A Century Later, Foot of Lost Everest Climber Provides a Clue

The foot of a man who some believe may have been the first person to summit the world's highest peak has been discovered on Mount Everest. The discovery of the socked and booted foot on Central Rongbuk Glacier was made last month by a team filming a National Geographic documentary. Though British authorities are trying to verify the identity, per National Geographic, the foot is believed to belong to Andrew "Sandy" Irvine, who was never seen again after setting off to climb the mountain's north-east ridge with partner George Mallory in June 1924. The British climbers hoped to make the first ascent of Everest, 29 years before the first acknowledged ascent by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Both died, but whether they made it to the summit first has long been a matter of debate.

Mallory's remains were discovered in 1999—without the photo of his wife that he intended to leave at the summit, the Guardian reports. As Irvine was reportedly traveling with a camera, many hoped the eventual discovery of his body would finally answer the question of whether he and Mallory made it to the summit. However, no camera has been found. The foot was a lucky find in itself, as it had emerged from ice that apparently melted only the week before the team turned up, the BBC reports. "I lifted up the sock and there's a red label that has 'AC Irvine' stitched into it," climber and film director Jimmy Chin tells National Geographic. "We were all literally running in circles dropping f-bombs."

The foot, found at a lower altitude than Mallory's body, is "the first real evidence of where Sandy ended up" and "a big clue for the climbing community as to what happened," says Chin. Now in the possession of the China Tibet Mountaineering Association, which issues climbing permits for the north side of the mountain, the foot "tells the whole story about what probably happened," adds Irvine's great-niece and biographer Julie Summers, 64. She suspects Irvine's remains were carried down the mountain by avalanches and then crushed by the moving glacier. "I'm regarding it as something close to closure," she tells National Geographic of the discovery. (More Mount Everest stories.)