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I’m
frequently asked if I want them to find Sandy’s body
and it is not a question I find easy to respond to.
Frankly the memory of his life is of far more
significance and interest to me than how he died,
although my interest does extend as far as the camera
or other concrete evidence that might be found on his
body. Only by confirmation of the details of their
final climb via photographic or written evidence would
I be prepared to believe that they had reached the
summit. The one piece of consolation I have [is that]
we might one day know whether Sandy and Mallory stood
on top of the world but no one will every be able to
prove conclusively that they did not.
―Julie Summers, great-niece of Andrew Irvine,
author of FEARLESS
ON EVEREST
FEARLESS
ON EVEREST is a highly personal and intimate
account of a quest to discover more about a man who,
at age twenty-two, died in the flush of youth
alongside one of mountaineering’s greatest legends.
Although the names of George Leigh Mallory and Andrew
Irvine have been inextricably linked for over seventy
years, Irvine’s story has never before been told.
Using previously unseen material, his great-niece
presents, for the first time, a picture of the valiant
and extraordinary young man and what might have
happened on that ill-fated trip. Why was the young and
relatively inexperienced Irvine partnering Mallory, a
mountaineer returning to Everest for the third time?
How did he come to be considered an indispensable
member of the 1924 climbing team? Were Irvine and
Mallory in fact the first men to conquer Everest?
Even the discovery of Mallory’s frozen body in 1999
did not provide the answer.
In
May 2000 Julie Summers made a remarkable discovery: a
long-forgotten trunk belonging to Andrew Irvine’s
brother yielded previously unreleased documents from
the 1924 expedition. Photographs of the approach trek
from Darjeeling to Everest (a distance of some 350
miles) and letters Irvine sent home capture in great
detail all aspects of the march, pleasurable and
otherwise. Irvine described to his mother the
inhospitable conditions they encountered on the
Tibetan plain, his relationships with other members of
the expedition team including George Mallory, and his
impressions of Tibetan culture and religion. He
revealed a mind for logistics: he carefully detailed
the food, tents, and equipment needed, and the
porters, mules, and ponies involved. Even a wry
account of a trip to Rongbuk Monastery―made by
the climbing party and porters who, after suffering a
major setback on their first summit attempt, sought a
blessing from Rongbuk’s Holy Lama for their renewed
bid―is documented here.
Through these letters we
see a side of Irvine never before uncovered. He was
passionate, expressive, creative, and a fiercely
ambitious young man. His engineering brilliance was
recognized by the 1924 expedition team as was his
remarkable fitness and seemingly perpetual good humor.
Irvine not only re-designed the oxygen apparatus used
on the 1924 Everest expedition (original sketches of
which have been discovered and are included in FEARLESS
ON EVEREST), but he also completed all the
running repairs on the camp’s equipment, being the
only person to have brought any sort of tool kit! It
is thus not surprising that Mallory, who had no such
technical expertise with the oxygen apparatus or
cameras, chose Irvine as his partner. Nor was this a
surprise to Irvine’s family, long accustomed to his
back-yard workshop tinkering and inventing. (Too young
to enlist in the autumn of 1917, Irvine invented,
apparently from scratch, an interrupter gear that
permitted a machine gun to fire through the propeller
without making holes in it. He also designed a
gyroscopic stabilizer for aircraft and caused a small
stir by sending off beautifully worked-up designs for
these two inventions to the War Office in London.)
As
well as presenting Andrew (“Sandy”) Irvine the
mountaineer, Julie Summers reveals Irvine the son,
brother, friend, lover, and inventor. Born in
Birkenhead, educated at Shrewsbury School and Merton
College, Oxford; a brilliant scientist and keenly
competitive rower; known as a daredevil and a
ladies’ man; Irvine’s life was tragically short
but he lived it to the full. Fearless
on Everest is the revealing story of a
young adventurer whose life and death linked him with
one of the greatest mountaineering legends of all
time.
About
the Author: Born in northwest England, Julie Summers
is a great-niece of Andrew Irvine. Her own fascination
with the mountains developed in early childhood, with
skiing trips to the Alps and vacations in North Wales,
always spurred on by family tales of her great
uncle’s exploits. She was living in California in
1997 when she began research for Fearless on Everest.
Summers now lives with her husband and their three
sons in Oxford, England.
A
review by Tom Holzel is below:
Fearless
on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine, Julie
Summers, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, London; 290 pgs,
L 20. © 2000 by
Tom Holzel
The
unearthing of new information about Mallory &
Irvine seems never to end. Eight years after their
death, expedition members of 1933 retracing their
route discovered Irvine’s ice ax marking the point
of a fall. In 1980, the Japanese Alpine Club announce
the discovery five years earlier of “an English
dead” at 8200m on Everest’s North Face. In 1979
Irvine’s diary—“discovered” first in 1962--was
published privately in a spare book of the same name
edited by Herbert Carr.
In 1984, Audrey Salkeld discovered a large,
hidden cache of Mallory’s letters for our book, “The
Mystery of Mallory & Irvine.”
Recently, Peter and Leni Gillman dug even
deeper and were finally able in their book “The
Wildest Dream” to pierce the veil of Mallory’s
jumbled private life that we could only hint at. Then,
incredibly, Mallory’s body was discovered below the
site of the ice ax. Other than the climbers’ fabled
camera, only Andrew Irvine remained essentially
unknown, his diary offering only a self-effacing
(and edited) glimpse of the man through his own
eyes.
Julie
Summers knew there had to be more.
She searched for and finally discovered a trove
of hitherto unknown information about Mallory’s
22-year-old climbing partner, Andrew Comyn
Irvine—“Sandy” to his friends—complimenting
perfectly the detailed picture of Mallory painted by
the Gillmans. It
is always unbelievable when the heroes of our Pantheon
are described as having inhumanly spotless lives.
Thank goodness the Gillmans, and now Julie Summers,
are able to show the human side of their subject.
Sandy, it is revealed, had a torrid affair with
Marjory Summers, the 25-year old step-mother of his
best friend. A strong clue to their intensely
passionate involvement can be seen clearly in the full
page photograph of the couple.
(Any hint of this affair had been expurgated in
Herbert Carr’s book.)
At last we have in this fine work the
unearthing of this and much other new and refreshing
information about someone who--although sharing equal
billing--had essentially remained a footnote in the
great Mallory & Irvine saga.
Irvine’s
contribute on the mountain was the guarantee of
providing working oxygen systems to fuel their fatal
climb--something which no one else on the expedition
was capable of. In fact, given the anti-science
mind-set of the gentlemen of the Royal Geographic
Society and the Alpine Club, Irvine and George Finch
were the only ones so capable.
George Finch, who made a terrific
oxygen-assisted attempt on Everest in 1922, was
black-balled in part for his first-rate engineering
talent, the results of which showed up (by climbing
higher and faster) the oxygenless “first team” of
Mallory, Somervell & Norton. This hands-on
know-how was too much for a gentleman.
Seeing a photo of Finch repairing his own boot,
E.L. Strutt, sneered at this show of practicality by
remarking that this proved the man was "a
shit."
Summers
points out that Irvine had a form of dyslexia that
resulted in his writing with what can only be called
telegraphic punctuation. Some of this must have passed
down the Irvine line (Julie Summers’ grandmother was
Irvine's sister), for the book is annoyingly replete
with many small numerical errors: C-4 is given as
23,500-ft when it is elsewhere shown correctly as
23,000; The Rongbuk Monastery is three, not eleven
miles from Base Camp, which is at 16,500-ft, not
17,800-ft (which is C-1). In an otherwise detailed
genealogy of Irvine’s family which includes herself,
she leaves out her mother! These are nits, to be sure,
in an otherwise wonderful depiction of young Irvine's
rather racy life.
The
new information she gathers leads up to the expedition
of 1924, and offers some interesting new insights into
Sandy’s role in it. For the most part, this latter section of the book comprises
well-known information.
A breath-holding test at Base Camp revealed
that Sandy, able to hold his breath for two minutes at
sea level, was able
only to do so for half a minute at Base Camp—a good
sign of the reduced capacity of the blood to store
oxygen at altitude. Mallory’s “astonishing” ability to perform math
exercises while the others were woefully slow is also
an interesting new tidbit, but this should not lead
anyone to think that full mental functioning is
possible, even at “only” 17,000-ft.
Mallory’s (and everyone’s) handwriting
became more angular and cramped as he ascended, and
dyslexic mistakes became ever more common (e.g.,
Mallory’s “8 p.m.” instead of 8 a.m.).
Summers begins to suggest that the “8 p.m.”
notation meant Mallory might have conducted an
afternoon recon of his route at C-6 prior to their
next day’s assault, but then fails to complete the
thought. More
likely is that the two men moved C-6 from its exposed
position to a more sheltered spot hard on the lip of
the North Ridge.
This would explain why Odell felt it necessary
to clamber some 300 yards up the rout during the snow
squall, to aid the descending climbers in finding the
tent which was no longer clearly in view from above,
as it had been previously during the Norton/Somervell
attempt.
This
fine book is a necessary and delightful compliment to
a full understanding of the dynamics of the endlessly
fascinating Mallory & Irvine partnership. It goes
far in explaining the universal attraction felt by all
on the expedition for their young “experiment,”
and especially the instant rapport the two men quickly
felt for each other.
With Sandy’s innate exuberance, his
astounding mechanical aptitude, his boundless energy,
and his unfailing enthusiasm and cheer even under the
most daunting hardships, it is now abundantly clear
why the equally sociable Mallory could not have chosen
a better companion.
Fearless
on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine by Julie
Summers US
Order
Fearless
on Everest: The Quest for Sandy Irvine UK
Some
of the older Mallory and Irvine Highlights on
EverestNews.com:
Jochen Hemmleb's Research Papers
Jochen Hemmleb's Q&A
Eric Simonson's Q&A on M&I
Graham Hoyland
Interview
Tom Holzel's side
Jochen's reply
Then
Tom's
Tom's
Q&A Part 1
Tom's
Q&A Part 2
Tom's
Q&A Part
3
Your
comments on the forum
Graham
Hoyland's Q&A on the Mallory and Irvine 2000 Expedition.
Jochen's
reply to Tom
Tom Holzel
replies
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