MT. EVEREST'S MYSTERIES

May 5, 1999
		David Breashears, who created the film, "Everest: The Mystery of Mallory and Irvine," discusses the body found on Mt. Everest's summit and the mystery that surrounds it. For more information on the Everest discoveries, visit NOVA Online.

June 4, 1998: Finding the U.S.S. Yorktown Aug. 14, 1997: Exploring the preserved steps of ancient man July 31, 1997: Archaeologists locate the largest concentration of ancient shipwrecks ever found May 13, 1997: The dangers of climbing Everest. NewsHour coverage of science issues   NOVA Online's Everest page Mount Everest Net Mountainzone.com The latest news from the Mountain A complete list of Everest links	TERENCE SMITH: It was June 1924. George Mallory and his team set out to be the first to conquer Mount Everest, but they vanished near the summit. Whether the Englishman made it to the top or not remains one of the great mysteries of the mountain. Now, 75 years later, an expedition has discovered Mallory's body on a rock ledge some 2,000 feet below the summit. ERIC SIMONSON, speaking from Mount Everest: The remains were conclusively identified, and the surrounding area was investigated by our team.
	A Mountain's Secret.
	TERENCE SMITH: The team still hopes to answer Mount Everest's and mountaineering's most famous riddle: Whether or not Mallory reached the summit. The key to the mystery may be found in a primitive Kodak camera carried by Mallory's companion, Andrew Sandy Irvine. The expedition is still searching for Irvine's body. Kodak says the cold may have preserved the film. If Mallory is found to have reached the 29,000-foot summit, Sir Edmund Hillary, honored along with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in may 1953, as the first men to scale the world's highest peak, would lose the claim. SIR EDMUND HILLARY, Mountaineer: For 45 years, people have regarded me as the great hero of Everest, so I've done pretty well anyway. So I couldn't complain too much if Mallory had proved to actually have reached the summit. TERENCE SMITH: After resting for a week or so at base camp at 17,000 feet, the search team intends to climb Everest again in what they hope will be a final effort to unravel its mystery. TERENCE SMITH: Joining me is mountaineer and filmmaker David Breashears, who has climbed to the top of Mount Everest four times. He, too, has searched for the remains of Mallory and Irvine and made it a film about it entitled "Everest: The Mystery of Mallory and Irvine." Breashears' new memoir about mountain-climbing and filmmaking, just out this week, is entitled High Exposure. David Breashears, welcome. As someone who has searched himself for Mallory, do you find this evidence conclusive? DAVID BREASHEARS, Mountaineer/Filmmaker: Well, it's conclusive evidence that they found Mallory, and it confirms what we've known all along, that Mallory's body did come to rest somewhere high on the slopes of Everest 75 years ago. And it's also a -- this discovery is a tremendous tribute to the research team that's been up there working so hard and has been partially funded by the Nova science series and the BBC. It's just -- It's really exciting. I didn't expect to find myself quite so excited about the discovery of George Mallory.
	Clues Left Behind.
	TERENCE SMITH: It's quite extraordinary, isn't it, that they found a body in the vastness of Everest? DAVID BREASHEARS: Well, there have been some very important clues over the year. This isn't a needle in a haystack. They're not searching all sides of Mount Everest. In 1933, a team of British climbers following in the footsteps of Mallory and Irvine discovered Irvine's ice axe lying on a slab on the route, on a traversing section of the route, much like a low-angled slate roof. No climber would leave his ice axe behind. So the ice axe could only be the site of an accident. You don't just put it down and leave it. You don't leave your boots behind. So it was matter of following the fall line down this short cliff, this 300 or 400-foot cliff to a terrace, a low-angle snow terrace about the size of a football field and looking there where we assumed the body would have stopped. Another clue came out in 1975, when a Chinese climber trying to climb the north ridge wandered out onto that terrace, not really looking for anything and came back and commented to his companion that he had found English dead. Unfortunately, four years later, when he reported that information to anyone who could really take notice of it, a Japanese climber before he could fully explain it, he was killed in, in the next day in an avalanche. So those were two clues which led the team to be able to search not the entire mountain for Mallory and Irvine, but really a fairly described area. TERENCE SMITH: Well, this body was found some 2,000 feet down from the summit. So here's the $64,000 question. Was he on his way up or his way down? DAVID BREASHEARS: And that is the question we still cannot answer. We have found a body. By looking at a body, what can we learn? Well, we've learned from what I've heard from reading the NOVA Web site and from listening to reporters who have called me and been speaking to climbers, the climbers at base camp, we've learned that Mallory had a broken leg and other injuries -- so that he fell. It was an accident approximately where we thought there was an accident. Whether he was going up or down, there is no evidence on his body to let us know that. When you die in an accident like that, you can't be a Captain Scott in your tent in the Antarctic writing a note to your wife about your imminent death -- maybe before -- after you've already reached the summit. The real clue, and what they are really looking for, more than a body, is the camera, the Kodak vest pocket camera that Mallory or Irvine was carrying. TERENCE SMITH: And if they find that camera, because of course the team is going to go back up to that area and search for Irvine and search for the camera, what - is it possible that that film could be still good? DAVID BREASHEARS: Well, what we found out when we were going to Mount Everest in 1986, I was going there with a friend who had researched this quite extensively - Tom Hodell -- he contacted the Kodak Corporation, and they said, "This is an ideal environment to preserve film." If that small camera -- and it was small -- it fits into a man's vest pocket -- if it's undamaged, meaning no light has fallen onto that exposed film in that thin, dry, cold air, the image, the unexposed image should be preserved. And they gave us careful instructions to wrap it in special foil, seal it in a plastic bag, keep it cool, and return it to their laboratories for processing. So if on this next time up, and this is going to be very exciting over the next week, if they find the camera, and there is an image on it from the summit, and I think that's maybe not too likely, but if there is, they should be able to print it. TERENCE SMITH: There was one other clue, as I also read the Web site and the accounts of the searchers. They found Mallory's snow goggles tucked in his pocket. What does that tell you? DAVID BREASHEARS: Well, it could mean a couple of things. To me, the mountaineer, it means a man descending maybe in near darkness or in heavy cloud, and we do know that they were last seen halfway to the summit before heavy mist and a snow squall came in. Generally, though, I would wear my goggles in a snow squall to keep the snow out of my eyes. So if they were coming down in the evening on this low angle but treacherous terrain, once again, like a slate roof, easy to slip on and start tumbling in a fall you can't stop, then say half an inch or inch of snow had fallen, they're exhausted, sleep deprived, dehydrated, hypoxic, one of them slips on this slick surface in the dark and pulls the other off. People often have accidents, tired, and less focused on the descent. Now, could he have had a pair of goggles on that fell off when he fell and have been carrying a spare pair in his pocket, I think that's not where you carry your spare goggles. And I think he only had one pair. And the fact they're in his pocket means it was probably late in the day.
	Another Age of Exploration.
	TERENCE SMITH: In just a few seconds that we have left, does this make you look at either Everest or Mallory differently? DAVID BREASHEARS: You know, the amount of respect I hold for those early mountaineers hasn't changed at all. It will change if there is a picture of Mallory or Irvine on the top. I just -- all I can say is, for this next week, I am going to be tuned in or glued to my computer and the NOVA Web site and see what they find next. TERENCE SMITH: David Breashears, thank you very much. DAVID BREASHEARS: Well, thank you.