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Well, here we go again. Almost 13 years after the first pioneering research initiated by Tom Holzel and Audrey Salkeld, the members of the Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition are about to resume detective work on Everest's northern slopes. The Mountain Zone will cover the 1999 Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition beginning March 15, 1999, using live reports with real-time images. Stay tuned.

If everything works according to plan, in a couple of weeks we'll be standing at Rongbuk Base Camp, looking up to that "deathful", windswept ridge, where, back in 1924, two brave Englishmen had disappeared forever into the mist...

Theirs had been only the third expedition to the world's highest mountain, after a reconnaissance in 1921 and the first attempt of the summit one year later.

The reconnaissance was exploration in the grand style; mapping and surveying a vast area to the north and east of the mountain. Everest was very much terra incognita back then — unexplored to a degree that the first party even missed the now conventional approach via the East Rongbuk Glacier and had to travel all the way round the massif to reach today's Advance Base Camp by descending from the 6849m (22,470ft.) high Lhakpa La at the head of the Kharta Valley. That Mallory, Bullock, Wheeler and their 10 sherpas nonetheless climbed to the North Col 7066m (23,180ft.) the very next day speaks volumes about the toughness of those old hands — and certain Everest "heroes" of recent years pale in comparison. From their highest point on the Col they could see that a broad spur at the left side of the North Face, the North Ridge, led up to a prominent shoulder in the upper Northeast Ridge, which in turn offered a feasible way to the summit.

"Despite strong opposition on sporting reasons, both climbers had been using artificial oxygen, thus starting a controversy that was to dominate high-altitude mountaineering for decades to come..."

At the time Finch and Bruce's high point was estimated to have been 8320m (27,300 ft.), but recent re-measurement has shown it to have been even higher, closer to 8400m (27,560 ft.). Bearing in mind that this had only been the second foray ever onto the mountain's upper slopes and that this party had started from as low as 7770m (25,500 ft.), one can only speculate what the outcome would have been if they had set out well-rested from a higher Camp VI.

Tragically, a planned third summit attempt met with disaster when seven porters: Norbu, Lhakpa, Pasang, Pema, Sange, Dorje and Temba were swept away by an avalanche below the North Col.

					"Four days after Norton and Somervell's attempt, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, making a final summit bid with oxygen, walked out of their lives and into legend..."

In 1924, Mallory returned to Everest for a third time. The dramatic, and in the end fatal, climax of this expedition is now part of mountaineering history: A severe storm in mid-May had already claimed the lives of two Gurkhas, Shamsherpun and Manbahadur, and weakened the rest of the party. But, despite this setback, they managed to establish Camp VI near the top of the North Ridge at 8220m (27,000 ft.). On June 4th, Edward Norton and Theodore Somervell set off from there for the summit. Climbing without artificial oxygen, they traversed below the crest of the Northeast Ridge toward the Great Couloir, which runs down the North Face from below the final pyramid.

On the slabs of the Yellow Band, at 8530m (28,000 ft.), Somervell was forced to give up due to respiratory problems. Norton struggled on for another hour to the snow-smothered rocks on the far side of the couloir, reaching 8572m (28,125 ft.) — a record not to be broken until the first oxygenless ascent of Everest by Messner and Habeler 54 years later. Four days after Norton and Somervell's attempt, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, making a final summit bid with oxygen, walked out of their lives and into legend...

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The pair was last seen by the expedition's geologist, Noel Odell, at 12:50 p.m. on 8 June, 1924. Odell remained the sole eyewitness and much of the subsequent conjecture about the possible fate of Mallory and Irvine has rested on precisely where he had last seen them. Odell's initial reaction was that they had been climbing the Second Step, the most prominent obstacle of the route. However, as the seemingly enormous technical difficulty of this pitch became more and more apparent, Odell was persuaded that it must have been the lower and easier First Step where he had seen the two climbers ascending.

Seventy-five years later, with the topography of the upper Northeast Ridge well known, it is intriguing that arguments for and against the various alleged locations are still found. It is true that a scenario involving a sighting at the First Step and retreat of the pair from the Second Step fits the known events and timings, but the First Step hardly matches Odell's original description of his sighting. In fact, there is only one place on the upper Northeast Ridge where events could have occurred in the described manner: the diminutive Third Step at 8710m (28,575 ft.). Moreover, Odell's diary recorded his sighting as follows: "At 12:50 saw M & I on ridge nearing base of final pyramide."

One can't help but feel this refers to a point at or above the Second Step. Whether Mallory and Irvine had the ability to surmount the technical difficulties of the ridge below and how they could have climbed that far along the route in the time given remains open to debate. But besides Odell's sighting, subsequent expeditions managed to unveil additional clues about the possible fate of the climbers.

					"In 1997 an expedition came across the remnants of an old Camp V on the North Ridge, with the green canvas tent, wooden poles, pegs and several food tins still recognizable..."

Members of the 1933 Everest Expedition found an ice axe lying freely on gently inclined slabs about 230m east of the First Step, some 20m below the crest of the ridge. Markings on the shaft later identified the axe as having belonged to Andrew Irvine — but in the end it left more questions than it answered. Did it mark the site of an accident during the descent? Many climbers who have followed Mallory's route in recent years have commented that this is an unlikely place to fall, giving rise to the supposition that the ice axe was lost or discarded on the ascent. Fifty-eight years after the discovery, however, the leader of this year's research expedition, Eric Simonson, made a find near that location that could significantly alter the story as we know it. We will recount this find and its possible implications in detail in our expedition dispatches on The Mountain Zone beginning March 15.

For many years, rumors have circulated that during the first confirmed ascent of the North Ridge by the Chinese in 1960, a piece of hemp rope and a tent pole had been found on the slabs of the North Face below the Second Step, suggesting another trace of Mallory and Irvine. Yet it has now been established that the items in question were in fact found below the First Step and belonged in all probability to the remnants of the 1933 Camp VI.

By far the most intriguing of these clues emerged during the Sino-Japanese reconnaissance of Everest's North Face in 1979. A Chinese climber, Wang Hongbao, approached one of the Japanese members, Ryoten Hasegawa, with an incredible tale: During the Chinese expedition of 1975, he had seen TWO deads from pre-war days. One of them had been near Advance Base Camp on the East Rongbuk Glacier and was obviously Maurice Wilson, the eccentric soloist who had died nearby in 1934. But who was the second, at 8100m (26,575 ft.) on the North Ridge route? Communication between the two climbers was difficult, as neither spoke the other's language. But Wang repeated a word, "English, English", to Hasegawa. Through gestures he indicated that the clothing of the body was in tatters, breaking to pieces when touched and getting blown away by the wind. When Hasegawa realized the implications of what Wang was saying, he was awestruck — the body could only be that of Mallory or Irvine! But Everest did not yield up its ghosts that easily. The very next day after telling his remarkable story, Wang and two of his comrades were killed in an avalanche below the North Col.

Many have doubted that any traces could be found after all these years. But, in 1997, an expedition came across the remnants of an old Camp V on the North Ridge, with the green canvas tent, wooden poles, pegs and several food tins still recognizable. Now, with the strongest team ever assembled to do historic research on Everest, we have every reason to believe in a success.

Along the route of the pioneer's attempt we will try to relocate and document artifacts of the early expeditions: tents, oxygen cylinders, etc., in order to reconstruct as much of the events as possible. Near the site of the present day Camp VI we will investigate the 1924 high camp and the snow terrace where the body was found in 1975. From rediscovering the missing climbers and their cameras we finally hope to solve Everest's greatest secret — Were Mallory and Irvine the first to reach the summit of the world's highest mountain?

— Jochen Hemmleb, Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition Historian