China Camera team finds remains of a dead climber on Mount Everest

To this day, there is speculation as to whether the British climber Andrew Comyn Irvine made the first ascent of Mount Everest 100 years ago together with his then famous mountaineering colleague George Mallory. According to a report by "National Geographic", a documentary film team from the magazine has now possibly found the remains of Irvine ("Sandy") on the highest mountain on earth. Both British climbers disappeared on Everest in 1924, thus solving one of the greatest mysteries of mountaineering. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who stood on the summit of the 8,849-metre-high mountain almost 30 years later, are considered to be the first ascenders.

As the magazine reported, the film team found a worn climbing boot on the central Rongbuk Glacier on the Tibetan side of Everest in September, with a foot still inside under a sock. The sock was embroidered with the name "A.C. Irvine". Director Jimmy Chin was quoted as saying that the team hoped the find would provide further clues to explain what really happened on Everest at the time. "This is the first real evidence of where Sandy ended up." His body could lie a few meters away.

DNA samples

Members of the Irvine family had agreed to have DNA samples taken to ensure that the body part belonged to Andrew Irvine, it was said. "This is an object of his and there is something of his in it," said Chin, according to Irvine's grandniece Julie Summers. She suspects that the remains of both climbers were caught by avalanches and torn apart as a result of the glacier movements. Mallory's body was found by a search expedition in 1999, Irvine remained missing. To this day, it has not been conclusively established whether they made it to the summit. When the body was found 25 years ago, it was hoped that images from Mallory's camera would shed light on the matter, but it was never found.