(TibetanReview.net, Jun03’24) — The body of British explorer George Mallory discovered in 1999 after he vanished during his Mt Everest expedition in 1924 may have been secretly removed by China sometime after 2001 to serve its propaganda interests, reported gbnews.com Jun 2, citing people involved in the campaign to recover his body and others.
The speculation is rooted in China’s historic claim that its climbers were the first to summit Mt Everest from the north in 1960, reported the Daily Express (express.co.uk) Jun 23.
This assertion served as a significant propaganda victory for Mao Zedong, who had a vested interest in the mountain’s symbolic value, the report said.
George Mallory, 37, and his climbing partner Andrew “Sandy” Irvine, 22, disappeared while attempting to reach the summit of the world’s tallest mountain.
For over 80 years, the whereabouts of their remains remained a mystery, with their last known sighting just 800 feet from the top during their ascent from the Tibetan side.
Any proof that the duo had reached the summit before they disappeared would negate China’s propaganda and Mao’s pride. It will also hit Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary’s record as the first team ever to conquer Mt Everest, which it did in 1953.
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Mallory’s body was discovered in 1999 by American climber Conrad Anker, lying 2,000 feet below the summit.
However, despite GPS-marking the location, subsequent attempts to locate Irvine’s body have been unsuccessful, and Mallory’s remains have since vanished, fuelling speculation about China’s involvement.
As the 100th anniversary of Mallory and Irvine’s climb approaches, new theories have emerged that Chinese authorities might have moved their bodies, the report said.
Mark Synnott, who participated in a recent expedition searching for Irvine, has expressed his disbelief to The Observer: “We had GPS coordinates for where the body was. We flew the drone to that spot.
“We took photos. I feel if Mallory’s body was still there, we would have seen it. It doesn’t make any sense. Why remove the body?”
Jake Norton, part of the team that discovered Mallory in 1999, is said to believe Irvine’s body was still on Everest in 2001. He was separately part of a 2001 mission to locate Irvine and has argued the Chinese were “worried enough to do anything about it in the early 2000s”.
Norton suspects that it was removed by Chinese authorities around 2008 when Chinese climbers carried the Olympic torch to the summit before the Beijing games.
The report said this theory is further supported by a comment from an official at the China Tibet Mountaineering Association (CTMA) suggesting that Irvine’s body was removed long before the 2008 event.
“It was thrown off the mountain a lot earlier than that,” the gbnews.com report quoted CTMA as having told Jamie McGuinness, another Everest veteran.
Synnott’s 2021 book, The Third Pole: Mystery, Obsession, and Death on Mount Everest, has revealed claims from multiple sources indicating that the Chinese found and removed Irvine’s body to safeguard their claim to the first ascent from the north.
A former US intelligence officer and a British diplomat have corroborated these accounts, suggesting that Irvine’s body and his camera were discovered and possibly relocated to Lhasa, Tibet.
The Daily Express report said that if Irvine’s camera contained photos proving that Mallory and Irvine reached the summit, it would challenge the narrative that the Chinese team was the first to summit from the north.
The possibility of such evidence has long intrigued mountaineering historians and enthusiasts, the report noted.