In September, a National Geographic documentary crew made a significant discovery on Mount Everest: a boot and sock emerging from a melting glacier. The team immediately recognized it as a potential clue to a long-standing mystery, especially when they found a name label stitched onto the wool sock that read “A.C. Irvine,” suggesting it likely belonged to British climber Andrew “Sandy” Irvine.
When Did Andrew Sandy Irvine Vanish?
Irvine’s disappearance in 1924, along with fellow climber George Mallory, is one of mountaineering’s greatest mysteries. The two vanished on June 8, 1924, just 800 feet below the summit of Mount Everest, during their attempt to complete the first recorded ascent of the world’s highest peak.
To this day, it remains unclear whether they reached the summit before they perished.
While Mallory’s body was found in 1999, Irvine’s body and the camera the climbers carried—potentially holding the answer to whether they reached the summit—remained missing. That changed with this recent discovery when the National Geographic team, which included “Free Solo” co-director Jimmy Chin, found a foot inside what they believe is Irvine’s boot.
The team is now awaiting DNA results to confirm the identity by comparing samples from Irvine’s relatives, but this discovery appears to provide the first evidence of his death since his disappearance.
“It’s The First Real Evidence”
“It’s the first real evidence of where Sandy ended up,” Chin stated, according to National Geographic. He explained that many theories had been proposed over the years. “When someone disappears and there’s no evidence of what happened to them, it can be really challenging for families. Just having some definitive information of where Sandy might’ve ended up is certainly helpful, and it’s also a big clue for the climbing community as to what happened.”
Just days before the discovery of the boot, the team had come across an oxygen cylinder from a 1933 Everest expedition, which had also attempted to reach the summit but had failed. During that attempt, climbers found an ice ax on the mountain’s northeast ridge that belonged to Irvine, leading Chin’s team to believe they might be close to finding his body. With this theory in mind, the team searched the glacier for several days before climber and filmmaker Erich Roepke spotted the boot.
“I think it literally melted out a week before we found it,” said Chin.
To prevent birds from disturbing the find, the team carefully removed the boot and foot from the mountain and placed it in a cooler before handing it over to the China-Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA).
After the discovery, the team informed Irvine’s family, including his great-niece Julie Summers, who has authored a book about the climber. According to PA Media, Summers described her reaction as an “extraordinary and poignant moment” that moved her to tears. She added, “I have lived with this story since I was seven years old, when my father told us about the mystery of Uncle Sandy on Everest.”
Summers reflected on how the story became more tangible after George Mallory’s body was found in 1999, and she had wondered if Irvine’s body would ever be discovered. “A quarter-of-a-century after that discovery, it seemed extremely unlikely that anything new would be found,” she said.
