Behind The First Summit of The World's Tallest Mountain (Full Episode) | Lost on Everest

(wind whistling) (wind whistling) <i> REPORTER: It's the traffic jam atop the world:</i> <i> droves of climbers,</i> <i> waiting for their chance to summit Mount Everest. </i> <i> REPORTER: With a large number of people,</i> <i> the longer wait means climbers are spending more time</i> <i> in what's called the Death Zone. </i> <i> REPORTER: A second American dying in just days,</i> <i> bringing the total to 11 deaths already this season.

</i> RENAN OZTURK: Locals view Everest essentially as a god, and by climbing the mountain, you're stepping on the heads of their gods. MARK SYNNOTT: I've never been an Everest person. The definition of adventure for me is an endeavor where the outcome is totally unknown.

The Mallory and Irvine mystery is one of those stories, like, you can't imagine an endeavor with more unknowns than what they were facing in the 1920s. Climbing to the highest point on Earth, I think, in those days, wasn't too much different from the idea of going to the moon. George Mallory pioneered the first expeditions to Everest.

The world was shocked when he and his climbing partner Sandy Irvine disappeared. They were spotted just 800 vertical feet from the summit and were never seen again. ♪ ♪ The essence of the Mallory and Irvine story for me is the spirit of the climbers themselves.

What was driving them. What happened to those guys? ♪ ♪ THOM POLLARD: It's not just solving the mystery of two guys who disappeared.

It's solving the mystery to try to figure out if they might have been the first to summit the greatest mountain in the world. ♪ ♪ Back in 1999 I had the opportunity to go look for the bodies of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine. Our goal was finding the Kodak VPK, or vest pocket camera, they're believed to have carried with them on that final day.

The hope is that the film inside it will prove if they actually made it to the summit. On the very first day of searching, we found a body. His body appears to be mummified.

There's rope around his waist. Can see a boot. MAN: Here, wait, this is George Mallory.

THOM: Really? MAN: George Mallory. THOM: Oh, my god.

Oh, my god. MAN: See that? George Mallory.

THOM: Oh, my god. He was face down in the surface. His face was completely in, and his hands were like this.

Around, especially around the left part of his waist, it looked like the rope really pulled tightly. You could actually see the rope kind of imprinted into the side of his waist. Below his right knee, his leg was broken completely in half and it was an open wound fracture.

And up there, an injury like that, there's no way you're getting out of it. And I can remember how overwhelming it was to be in the presence of this guy, this man, this icon of exploration. But we had a job to do.

We wanted to try and tell his story. So we searched the body as carefully as we could. We found some personal effects, but the most important thing that was not with Mallory was of course the camera.

Burying George Mallory. We didn't find the camera. We looked fairly hard.

MARK: Since then people have speculated, and I think this is logical, that Irvine had the camera. Mallory was the leader. So it would have made sense for Irvine, you know, as his almost like assistant to be the one taking pictures of the, you know, the boss.

THOM: Can you imagine that camera? It's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If we find that camera, let me tell you something, it's gonna just change things.

This is gonna be the greatest event in the history of mountaineering. MARK: History books say the first climbers to summit Mount Everest were Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953. If Irvine took a photo on the summit in 1924, it would rewrite history.

THOM: It's out there somewhere, the camera exists. It's there. It just has to be found.

♪ ♪ MARK: We're on our way to go see Tom Holzel, who is an Everest historian. He has more knowledge about this than anyone alive, and he just contacted Thom the other day and said that he had GPS coordinates for the location of Irvine. He did the first expedition to try to find these guys in 1986, but there was too much snow on the mountain so they got shut down.

And when they eventually found Mallory in '99, he was very close to where Holzel had thought that he would be. TOM HOLZEL: It's interesting to see when you have an assembly of facts, can you figure out what happened? Can you get to the conclusion?

I think you can. That's what is so interesting about history. Mallory and Irvine went missing on June 8, 1924.

In 1960, the Chinese made their first attempt from the north side, and one of the climbers climbed down a more direct route and he said he saw a dead British climber. A British? How do you know that?

He was wearing braces. Braces are suspenders. All the English wore braces.

So that was a fantastic clue. And then in 1995, a Sherpa named Chhiring Dorje also took a more direct route and also saw a body. So we have now two eyewitness accounts.

That means there is a body there. So that's when I went to Brad Washburn at the Museum of Science and I said, "Brad, do we have any good aerial photographs? " And he says, "Tom, you've come to the right place.

" (film projector running) They flew over Everest in a Learjet at 40,000 feet and did extensive mapping photographs. And they seamed them together and I made this eight-foot picture. You can see the two trails where they diverge.

And there's only a very short area where the more direct route, the lower route, passes by these slots. So if he's in a slot, and we know he is, because two people say he is, there's only one place where Irvine can be. MARK: This is what you've come up with.

TOM: Yep. MARK: Thom and I are proposing to be your boots on the ground. TOM: Yep.

MARK: What are you giving the odds that he's actually there? TOM: He can't not be there. MARK: So you're saying, "He can't not be there.

" TOM: Yes. MARK: Wow. THOM: He has worked for years on identifying the exact location of that spot, and he swears, if we go there, we will find Sandy Irvine.

(child talking) MARK: Climbing and adventure and exploration for me is kind of like a compulsion. I've been on a lot of expeditions in my life. And it's just something that you feel, where it feels right.

Thom Pollard is an old friend of mine, and I said to Thom, "This is a story that needs to be told. This is the trip that you and I were always meant to take together. " THOM: Ever since that day in May of 1999, this thing has just become part of the fabric of who I am.

Here we are, 20 years later, I'm finally getting back to have another look around, to try to wrap things up. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ RENAN: Mark has specifically avoided Everest in his career because Everest isn't true exploration. And I think this mystery is his way of connecting with Everest.

He's the chief detective. MARK: I have no idea what it will be like up there. I've never done anything like this.

But I know what it will be like for me; it will be similar to what it was like for them a hundred years ago. ♪ ♪ RENAN: We can actually see what that expedition was like for them back in 1924. Team member John Noelle brought a film camera all the way to Everest, and he captured incredible footage of the entire expedition.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (cowbells clanging) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We're gonna go, just like they did, through the mountains on the south side of the Himalaya. Cross the border onto the north side of China. ♪ ♪ Up into the Tibetan Plateau.

♪ ♪ MARK: The focus is on the Irvine location and finding the body, but it's the whole journey to get there. And seeing the places that they were, and putting myself into some of the exact positions that they were in, makes this so compelling for me. THOM: I've pictured finding Sandy Irvine many, many times.

His mom and dad left their back door open and unlocked for three years, just in case he came home. And I feel like if I could go and find Sandy Irvine, they could lock their door. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ JAMIE MCGUINNESS: I'd like to take all the gear out of the vehicle.

We can drop it in the dining tent. MARK: Jamie is the guide. He's summited Mount Everest five times.

His primary job, apart from logistics and getting us from point A to point B, is to make sure that we come home from this expedition. In terms of what it's like to search high on Mount Everest for a body, I have no idea. That's one of the reasons why I'm so enthralled with this expedition because I just have this singular focus, which is Mallory and Irvine, Mount Everest and following in their footsteps, and there's kind of nothing else.

Mallory and Irvine were last seen climbing a rock face just below the summit. Climbing that high has to be done in stages, by hiking along a glacier from Base Camp to Advanced Base Camp. Then climbing to the top of a ridge called the North Col.

From there, it's a final two-day push up the ridge, all the way to the summit. (guides singing) RENAN: Today is a big day. We're doing our Puja, which is a ceremony that the Sherpas do to ask for permission and good luck to climb the mountain.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ MARK: We just crested 18,000 feet, so we've gained about 1,000 feet from Base Camp. This is another milestone in the journey ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ JAMIE: Final push. MARK: Ah.

Wow. JAMIE: It's been a great day. But I think everyone's hurting a little.

The last push is. . .

is hard. (wind whistling) RENAN: Climbing Mount Everest has to do with cardiovascular fitness, how your physiology of your body actually handles the altitude. (Mark coughing) You can be one of the strongest climbers in the world, but your physiology just doesn't work for Mount Everest.

THOM: It's a slow, cold, agonizing process. It slams you. MARK: What I want to do right now is I want to chart out where we're gonna go, and then the point at which we're gonna fix our rope and rappel down to Holzel's spot.

THOM: Okay. MARK: Here's the second step, and then this is the Holzel/Xu Jing area. So we have to go to this spot.

Our search zone is high on the mountain, in an area known as the Death Zone. Our time at that altitude will be extremely limited. The plan is to follow Mallory and Irvine's route to the summit, then traverse back across the ridge to find Tom Holzel's spot.

And go off rope, searching, across a steep slope of loose rock, with a 7,000-foot drop below. THOM: The sun's just hit, we're moving out of ABC to the North Col. I know I'm not dying because I desire coffee so badly.

RENAN: It's pretty important to note that Everest doesn't get climbed alone. We've got all of our Sherpas taking all of our advanced camera loads and all of the little things we need to survive the North Col. MARK: Off we go.

♪ ♪ RENAN: Not sure how it's gonna go, but a lot of vert to climb. 2,000 feet. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We just started up the technical part to the North Col.

I can't believe the conga line. There must be 200 people up there. MARK: It's a little scary.

If you look above us, there's a giant serac just waiting to cut loose in the hot sun. Like textbook (bleep) you don't wanna be under. Let's move.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ MARK: That was burly. My lungs are. .

. not feeling great. RENAN: We're all just hurting, just trying to acclimatize.

It's just a lot. It was a suffer-fest. We were all suffering, and the hundred-mile-an-hour death winds were coming.

Charts of the jet stream passing right through the summit. That does not look good. (wind buffeting) (wind buffeting) ♪ ♪ (yawns) MARK: When we woke up in the morning, poked my head out the door of the tent, looked up at the North Face, which had been beautiful.

That was now replaced with this nasty, swirling cloud. Holy crap. (wind roaring) (wind roaring) Ahhh!

Renan. THOM: Do you wanna come in here? (wind roaring) (wind roaring) MAN: Oh.

MAN: Is everyone okay? RENAN: It threw a tent in the air and nearly killed a few people. I'm glad they were clipped into fix lines 'cause it threw 'em off the ridge and they were just hanging limp, halfway down the face.

(wind roaring) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ MARK: Pretty windy now, but not nearly as bad, so I'm going next door. Renan's gonna launch the drone. See what happens.

(drone humming) ♪ ♪ RENAN: We can search a thousand times more just through this technological advancement of what the drones are capable of. MARK: It was kind of our vision to do all these drone flights and to photograph the terrain rather than having to put boots all over the mountain, which is incredibly dangerous. RENAN: This is good, we're cranking.

MARK: It's unbelievable what you're doing, Renan. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ RENAN: Take a photo here. MARK: Yeah.

(click) RENAN: And then should I go in a little tighter? MARK: If you can. RENAN: Just gonna get right in there this time.

Gonna really push it. MARK: Oh, my god, dude. You're frickin' right there.

You're so there. Yep, get that ledge. .

. and up in here. (click) RENAN: Getting a thumb workout.

MARK: Holzel would be losing his mind if he could see this right now. (click) RENAN: Alright, I'm gonna come home. MARK: Bring her home.

We just flew a drone to 28,300 feet on Mount Everest. No one's every done that (bleep) before. You're in uncharted territory.

♪ ♪ (drone humming) (beep) RENAN: Okay. First-hand view. Drne POV.

MARK: Yeah. This zone right in here, this is where I wanna go, on foot. JAMIE: Okay.

Let's talk a little strategy, quickly, in terms of what we should do for the next few days, with our weather forecasts, we go to ABC. It's hard work going down, but we recover so well. With Everest, with Chomolungma, it's not a question of when we're ready.

It's a question of when she's ready for us. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ MARK: Oh, wow. The conga line at the top.

Holy (bleep). There's only a few days a year suitable for a summit climb, and there was an early weather window. And there was, I don't know, something like 200, 300 people trying to climb Mount Everest from the north.

Every single one of 'em went for the first weather window. Wow. That's really inspiring to see that, that's incredible.

THOM: Do you wish you were there with them? MARK: Yes. THOM: Let's be real.

MARK: I do, I mean. I'm not gonna lie. It feels weird to be sitting here while all the action is going on up high.

JAMIE: There are queues of people, lines and lines of people waiting. MARK: Jamie said to us, "You know what? This is a bad idea.

I got a bad feeling about it. There's gonna be huge lines, and we're gonna get entangled up in the whole thing. And it's gonna be a mess.

It's gonna be a (bleep) show. " And you're sitting at home and you're looking at the photos on CNN and you just think, "Ah, what a bunch of selfish jerks. " But when you're here, you realize, um.

. . that it's actually something kinda special going on here.

The spirit that's driving those people is I think the same spirit that was driving Mallory and Irvine. We wanna solve the mystery, but this mountain is pretty alluring. (wind whistling) ♪ ♪ We were waiting in Advanced Base Camp for the crowds to clear, and the day before we were set to leave, we went for a little hike around camp and on the way back Thom had some kind of bizarre neurologic episode.

Thom, what's going on? THOM: Getting my blood pressure taken. I had this, just before I popped into my tent, I had this really, this tingling, kind of almost pleasant, believe it or not, feeling here in my cheek, and it moved kinda up into my eye area.

MARK: Throughout the expedition I've been communicating with Dr Peter Hackett. You know, he's a high altitude doctor. And I told him about Thom's symptoms.

He said, "Mm, that doesn't sound good. You know, it's possible that he had a TIA," which I think stands for trans ischemic attack, it's kind of a miniature stroke. "Numbness can occur from Diamox, but not trouble moving lips.

" So you definitely had trouble moving your lips? THOM: Yeah. MARK: Yeah?

"He probably shouldn't go up because a chance this is a TIA. " If it was a TIA, you don't wanna go up. THOM: Yeah.

MARK: No one would go up, because. . .

THOM: Yeah, then you're (bleep). MARK: . .

. you could have a stroke and die. THOM: Yeah.

♪ ♪ MARK: His dream, you know, to try to find Sandy Irvine and try to solve this mystery, it's over. THOM: Oh, my god. That's the hardest thing.

. . in the world.

Watching your blood brothers go onward. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ MARK: Five minutes later we were on our way up the trail without him. ♪ ♪ This was the final push up the mountain.

I think we all understood that if we made a misstep, the entire endeavor could just go off the rails. ♪ ♪ It was grueling. It's incredibly tedious, and the altitude is kicking your ass.

Imagine what that must have been like in 1924, back in the day when it wasn't festooned with fixed ropes like it is now. MARK: To be dressed the way that they were in tweed and Burberry and all these layers of silk and with their bomber caps and their little goggles. And their leather hobnail boots.

And their 100-foot manila rope that was that thick. It's mind-boggling. (wind buffeting) We start moving up from Camp 2.

And it's windy enough that it's not comfortable. You can't just, like, hang out. You get cold even with a down suit.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ This is the spot where Odell had his last sighting of Mallory and Irvine. And it's kind of fitting that it's a snow squall, because there was squalling and then it lifted out and he turned the corner here. .

. and had that famous sighting. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ RENAN: Team member Noel Odell was the last person to see Mallory and Irvine.

He describes them high on the ridge, going for the summit. And then the mist came over and engulfed them, and they were never to be seen again. MARK: Everybody's been disputing since 1924 about Noel Odell's sighting of the two climbers.

He saw them surmounting a rock step. And the question is whether it was the first step or the second step. And the idea is that if they were that far along and that if Odell saw them surmounting the second step, that they probably could have made it to the summit.

Because it's the crux of the whole route. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ If Odell says he saw them over the second step, I'm pretty sure nothing would stop them going to the summit. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ It's been, uh.

. . (coughing) THOM: The Death Zone is correctly named.

There's nothing dramatic about it, it's just the truth. You can't eat enough, you can't sleep enough, you can't drink enough. Your body is literally wasting away up there.

And if you fall asleep one too many times, you never wake up again. ♪ ♪ RENAN: It is 10:30. We just slept in some abandoned tents up here in the Death Zone.

Scrounged some random food. And against all odds we're launching to try to solve this mystery. MARK: We were working our way up to the summit and how are we gonna have the energy to do this?

I mean, we'll be lucky if we even make it to the top. ♪ ♪ Oh. ♪ ♪ We get to the first step, you know, it's pitch black.

This is like a 60-foot-high vertical cliff. I'm like, "Holy (bleep), this is the first step? What the hell is the second step like?

" RENAN: I think we all underestimated how hard Everest and the climb was gonna be. I just see Mark climbing up the ladder and I had a little panic. The regulator on the top of the oxygen bottle, which feeds the oxygen down the hose, cracked.

And there's dead bodies on either side. One of them from a couple weeks ago. MARK: You run out of oxygen, you become one of the dead guys lining the side of the route.

But one thing you realize quickly when you're up there is that it's kind of every man for himself. I mean, I was barely even alive myself, so I couldn't really do anything for anybody else. ♪ ♪ RENAN: The severity of the whole situation really hit home.

And from that point on, I had the hardest climb of my life. ♪ ♪ (breathing heavily) RENAN: Third step. (breathing heavily) ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ How you feeling?

MARK: Couldn't have picked a better day. (breathing heavily) (breathing heavily) ♪ ♪ MARK: Woo! There's no one on the mountain, except for us.

We had the entire peak to ourself. And it was an absolutely perfect day. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ RENAN: That was something really special.

To feel the power and the energy of the tallest place on Earth. The same power that drew Mallory and Irvine. MARK: After that last sighting by Odell, Mallory and Irvine were never seen again.

Odell led a search party up to their high camp. And after two days, they marked a signal in the snow. It was a black cross made out of sleeping bags.

Whether they made it to the top or not, they probably died on the way back down. RENAN: We went for the summit. And now we're trying to make it down safely.

Yet to be determined if we go searching for Irvine. Personally, I barely made it and I just hope to have a safe descent at this point. MARK: Yeah, let's get going.

(coughing) We're on the summit of Mount Everest. (coughing) We're supposed to descend and on the way down go off the routes and go out exploring, solo, across the yellow band. And I thought to myself, "I'm gonna do this.

I'm gonna find Holzel's spot. I'm gonna find Sandy Irvine, I'm gonna find the camera. " TOM: I've showed them where I think it is, and I hope they follow that advice and find it.

To me, it's been a science project, and the nice thing about a science project is at the end, you prove your theory or you disprove it. But hey, they're the explorers, not me. MARK: We're getting closer and I'm thinking, OK, when and if I find this spot, am I really gonna be able to do this?

Oh, my god. I was smoked, more tired than I'd ever been in my life. You have to be able to move under your own power.

And if you can't, that's it. Then you're gonna die. And as evidence of that, you see dead bodies.

RENAN: I can see Mark's brain thinking, when we stopped at Mushroom Rock with our backs against a frozen body. MARK: I'm looking at the GPS and I'm trying to collate things in my mind, like, where am I? I'm trying to get oriented.

And one of the distinguishing features, unfortunately, was a dead body of this Japanese climber that we had spotted when we were looking at the drone footage. And then I looked down and all of a sudden, I could see it. There's Holzel's spot.

♪ ♪ Yeah, I wanna do it. ♪ ♪ Where's the ax? RENAN: Here it is.

MARK: And it was the moment of truth. MARK: It's in right there. MARK: I was off the rope and it was very clear that it was not something that they had wanted me to do.

MARK: Just an absolute emotional roller coaster. Determination, "I gotta do this, I have so much into this. " And then self-preservation.

"Dude, you have four kids. Like, this is not worth it. It's not worth risking your life.

" (breathing heavily) ♪ ♪ Finally I just said, "(bleep) it, I'm going for it. " ♪ ♪ RENAN: He cast off into the unknown. And neither Matt nor I had.

. . had the wherewithal to follow him.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ RENAN: I was on the edge of my seat wondering what the answer to the mystery is going to be. ♪ ♪ GUIDE: Hey! Woo!

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (radio chatter) MARK: As I started dropping elevation and traversing on these ledges, I realized that I was very close to where Mallory might have fallen and where Irvine might have fallen. And there were spots where if my crampons skated off, I would just fall into the abyss. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ As I was going, I was looking into these slots because the two eyewitness accounts said that they saw the body in a slot of rock.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (radio chatter) As I came to the various slots, I was five foot above the drop where if I slipped and fell I would essentially suffer the same fate as Mallory. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I didn't see anything. (wind buffeting) (wind buffeting) And that was it.

I went to Holzel's spot. There was nothing there. (breathing heavily) I went against the Sherpas, which I feel really bad about.

I almost didn't go. But I spent so much time studying that spot, I just had to go there. Even after going to the summit, I, seriously, this is the hardest day that I've ever had in my life.

I had to get boots on the ground to either prove or disprove Holzel's theory. I think that's ultimately our. .

. our contribution to this mystery. And I think that Irvine was there in 1960.

I think it's corroborated by Chhiring Dorje in 1995. And I think sometime between then and now Irvine and the camera went to the bottom of the North Face. And I don't think there's a chance in hell of anyone ever finding it.

Because I looked down there, and I saw the size of the crevasses. And just the way that the sweep of the avalanches would just flush things down into the abyss. Never gonna.

. . never gonna find him down there.

(breathing heavily) ♪ ♪ This was the most frantic, intense, dangerous thing that I've ever done in my life. We gave it absolutely everything that we had, and the mystery remains. ♪ ♪ THOM: People who don't really know about this mountain are very quick to criticize it.

What happens when people set their focus on this mountain is that the people become driven by ambition. And ambition is a really tricky thing because sometimes it will cause us to cross over this line that can bring us to the point of no return. Which is exactly what happened to George Mallory and Sandy Irvine.

MARK: We all have sort of an imaginary fence that we draw as far as how much risk we're willing to take. And I think, for a father of four, I stepped over onto the wrong side of the fence on this trip. What I hope people will understand is that everybody that's here, that's trying to climb Everest, they're embodying the same spirit of Mallory and Irvine.

RENAN: What they did is unimaginable. The sheer grit it took to climb that high and into the unknown at that point in time and the odds of them making it to the summit and being the first to stand on top of Chomolungma, Everest. I don't know, man.

That's the story that keeps us coming back.