China has come under scrutiny following allegations that it secretly moved the body of British explorer George Mallory from Mount Everest after he vanished during a 1924 expedition.
George Mallory, 37, and his climbing partner Andrew “Sandy” Irvine, 22, disappeared while attempting to reach the summit of the world’s tallest mountain.
For over 80 years, the whereabouts of their remains remained a mystery, with their last known sighting just 800 feet from the top during their ascent from the Tibetan side.
Mallory’s body was discovered in 1999 by American climber Conrad Anker, lying 2,000 feet below the summit.
His body had a rope around its waist and injuries suggesting a fall while being roped together with Irvine.
However, despite GPS marking the location, subsequent attempts to locate Irvine’s body have been unsuccessful, and Mallory’s remains have since vanished, fueling speculation about China’s involvement.
As the 100th anniversary of Mallory and Irvine’s climb approaches, new theories have emerged that Chinese authorities might have moved their bodies.
The speculation is rooted in China’s historic claim that its climbers were the first to summit Everest from the north in 1960.
This assertion served as a significant propaganda victory for Mao Zedong, who had a vested interest in the mountain’s symbolic value.
Mark Synnott, who participated in a recent expedition searching for Irvine, expressed his disbelief to The Observer: “We had GPS coordinates for where the body was. We flew the drone to that spot.
“We took photos. I feel if Mallory’s body was still there, we would have seen it. It doesn’t make any sense. Why remove the body?”
Jamie McGuinness, another Everest veteran, supports this claim, stating that Irvine’s body is almost certainly no longer on the mountain after extensive drone searches found nothing.
Jake Norton, part of the team that discovered Mallory in 1999, believes Irvine’s body was still on Everest in 2001.
However, he suspects that it was removed by Chinese authorities around 2008 when Chinese climbers carried the Olympic torch to the summit before the Beijing games.
This theory is further supported by a comment from an official at the China Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA) suggesting that Irvine’s body was removed long before the 2008 event.
Synnott’s 2021 book, “The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession, and Death on Mount Everest,” revealed claims from multiple sources indicating that the Chinese found and removed Irvine’s body to safeguard their claim to the first ascent.
A former US intelligence officer and a British diplomat corroborated these accounts, suggesting that Irvine’s body and his camera were discovered and possibly relocated to Lhasa, Tibet.
If Irvine’s camera contained photos proving that Mallory and Irvine reached the summit, it would challenge the narrative that the Chinese team was the first to summit from the north.
The possibility of such evidence has long intrigued mountaineering historians and enthusiasts.
Despite the controversy, some experts, like author Graham Hoyland, argue that Mallory and Irvine never made it to the top.
Hoyland cites adverse weather conditions and other challenges as insurmountable obstacles that likely led to their demise before reaching the summit.
The first confirmed ascent of Mount Everest was achieved by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa partner Tenzing Norgay in 1953.
Their successful climb marked a significant milestone in mountaineering history, forever etching their names into the annals of adventure.
