription “A.C. Irvine,” confirming it belonged to Irvine.
The boot buried for a century bears Irvine’s name. (Photo: National Geographic).
Mark Fisher, one of the three filmmakers who discovered the boot, said he and his colleagues Erich Roepke and Jimmy Chin were in shock.
“Oh my God, we just found Irvine,” Fisher likened the discovery to finding a pot of gold in the desert.
This 78 square kilometer glacier is filled with ice blocks and ice “pyramids” reaching up to 15 meters high, piercing the sky.
“There have been many expeditions over the past 100 years, many with the sole purpose of searching for Mallory and Irvine. Our finding the boot is truly a miracle,” Fisher said in an interview on October 13 at his home in Victor, Idaho.
Fisher believes the glacier has melted partially, revealing the boot about a week before their team discovered it.
According to AFP, climate change is thinning the ice around the Himalayas, uncovering the remains of many climbers who have perished here over decades while attempting to summit the world’s highest peak.
Researchers believe the discovery of a part of Irvine’s remains could narrow the search area for the camera and help decipher the century-old mystery of who was the first to set foot on Everest.
The boot and foot are currently held by the China-Tibet Mountaineering Association, the Chinese government agency overseeing access to the northern face of Everest, where the boot was found.
This agency has declined to comment beyond confirming their possession of the boot and foot. According to National Geographic, DNA samples are being compared with those of Irvine’s closest living relatives.
The Family’s Lingering Pain
Julie Summers, Irvine’s granddaughter, received a call last week. The caller was her friend Jamie Owens from the Royal Geographical Society. Members of the society helped organize the 1924 Everest expedition.
“Can you talk to this guy from Kathmandu?” Owens asked.
The next morning, Summers—who has written a book about Irvine and studied him for many years—joined a Zoom call with Chin, one of the three who found the boot during their recent trip to Everest.
“And we knew it was Sandy Irvine’s boot,” Summers recalled Chin saying. She was stunned.
Summers expressed relief upon hearing those words. She also felt somewhat comforted to learn that this discovery contradicted an unproven conspiracy theory that Chinese climbers had taken Irvine’s remains from the mountain.
She and most of Irvine’s surviving relatives want him to remain on Everest if his body is found, just as the Mallory family wished when his body was discovered 25 years ago.
Irvine’s death—the third of six children—was a deep sorrow for his family. Summers’ grandmother, Evelyn, refused to speak about her lost brother, affectionately known as Sandy, with whom she was very close. Irvine’s parents—Summers’ great-grandparents—suffered in silence, “in a very British, stoic way,” Summers noted.
In October 1924, Irvine’s mother wrote to his elder brother Hugh, four months after he disappeared on Everest. “Your father and I never questioned the right or wrong of Sandy going to Everest. But that does not mean the hole in our hearts is healed.”
Summers stated that the boot does not answer whether Irvine and Mallory reached the summit. But she believes it will help ease the pain of searching for the Kodak camera, although that task remains daunting. Ultimately, she remarked that this mystery may continue for some time.
“Perhaps we will never know the truth,” she said, because even if the camera is found, it may not contain images of the summit.
