Where is Andrew Irvine?
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At present (2018), there were three presumed sightings of Andrew Irvine’s body, two of them by eyewitnesses and one by airphoto analysis. However, the locations of these sightings are different and therefore mutually exclusive.
Xu Jing (1960)
Chinese veteran climber Xu Jing (1927-2011) claimed to have found an old body high on Everest’s Northeast Ridge during the final stage of the 1960 Chinese expedition. He made the discovery while he was descending from the expedition’s final camp at 8510 m/27.920 ft. (base of First Step), having turned back from the summit attempt due to exhaustion.
Xu first revealed his discovery 41 years later, in August 2001, during an interview with Eric Simonson and me in Beijing. There is, however, evidence that at least one of Xu’s expedition colleagues, Wang Fuzhou, was aware of the discovery and reported this during a lecture in Leningrad in 1965.
During our 2001 interview he described the location as “along the ridge … in a slight ditch on the ridge”; the altitude he initially gave as “8200-8300 m” (26.900-27.230 ft.), but later corrected this to “8300-8400 m” (27.230-27.560 m). About the position and condition of the body, Xu stated that it was “lying straight, on a sleeping bag which was all rotten”. He also described the body as “all black”, suggesting frozen skin.
In the light of subsequent interviews it is important to note that Xu, when asked to pinpoint the location on a picture of the upper Northeast Ridge, placed the final camp between the First and Second Steps, and the body somewhat below the camp. From the historical record, confirmed by Jake Norton’s discoveries in 2001 and 2004, it is clear that Xu was wrong about the location of the 1960 high camp – as stated early, this was at the base of the First Step, and it could therefore be inferred that the body was on the ridge below the First Step.
When I interviewed Xu Jing again in 2008, he essentially repeated the information he had given seven years earlier – including the mistake with regard to the location of the 1960 high camp (!). He described the location of the body as cave or shelter along the ridge, somewhat to the left and above the route of ascent, which would place it at an altitude in the 8400-8440 m region (27.560-27.690 ft.). The body was in a sleeping bag, with only the head showing. The skin on the skull was black and “thin”, i.e. dessicated. Xu Jing was also interviewed by Noah Smith of The Sunday Times in 2003 and by the website EverestNews in 2005. In the Sunday Times interview, Xu gave the altitude of his find as “between 8200-8300 m” (26.900-27.230 ft.) and described the location as “a crack, 1 m wide, on both sides steep cliff”. “Body was in a sleeping bag, sleeping bag was decayed … For sure in a sleeping bag, feathers around it, down. Body was intact but with blackened skin.”
However, in marked contrast, the reporter for EverestNews stated that Xu Jing had been “definite on seeing the body and that it was between the First and Second Step” (which would have placed it at c. 8570 m/28.120 ft.), and quoted Xu as saying, “I saw the body on the side (sic); it was a good bit along from the First Step, on the ridge.” The reporter also stated that Xu denied seeing a sleeping bag with the body.
Given that Xu made his mistake about the location of the 1960 high camp (and the resulting location of the body) in both 2001 and 2008, I highly suspect that he did the same in the interview with EverestNews in 2005, and that their reporter simply took this statement at face value. From the known location of the 1960 high camp and other facts (i.e. that Xu Jing never climbed higher than the First Step), the conclusion can be drawn that the body Xu Jing found in 1960 was at or near the crest of the Northeast Ridge, below the First Step.
In 2004, Jake Norton climbed the standard route from Camp VI to the crest of the Northeast Ridge at c. 8440 m (27.690 ft), where he had previously found an old woollen mitten of unknown provenance. From this spot, Norton followed the ridge left for c. 100 m horizontal distance but didn’t discover anything. This area was again covered by my 2010 search team and extended in 2011 for another 150m towards the Northeast Shoulder, again without results. Search conditions in 2010/2011 were difficult due to a significant snow cover on the ridge.
Chhiring Dorje (1995)
EverestNews also reported that another climber, meanwhile identified as Chhiring Dorje, had come across a “very old body” in “army-coloured clothing” on a snowfield high on Everest in 1995. The body was resting on its side with knees drawn up, as if sleeping. It was on “a lot of snow”, in a very exposed area “unsafe to go further this way”. EverestNews quotes Chhiring as saying that “if something fell from that area there is nothing to stop its fall. Whatever fell would wind up at 6000 meters or below … The fall line is uninterrupted, no obstructions at all.” The location had been “above 8400 meters” (27.560 ft).
It is known that during the 1995 expedition Chhiring Dorje never went higher than 8500 m/27.890 ft., a Camp VII at the foot of the First Step. When the EverestNews search team went to the place where Chhiring had found the body, they did not find the body again, but “an old oxygen bottle from the 20s or 30s”. The bottle was later identified as being from the 1938 British expedition. Yet the high point of the 1938 expedition was just above and slightly to the right of the top of the North Ridge, at c. 8320 m/27.300 ft. – clearly at odds with “above 8400 meters”, which would have been along the crest of the Northeast Ridge.
As the oxygen bottle was clearly unrelated to the body, presumed to have been Irvine’s, I assumed in my book Tatort Mount Everest (p. 230f.) that Chhiring had indeed found the body at the higher location, thus matching Xu Jing’s discovery from 35 years earlier. By contrast, EverestNews still concluded that the body was found at the lower location, and that Irvine’s body fell to the East Rongbuk Glacier sometime after 1995, thus explaining its absence inIn addition, the leader of Chhiring Dorje’s 1995 expedition, Kiyoshi Furuno, doesn’t believe that he could have found the body somewhere along the Northeast Ridge, as other members would have seen it as well. In Furuno’s mind, the only way (and place) Chhiring could have made his discovery was during a descent by the North Ridge to the North Col
Tom Holzel airphoto analysis (2010)
In January 2010 pioneering Mallory researcher Tom Holzel added a third potential location for Andrew Irvine’s body to the record. Holzel had acquired large-format diapositives from the 1984 aerial mapping of Everest and done a high-resolution scan of the Yellow Band area between 8300 m/27.230 ft and the First Step. A comparison between a large-scale print-out (scale 1:270) and an image from the 1933 expedition led him to the assumption that the location of Irvine’s ice-axe had, in fact, been 40 metres farther to the northeast (i.e. horizontally down the ridge) than previously recorded. As Xu Jing had stated in the 2003 Sunday Times interview that “on the way down I took a more direct route”, Holzel focussed in his search on a shorter descent route from the First Step.
Below the new ice-axe site he discovered an unusual object the shape of a body within a sleeping bag. It was located next to a gully leading down through the Yellow Band. Further investigation of the image revealed a crevice-like feature farther down the same gully that had a six-feet oblong object at its upper end (bearing in mind Xu Jing’s statement that he found the body in “a crack, 1 m wide, on both sides steep cliff”).
However, a location in the Yellow Band between c. 8410-8430 m (27.590-27.660 ft.), while on a potential line of descent from the First Step, is at odds with Xu Jing’s repeated statement that the body had been at or near the crest of the Northeast Ridge. Also, the two objects discovered by Holzel were in the immediate vicinity of the gully ascended by Eric Shipton and Frank Smythe in 1933, who didn’t report seeing anything. Jake Norton had reached the location of the lower object in 2004, also without result.