Fig. 8. Tom Holzel with the ultra-high (5000 dpi) resolution 435:1 scale image of Mt. Everest’s Yellow Band. On it a six-foot figure would be ½ cm in length. (Click to enlarge).
Fig. 9. Here is Wynn Harris’ location for Irvine’s ice axe. This indicated location is too low, being much more than “60-feet below the crest of the ridge.” We assume that the east-west location in the photo is correct. (Btw--are there two climbers on the extreme left of the photo—yellow circle?) Photo from Everest 1933, Hugh Ruttledge, opp. P 188. (Click to enlarge).
Fig. 10. The little black circles are reference points of each photo that correspond to the same locations on each image. The orange lines connect them in this illustration. The Harris image is then stretched (“morphed”) so its circles overlap with the corresponding circles on the modern photo. The blended result below shows where the ice axe location of the Harris image falls on the modern photo. (Click to enlarge).
Fig. 11. The 1933 image morphed to the SwissPhoto image. The blue circle is the location other researchers attribute to the ice axe. The green line shows the standarde route; the orange line the presumed "more direct" descent that Xu took. (Click to enlarge)
10:30 am CDT Apr 17, 2009
(MountEverest.net) In his entry last year, American historian Tom Holzel explained how he had arrived to the conclusion that Mallory and Irvine did not summit Mount Everest back in 1924.
To confirm Tom's theory that the climbers fell while descending after an aborted summit push; finding Irvine and the camera is still crucial.
In this three-part series, Holzel thoroughly analyzes all clues and high-resolution orthophotographic prints (aerial photographs corrected to measure true distances) to narrow down the area where Irvine’s body may be found. Here goes the second entry, don't forget to check back in tomorrow, Saturday, for the final.
The Search
On December 22nd of 1984 a SwissPhoto Lear jet under the direction of Brad Washburn of the Boston Museum of Science and sponsored by it and the National Geographic Society, made successive passes over Mt. Everest at 13,500m (44,550-ft) taking high-resolution color photographs in order to create a detailed topographic (“orthophoto”) map of the mountain. The film transparency size is 9-inches square.
Xu’s reported location of Irvine’s body is at approximately 8400m. (See “Irvine Search Zone” rectangle at upper left in Fig. 1.) In other words, the distance from the mapping camera to Irvine’s body is about 5000m—around three miles. The Cosmic Question is, could Irvine’s recumbent six-foot body be spotted by a scrutiny of these high-resolution photographs?
I scanned a portion of my 1:5000 orthophotographic print of the North Face image with an overlaid millimeter scale to calibrate the enlargement. On the enlargement I placed a to-scale 6-ft object (blue circled object below). Notice that this six-foot object is relatively large! But it is still fuzzy. And its contrast will probably be very similar to surrounding rock.
Nevertheless it seemed at least feasible that a close scrutiny of the very small section of the map (especially by experienced photo interpreters) might uncover the location of Irvine. In 1984, there were only three bodies on this part of the mountain—a Chinese climber and Mallory & Irvine. It was at least worth a try.
The “Andrew Irvine Search Committee” commissioned a custom scan at the highest resolution yet attempted--a 5µ scan of one of these mapping photographs. (Previous scans had been made at 8µ.) And we had contact prints of two 9-inch transparencies made. The scanning resolution is high enough to identify an old climbing rope beneath the First Step!
Irvine’s Location
Climbers have shown that random searching has not worked. To photo-search all possible routes that Irvine might have descended is just too much area. Thus, I felt it was essential to create a “Mallory & Irvine Descent Scenario” to greatly narrow-down the photo-interpretive search. Here it is:
It is my firm opinion that the search for Irvine must begin with a single assumption from which all possible scenarios flow: The ice axe was dropped in an accident on the descent by the two roped-up climbers.
Wynn Harris, who found the ice axe in 1933, remarked that it seemed likely to mark the point of a fatal accident. Some Mallory & Irvine aficionados still want to believe that at least Mallory made it to the top (and I was one of them!). For them, the ice axe is a very unwelcome clue. And the conclusion-driven explanations of what else it could mean other than an accident sometimes border on the ludicrous. But it and Mallory’s body are the only two hard clues we have. To blithely ignore 50% of the best evidence in favor of wishful thinking is not good sleuthing.
But where, exactly, did Harris find the ice axe? To chart the search zone for Irvine’s body on our aerial photographs, we must narrow down his likely location as much as possible. This is because the clothed body is essentially the same color as the rocks. Without narrowing the search area down, a lot of time is wasted “cruising” the image through a magnifying glass or a microscope, looking here and there, much like the searchers on the mountain have been cruising back and forth, in hopes of getting lucky. And looking for small, indistinct features through a loupe or a microscope is slow, eye-tearing work.
On page 137 of Everest 1933, Ruttledge states that when Wyn-Harris found the ice axe “it was lying free on smooth, brown ‘boiler-plate’ slabs” of rock. A few pages later (p.145), as he attempts to analyze the accident, Ruttledge states that “the slabs at this point are not particularly steep, but they are smooth and in places have a covering of loose pebbles which are an added danger.” In Ruttledge's earlier published account in the November 1933 Alpine Journal, he describes the spot as follows:
Traversing diagonally upwards they found, after about an hour’s climbing, an ice axee which must have belonged to either Mallory or Irvine. It was lying loose on a slab at an angle of about 30°, about 60 ft. below the crest of the N.E. arête.
“(I)t seems probable,” Harris continued, “ that the axe marked the scene of a fatal accident.” … “(I)ts presence would seem to indicate either that it was accidentally dropped when a slip occurred or that its owner put it down possibly in order to have both hands free to hold the rope.”[13] Note that 30º is not “not particularly steep;” it is fairly steep. (Few Black Diamond ski slopes are as steep as 30º.)
There is a second way to determine Irvine’s ice axe location. Shown below is the above 1933 image morphed onto the 1984 aerial photo. By selecting the same recognizable points on both images, the 1933 image is distorted to fit the modern one while maintaining relative positions.
Jake Norton did climb directly through this ice axe area (see Hemmleb’s map, Fig. 2) when he searched for Harris’s ice axe which was thought to have been left behind. He also visited the shallow “Big Cave” in which a dead (modern) climber sits. But he did not find Irvine. Of course, he was ascending, unlike Xu who was on the descent.
It now seems certain to me that when Noel Odell saw the two at about 1PM climbing what he firmly believed was the higher Second Step “with alacrity,” and “going strong for the top,” he actually saw them climb the First Step as they were making a small detour on their descent for a final look around. The reason for this natural error is clear enough.[14] Since Odell saw them ascending, he immediately assumed they were still on their way up—in which case they would only have been on the Second Step, as the First Step does not require to be climbed. It never occurred to Odell that Mallory had given up and was now headed down.
Thus, if Irvine’s VPK camera is found, its last images will be not the view from the top of Everest, but the view from the top of the First Step—Makalu in the distance, and the Second Step and continuation of the NE Ridge. Perhaps even a shot of Mallory holding up his custom-made 30,000-ft altimeter.
With this assumption—of their having been spotted by Odell climbing the First Step on their descent--all the unsupported rational for a late start disappears, as does the treasured companion sentiment that, therefore, their unreliable, ungentlemanly oxygen gear was the cause of their five-hour delay. (Mallory had expected to be at the Second Step as early as 8 AM.)
If the two climbers left their high camp, C-6, at five AM (Mallory was a known early starter) they would have run out of oxygen just before climbing the First Step on their descent. Freeing themselves of the clumsy apparatus, they could well have decided to clamber up the step to photograph the ascending ridge in order to bring something back.
But this is less likely as they would have left the oxygen gear stashed nearby, and the Chinese could not have failed to spot it. After coming down from the First Step and continuing their descent, they would have reached the location of the discovered ice axe at about 2PM, just as a sudden and intense snow squall began.
If, alternately, they started their climb at 6AM (a more likely time on Everest) the eight hours of oxygen available in their two bottles means they would have run out at 2PM—after having already climbed and descended the First Step, and just at the time the snow squall started.
Because of the severely restricted visibility as the squall hit them (“a few yards” according to Odell who experienced it a thousand feet lower down) [15], they would certainly have roped-up to continue their long descending traverse toward C-6 with Mallory leading to find the route.
It is then possible that as the oxygen supply was now exhausted, Irvine laid his ice axe down and, struggling to remove the clumsy oxygen apparatus, slipped on the pebbly, snow-coated 30o rock slab. Or, Mallory slipped and Irvine flung his ice axe aside to grab the rope with both hands and was himself pulled off his feet.[16] In that case the oxygen gear may have fallen with them, and a search of the ice axe fall line might turn up parts of the apparatus.
Fatigued, becoming hypothermic[17] and because of the slick coating of new snow, one of them slipped at the Ice Axe site. Mallory’s rope jerk injury tells us they were roped and one and pulled the other down.
Tomorrow, final: the probable location of Andrew Irvine.
Endnotes:
[13] Everest, 1933, p. 145.
[14] See “How Far Did Mallory & Irvine Get?” at http://www.velocitypress.com/mallory_irvine.shtml
[15] Noel Odell in The fight for Everest 1924, Lt-Col E. F. Norton et al, Edward Arnold, 1925. “One could not see more than a few yards, so thick was the atmosphere.” “But in the flurry and biting wind, even my accustomed ardour for this pursuit began to wane…” P. 132.
[16] This scenario is described more fully at “How far did Mallory & Irvine get?,” http://www.velocitypress.com/mallory_irvine.shtml
[17] A fascinating and authoritative environmental analysis of the exact (replica) clothing worn by Mallory & Irvine shows that while it was just adequate in good weather, as soon as the wind increased or the temperature fell below +14F, they would both begin to slip into hypothermia. Thus, the sudden 2 PM squall posed a deadly threat and demanded an immediate, emergency descent. If Mallory & Irvine had not dallied on the first Step—they might have made it back. (If, if, if.)
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