Sandy Irvine's foot found on everest after 100 years

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Marcel said:
But did not get back safely, so Hillary and Tenzing are still the first to go there and back again.
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Yes thats true.

I suppose it's how it's going to be looked at.

Will history be interested in the fact they didn't come back if it is proven they reached the summit ?

I'm not sure how i feel about wether they needed to get back safely to be called the first to conquer Everest.
But i suppose you'd need to live to say you conquered it ?
 
I think it is a win. The conquest of Everest will have two incredible stories instead of one.
I really hope they will find that camera but I guess it will still take some time. And then it's the question if they will be able to retrieve anything from it.
Imagine the frustration if they find the camera and the film cannot be developed anymore.
 
Agreed. Now we just wait and see. It's a good story regardless.
 
The immediate analysis and relative positioning of the remains of Mallory and Irvine creates additional grist for the mystery mill. They could not come up with a theory how one climbing incident could account for their locations and wide separation.

My immediate thought is there was likely some activity (wind, glacial, animal) that separated and moved the foot, and its present (exact site kept private) location is likely NOT to be where the rest of his remains are located. IMHO, no solution, just more mystery.

btw: Once while flying a sailplane above the Owens Valley in a Sierra wave, I saw an estimated 6' deciduous tree branch being lifted past 19,000' There was a very active windstorm in the valley below, and those trees seem to not grow above 10-11K'. I believe the Himalayas have more violent winds than the Sierras.
 

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A glacier is a slow-moving river of ice. Anything found at the foot of a glacier entered the glacier somewhere upstream. The researchers will probably be able to figure out where Irvine would have met his end.See the story of the BSAA airliner "Star Dust" on its final flight to Santiago, Chile.
I'll agree with Sir Edmund that in order to successfully climb a mountain, you have to make it back down alive.
No disrespect for Mallory and Irvine at all, theirs was a noble quest and a heroic failure.
 
We need to wait for better information, and it's sad that there are those who'd seek to profit on even unreachable areas like Titanic and Everest. One space venture group talked about going to the moon to recover Apollo artifacts to sell them!

The immediate info I've heard is that Irvin and Mallory's remains were found in very different areas, in different glacial zones.

I'm pretty sure that Mallory was on an exposed face, far from any glacial valleys ... covered occasionally with snow, but never accumulation. He had been spotted before, but was in a unstable slope, and thought to be a more recent victim.

I'll wait for accurate information from geologists and mountaineers, and I'm sure Nat Geo will do an extensive study.

Without the spirit of exploration, we'd be like beavers, creating family communities, but not venturing far from food or water.
 
Gnomey said:
It is a fascinating story hopefully the camera is found as well. Though wonder how well the film will have survived.
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It's possible that the images (if any) can be salvaged. Latent image decay in B&W film is fairly slow. It starts immediately after the image is taken and is rapid in the first few hours but the development process (time/temp) takes care of that. It slows exponentially after that, especially if kept cold. I used to photograph with a 4x5 view (sheet film) camera and found an exposed image (in my freezer) still loaded in the film holder that was 4 years old. Standard development gave a good image although it looked a little "thin". (I may have just underexposed it a little as I always "bracketed" 3 or 4 exposures and this could have been a deliberate underexposure, but I don't know. And it was color negative film.) In an antique shop I bought and old camera in the mid 1990's that still had exposed film it. It was an old 120 format camera and I developed the film a little "hot" (higher temp and longer development). Surprisingly, I got 8 images off the thing that were somewhat thin. The rest appeared to be unexposed. Nothing interesting but just pictures of a house, street, some people at a picnic table, etc. (B&W). The autos parked on the street looked to be early 1960's. Any film on the camera on Everest would have been "stored" in an ideal environment for exposed film: very cold and dry. So there is hope that some latent images can be retrieved, especially since extensive planning and execution of the "development" of the film would obviously take place due to the historical importance of the images.
 
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Here's more details and and a couple maps from NatGeo.
While they are not revealing the location of Irvine's foot, the mention of being in the East Rongbuk Glacier implies that it is 2-3000 meters below the North Ridge and Mallory.
My NatGeo contact implied that they had difficulty developing a theory of how the artifact sites would match up, especially Irvine, and I'll wait for their informed analysis rather than speculate.

Will the discovery of Sandy Irvine lead to solving Everest's greatest mystery?

Here's why the lost explorer’s remains were hunted for so long—and what finding them now could mean.
www.nationalgeographic.com
 
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