Selects: Did Mallory Make it to the Top of Everest First?

13:24Josh Clark: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.

13:38Chuck Bryant: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. Right. 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 North Call, which is a ridge that connects one mountain to another. And they found that North Call, which is the way still today, if you're coming from the north, from the Tibetan side up Everest, you still use that route that these guys mapped in 1921.

14:27Josh Clark: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 it in that.

14:48Chuck Bryant: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 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 three quarter miles of walking.

15:33Chuck Bryant:Nothing to sneeze at still. But it just kind of underscores just how hard the things that these guys were doing with zero equipment. All right.

15:44Josh Clark:So I think it's a good time for a break. Sure. I'm going to finally sort out the difference between Hillary and Mallory.

15:52Chuck Bryant:It sounds like an 80s sitcom. No.

15:57Josh Clark:All right. So I'm going to work all that out and we'll be right back. Stuff you should know.

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17:08Josh Clark:Work can be a little weird. One minute you're in a meeting that could have been an email. The next you're trying to decode corporate jargon that somehow means nothing. And don't even get us started on the quick sync that turns into a 45-minute deep dive.

17:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah, well, the truth is figuring out your career isn't always straightforward. Whether you're trying to grow, pivot, or just stay relevant, it can feel like you're navigating it all on your own. Well, that's where LinkedIn comes in.

17:34Josh Clark:That's right. LinkedIn can help you grow your career, helping you confidently navigate your path with insights, ideas, and inspiration from your professional community. You can stay up to date with the latest trends in your field, connect with people who get it, and discover opportunities tailored to your goals, your experience, and what actually matters to you.

17:50Chuck Bryant:Whether you're looking for something new or just trying to grow where you are, LinkedIn gives you the tools and connections to move forward with confidence. Because LinkedIn is the network that works for you. Visit linkedin.com slash no stuff to learn more.

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18:48Chuck Bryant:Okay, we're back. And I want to go over a little more about 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. Yeah.

19:21Josh Clark: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 the near impossibility of this feat at the time.

19:42Chuck Bryant: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. They can come and bury you. There's something called, I think, secores, 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.

20:14Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, we did a whole episode on ice climbing, right?

20:18Chuck Bryant:We totally did. And I remember thinking—

20:20Josh Clark:That's why we talked about secores.

20:22Chuck Bryant: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.

20:30Josh Clark:Yeah. Well, I mean, this one, the Sherp episode was really good. Ice climbing was good. I believe we did one on dead bodies on Everest.

20:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

20:41Josh Clark:Way long time ago.

20:42Chuck Bryant:We did one on altitude sickness, too. Yeah.

20:45Josh Clark:So this all comes together. Point is, it's really, really hard. And there are so many ways to die.

20:52Chuck Bryant:Yeah, what else wants to kill you up there, Chuck, that they weren't aware of until that 1921 expedition? The Yeti? 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.

21:20Josh Clark:That's right. So let's catch ourselves up. It's September 24th, 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. Devastation. 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.

22:10Josh Clark:Right. And these camps are then used later on as, you know, base camps like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. In fact, 6 might have been the highest camp at the time, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. 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.

22:33Chuck Bryant: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 higher 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 higher altitudes of Everest without that kind of stuff.

23:08Chuck Bryant: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.

23:29Josh Clark: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.

24:05Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and I think that was—

24:06Josh Clark:Which is an interesting point.

24:07Chuck Bryant:Yeah, but I think that point was made by Hillary himself. Oh, no, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, he's like, well, I mean, even if you've made it to the top, it doesn't count.

24:17Josh Clark:Like I'm doing this interview right now.

24:19Chuck Bryant:Right. 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.

24:58Chuck Bryant:And that's why it was so attractive to people.

25:01Josh Clark: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. Why climb mountains? Because it's there.

25:18Chuck Bryant:That alone makes him just worth remembering, you know? What a cool response.

25:26Josh Clark:Absolutely. Why are you going to eat that Big Mac?

25:28Chuck Bryant:Because it's there. Everything that's ever come since then where somebody says because it's there, you're actually quoting George Mallory.

25:36Josh Clark: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.

26:21Josh Clark:But Mallory was sort of, I don't think indifferent. And 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?

26:35Chuck Bryant: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 is 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 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 seem to have regret for being where they are. But even with oxygen on, if you watch them, they'll take a step.

27:17Chuck Bryant: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 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. Yeah, so in 22, I believe Mallory and a couple of other climbers hit 26 ,800 feet, which is remarkable before they decided to turn back.

28:05Josh Clark: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?

28:21Chuck Bryant:Yeah. So, no. In 21, there was an avalanche that wiped out some of the camps they'd established but didn't hurt anybody. Okay. In 22, they weren't as lucky, and seven Sherpa died in an avalanche. All right. Right. 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 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. Yeah.

28:52Josh Clark:And there are people, you know, who have looked back and kind of poo-pooed Mallory's, poo-pooed 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?

29:18Chuck Bryant:I think that was part of it, but I also get the impression that he was like just downright flighty. Oh, was he? 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 filming correctly. Like, that's classic Mallory. It's not a mistake, though. Sure. But if you do things like that over and over again, you start to develop a reputation as being flighty.

29:46Josh Clark:I guess so. The thing I think is, 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. Don't give it to me. They're like, well, you kind of have to take it. And he's like, all right, I'll do my best.

30:07Chuck Bryant:I mean, I kind of created that narrative. But it was a good one.

30:11Josh Clark:He was good at mountain climbing. He may not have been a good photographer.

30:14Chuck Bryant:Okay, fair enough. But there's a very famous quote by a doctor, Tom Longstaff, who was 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 going to say flighty again, and I'm not judging. I'm pretty flighty myself. Yumi would certainly tell you that. So, I think I recognize it when I see it. Maybe that's what it is.

30:42Josh Clark:Is Yumi your Dr. Longstaff? Yep.

30:46Chuck Bryant:I'm going to start calling her that now. She'll be like, what are you talking about? I looked that up, too. Remember our surnames episode? I was like, oh, is that a dirty last name? I know. That's what I thought. 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. Dr.

31:14Josh Clark:Longstaff definitely sounds like a born name. It definitely does. 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.

31:57Josh Clark:And Mallory was like, if he's not going to go, I'm not going to go. And they said, okay. And then he went, well, I still want to go.

32:05Chuck Bryant:He put on a fake mustache and put himself down as George Hallery. Exactly. So there was a guy who was kind of a surprise selection. His name was Andrew Sandy Irvine. And Sandy Irvine was a student still. He was an engineering student. 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 in the— In cameras, maybe? Yeah, probably. He knew how to put the film in the right direction.

32:46Chuck Bryant:But I get the impression that since the 1921 and 1922 expeditions, it had become clear to these people on these expeditions, on the 1924 expedition, that oxygen was, in fact, like really important. And to have somebody who could make these rigs more efficient would be really, really valuable. So they brought Sandy Irvine along.

33:10Josh Clark:Yeah, I also saw that Irvine was, you know, despite his fiddler's reputation, was strong as an ox.

33:18Chuck Bryant:Yeah, he's huge.

33:19Josh Clark:Which is another nice thing.

33:20Chuck Bryant:If you see, there's a famous picture of 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.

33:37Josh Clark:Yeah, and Mallory was very handsome too, we should note.

33:40Chuck Bryant:Yes. Good looking dude. He really was. Very pretty, I think you could say. Pretty man. And then one other note about Mallory 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.

34:06Josh Clark:That's right. so we to june 1st now i think so man all right mallory and uh george bruce make this first attempt uh this one didn't work out when basically the sherpa said all right we're not going any further it's too dangerous uh and they basically dropped their stuff and turned back so again this um this one didn't work out but one of the positives is they established a camp at 25 000 feet, which I believe was the tallest camp at the time or the highest camp.

34:39Chuck Bryant:Okay. Yeah. So that's, again, that's a huge success for a summit attempt, right? Right. More groundwork. The following day, another couple of climbers, Edward Norton and T. Howard Somerville, made their own attempt on the summit. Norton kept going beyond Somerville and he made it within a thousand feet 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 sounds far away.

35:10Josh Clark:I think it's pretty close.

35:11Chuck Bryant:It is. But if you look at a map and see where 28 ,000 feet is and then where 29 ,000 feet is.

35:17Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah. I get you.

35:18Chuck Bryant:He had a way to go. But far and away, that was the record. And 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 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.

36:01Chuck Bryant: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 ,000 feet back down, he had to be helped. Every footstep had to be placed by Sherpas and the doctor on the trip. Every footstep he made all the way back down out of the Everest area.

36:31Josh Clark:That's amazing.

36:32Chuck Bryant:It really is.

36:33Josh Clark: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. Sorry. 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 them? Yeah, I love you. So 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.

37:16Josh Clark: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.

37:27Chuck Bryant: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 O'Dell 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 was the third attempt. Remember, the first attempt didn't work.

38:03Chuck Bryant: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? we're 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 was 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.

38:39Chuck Bryant: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. All right.

38:50Josh Clark: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.

39:00Chuck Bryant:Stuff you should know.

39:14Josh Clark:Work can be a little weird. One minute you're in a meeting that could have been an email. The next you're trying to decode corporate jargon that somehow means nothing. And don't even get us started on the quick sync that turns into a 45-minute deep dive.

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39:56Chuck Bryant:Whether you're looking for something new or just trying to grow where you are, LinkedIn gives you the tools and connections to move forward with confidence. Because LinkedIn is the network that works for you. Visit linkedin.com slash no stuff to learn more.

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41:43Josh Clark:all right so uh 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 right beautiful teenager a beautiful so so handsome Geologist Noel Odell is up there again He is doing sort of the cool Groovy Appalachian Trail Hangout Dude thing Trail magic? Yeah, he's doing some trail magic up there And at 12.50 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 So again, for like what time of day you can pull this off and then safely get back down.

42:31Josh Clark:So to be a few hours behind schedule is a big deal on whether or not you're going to 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.

43:08Chuck Bryant: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 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.

43:42Josh Clark: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 ,000 feet?

44:15Chuck Bryant:Yeah, a couple of them. And he'd go back to camp because he had to, again, to survive. but then he would strike out like as soon as he could the next day to look for them.

44:25Josh Clark:I mean, that's why he's one of the heroes.

44:27Chuck Bryant: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 prearranged signal that they had come up with for this third summit attempt. exempt 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 expedition had a return signal saying like, give up hope, come back down. And very sadly, Odell did as he was instructed and came back down without Irvine, without Mallory, who remained up on the mountain as far as anyone knew.

45:16Yeah.

45:16Josh Clark:And at this point, he had been up there for, and this is over 23 ,000 feet. 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?

45:31Chuck Bryant:That's no picnic caught in a snowstorm. That's some serious stuff. Yeah.

45:36Josh Clark: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.

45:44Chuck Bryant: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 noble attempt at something no one else had ever done.

46:19Chuck Bryant: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.

46:29Josh Clark: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 is 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.

46:54Chuck Bryant:Yeah, one of them, Chuck, was Odell and what he saw. And there's a couple of 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.

47:32Chuck Bryant:They were moving. It was them. But exactly where he saw them kind of came up for grabs.

47:38Josh Clark: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.

48:18Josh Clark:But apparently later in life, he went back and was adamant that it was the second step that he saw them on.

48:23Chuck Bryant: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.

49:01Chuck Bryant:So that's what a lot of people think, people who think that he actually did make it, kind of point to Odell's eyewitness statements.

49:09Josh Clark: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.

49:29Chuck Bryant: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.

49:59Chuck Bryant:He might not have made it. If he made the second step, he definitely summited. That seems to be what the consensus is. All right.

50:07Josh Clark: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. Right. So basically they concluded that something happened that made Irvine drop this ISACS. 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.

50:54Josh Clark: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 snuck in and did so illegally. Uh, but one of the Chinese climbers said, I found an English dead to another climber. Um, China has always denied this and said that that's not true. Uh, and that it was a misunderstanding. And then, um, that climber actually, uh, his name was Wang, uh, Hung Bao died the next day in an avalanche. So there was never like any follow-up with him.

51:29Chuck Bryant:In a really interesting, ironic twist, Chuck, Hung Bao translate to so long staff. in English. No, really? I thought I'd get a bigger laugh out of that. We'll just edit that out. Well, it was believable enough to where I couldn't quite tell. 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.

52:13Chuck Bryant: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?

52:28Josh Clark: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.

53:01Chuck Bryant: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 would be pretty merciful on the way down if you think about it, if that killed him instantly. 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. I've had that happen, actually. I can't imagine. 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.

53:35Chuck Bryant: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.

53:55Josh Clark:I find it very strange that I said that that happened to me and you didn't even ask what that was about.

54:00Chuck Bryant:I was on a roll.

54:02Josh Clark:It's very strange. What happened? I'm not even going to tell you now.

54:05Chuck Bryant:What happened?

54:06Josh Clark:No one gets to know.

54:07Chuck Bryant:All right.

54:08Josh Clark: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.

54:46Josh Clark: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. I'll just say that.

55:01Chuck Bryant:I like that clue too. There's also a missing camera. They took a camera with them for that third attempt, a 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.

55:37Chuck Bryant: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 of 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.

56:16Chuck Bryant:That's right.

56:16Josh Clark:That is the rumor. And 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.

56:31Chuck Bryant: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 Mallory had made it to the top. Who knows? The thing is we'll never know, right, ever. The thing that we will know, I think eventually though, Chuck, hopefully, is what happened with your rope trauma.

57:00Josh Clark:Ha ha, that will go to the grave with me.

57:02Chuck Bryant:Oh man, I really botched that. Like the Chinese mountain climbers botched processing that film. Okay, long staff. Long winded is more like it. You got anything else?

57:15Josh Clark:I got nothing else.

57:16Chuck Bryant:All right, everybody. Well, since Chuck refuses to tell us about his rope trauma story, I guess we have nothing left but listener mail.

57:26Josh Clark:This is from the Silly String app. This is Myth Busted. Hey, guys. 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 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.

58:05Josh Clark: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. It is very interesting, Dave.

58:21Chuck Bryant:I like both stories. Okay?

58:24Josh Clark:They're both great.

58:25Chuck Bryant: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.

58:36Josh Clark:Not true. The mystery continues. Whatever.

58:40Chuck Bryant: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 stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

58:53Josh Clark:Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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