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| At right is a portrait of Andrew Comyn "Sandy" Irvine, companion to George
Leigh-Mallory on the 1924 British expedition to Mt. Everest. Irvine went to Shrewsbury
school, then read engineering at Merton College, Oxford. He rowed for the Oxford team that
beat Cambridge in 1922, and went on an expedition to Spitzbergen in 1923. He learned to
ski at Christmas 1923 from Arnold Lunn, the inventor of the slalom race. A man of great
mechanical aptitude, his Everest diary records days of compulsive puttering. |
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Mallory and Irvine disappeared 6 June 1924, while attempting the first ascent of Mt.
Everest. They never returned, and the question of whether they reached the summit has
remained a mystery. The remains of George Leigh-Mallory were located and conclusively
identified on 1 May 1999. Irvine's remains have not been located. |
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| In his 1922 book Mount Everest, the Reconnaissance, Mallory describes the
bleak landscapes he discovered: |
It was a desolate scene, I suppose; no flowers were to be seen nor any sign of life
beyond some stunted gorse bushes on a near hillside and a few patches of coarse brown
grass, and the only habitations were dry inhuman ruins; but whatever else was dead, our
interest was alive.
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| This description leads us to believe that Everest has a lot in common with western
Nebraska. And so it was decided - we'd look for Irvine where nobody else has looked: on
Panorama Point. |
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