Posted: Feb 19, 2008 03:14 am EST
(MountEverest.net) Summit or not? American historian Tom Holzel climbed on Everest as far back as in 1986 in search of the answer. Yesterday ExWeb published Tom's simple scenario for Mallory and Irvine's final climb; a conclusion he reached after assembling all the evidence.

"It's a big disappointment. But, as a historian, one is obliged to follow the facts no matter where they lead," Tom told ExWeb. Today a Q&A with the M&I researcher who was forced to have a change of heart.

ExWeb: Tom, you told us that way back in the early ‘70’s you predicted that Andrew Irvine’s body might lie below the ice ax on the snow field at 8200m. With that one article you re-ignited interest in this famous mystery--and you created a storm of protest. Then, in 1980, the Japanese Alpine Club wrote in reply to your letter to be on the lookout for Irvine, that a Chinese porter on Everest told them he had discovered “an English dead” at 8100m.

TH: Yes, and that was a great confirmation of what until then had only been a possibility. But this exciting news was not well received by the British climbing establishment.

ExWeb: Why not?

TH: British climbers, particularly the old guard, were really upset that it was an American who was hot on the spur. And having the audacity to suggest one of their heroic failures might have been a success. Plus my brash nature really offended them. For one thing, I failed in the article to pay any homage to their list of great men, as one of these great men, Sir Percy Wynn Harris acidly pointed out. Also, the official Chinese Mountaineering Association repeatedly denied that any “foreign mountaineer” had been spotted.

ExWeb: But why should they be angry about your turning failure into possible success?

TH: We never got a straight answer. But when we left for Mt. Everest in 1986 to go look, one book reviewer deliberately broke the embargo on Audrey Salkeld’s and my book—The Mystery of Mallory & Irvine--to wish us the same fate as befell Mallory & Irvine. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the establishment.

ExWeb: Ooops! So it wasn’t just envy…?

TH: It was rancorous pique (ed: bitter pride). Because it was they who should have thought to look for the two climbers. Instead, they did absolutely nothing to find out what happened to Mallory & Irvine, claimed that the “English dead” was another ‘Everest ghost,’ and complained we were nothing less than grave robbers—all pretty much in the same breath. It was dog-in-the-manger at its finest: we never looked, so how dare you?

ExWeb: Your theory was that Mallory & Irvine surmounted the very difficult Second Step, and then Mallory combined Irvine’s remaining oxygen with his own in order to have enough to reach the summit. And sent Irvine back down by himself.

TH: Yes. At the time, that was the only realistic assembly of facts that gave them any chance of at least one of them having got to the top. And still pretty much is.

ExWeb: But you don’t feel that way anymore?

TH: The Old Guard was adamant—almost apoplectic—that Mallory would never send Irvine back to his death. Solo travel on Mt. Everest was just not done, they exclaimed—especially to indulge in a vainglorious effort to reach the top. This while proclaiming out of the other side of their mouths that Mallory was unstoppable, someone who would never turn back while there was any chance, etc., etc.

ExWeb: Do you still feel the same way now?

TH. No. I knew that their solo-bit complaint, sending a climber back alone, was malarkey (ed: BS) —they did it on every expedition beginning with the first one 1921 on their return from the North Col. But they were accidentally right about Mallory not sending Irvine back from the Second Step. Back in 1971 nothing was known about the actual difficulty of the Second Step and the traverse to reach it from the First Step. Sir Percy had eyeballed it from below and declared it unclimbable. He also declared the Norton Route the only way to go. Since then (1933) the Second Step has been climbed a thousand times, the Norton Route two or three times.

When Western climbers were finally let in, they learned that the traverse from the First Step to the Second—about 250 yards—is treacherously steep and very scary. So critics were right when they said that Mallory would not have sent Irvine back down alone from the Second Step. This new fact weakened my theory.

ExWeb: And then it was Mallory who was found below the ice ax where you predicted, not Irvine…

TH. Yes, and that hurt the theory even more.

ExWeb: Why is that?

TH. Mallory could have been returning alone from his summit assault and just fallen to where he was found. He would certainly have been utterly exhausted. But his body exhibited severe rope-jerk mottling around the waist—a clear sign that he had received a strong rope-jerk from a falling partner.

ExWeb: So you say he could not have been coming down alone. He must have been descending with Irvine?

TH. Yes, and Irvine could not possibly have sat around above the Second Step completely out in the open in the midst of a snow squall for six hours to wait for Mallory to return. Or even for an hour or two in that fearful cold.

ExWeb: So you concluded they never split up, and they must have returned together?

TH. That’s the way it looks. And the puncture wound in Mallory’s forehead looks an awfully lot like that which would result from his own ice ax while trying a self-arrest.

ExWeb: So isn’t one way to look at it that the Old Guard was right—they didn’t climb the Second Step and they didn’t make it to the top? Given that, isn’t your latest theory just an explication of that?

TH. That would be painful to admit if one didn’t look at the whole picture. Prior to my 1971 article, the issue was essentially closed. Nothing was explained, and the Brits felt there was no sense in speculating further. Searching was never mooted. They simply blamed their failure on the failure of the ”artificial” oxygen system, which caused them to be so late when Odell saw them. Sir Percy blamed the two tanks on Mallory’s back as having acted like runners on a sled to speed him to his death! It never entered their minds to look for evidence, especially the cameras the two took.

ExWeb: And your latest scenario is…?

TH. I suddenly realized that all the palaver about Mallory & Irvine being late was based on two huge false assumptions: The first false assumption was that they were late because of oxygen equipment problems; the second false assumption was that when they were seen five hours late, they were still ascending.

ExWeb: So when Odell spotted them they were already coming down?

TH. Clearly. If you plug that assumption into the equation, suddenly ALL the known facts make sense—and you don’t have to turn a blind eye to all those clues that damage whatever your latest success scenario is. Or make up scenarios out of whole cloth.

ExWeb: You’re saying all “success scenarios” have holes in them?

TH. Unfortunately, including mine. Some much bigger than others. To get the two—or even one of them—to the top requires you to finesse important clues. Or contrive elaborate evidence-free scenarios. As a historian, you simply can’t do that. You have to simply and realistically account for all known evidence. But, if what you want is to establish a glorious myth, then, of course, anything goes…

ExWeb: So now you’ve done a complete turnabout from your original success scenario. Are now ALL the ducks in a row?

TH. This latest theory is straight-forward, accounts for all known facts, leaves nothing out and doesn’t contrive complex alternate universes. So it must be what happened. They failed and I show exactly how and why. What a pity. I certainly wanted to have seen them reach the top as much as anyone.

ExWeb: This will make a lot of Mallory & Irvine fans unhappy.

TH. For sure. And it made a lot of editors unhappy, too. I’ve never had a problem getting half-dozen articles published on this subject—as long as I was pushing the “How Mallory made it” scenario. But this negative assessment is heresy—none of the mountaineering press would touch it.

ExWeb: Except us?

TH. Bravo. That’s why I’m here!

Tom on how the film in the VPK camera should be handled and developed

In 1986, Everest expert and co-author of the book "First on Everest - The mystery of Mallory and Irvine," Tom Holzel set out to find Mallory's camera. In addition, Tom was the one to track down Zhang Junyan and corroborated the late Chinese mountaineer's Wang's story about the discovery of an "English body" on the mountain.

Odell says he saw Mallory and Irvine climbing the second step in less than five minutes. The section has only been free-climbed a few times since.

Oscar Cadiach (K2 Magic line, 7 main 8000ers, Everest twice), who climbed the second step without oxygen said, "It took me one hour to climb the 50 meters-long step. I hoped two hours more would be enough to reach the summit, but breaking trail in soft snow ended up with us topping-out six hours after climbing the Step."

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