Page 30 - 2001 AMA Summer

Everest Massif from high in the Kumbu valley.
THEWILDESTDREAM
By Tim King
enced and respected Everest researchers on the planet, has taken this line. It seems to fly in the face of so much that has been learned recently.
about rates of oxygen use, height gained, etc.
Tom Holzel’s argument hinges first on the watch found in Mallory’s pocket, which is supposed to have stopped at the time of his fall and not just run down. The hands and the crystal (the glass protecting the watch face) are missing but rust marks on the face, caused by the hands, indicate a time between 1.25 and 1.55. Holzel assumes that this time is pm and not am and so puts 1,55pm as the time of the accident, ie just an hour after Odell saw them well above the accident site and going strongly upwards.
This is the title of a biography What is it about this M & I mystery of George Leigh Mallory by that is so fascinating? I must Peter and Leni Gillman. I admit to being completely meant to review it last year (and hI ooked on it - even more so than will get round to it!) but felt that I
In a nutshell, Holzel argues that,
when they had to change
oxygen bottles 200 feet short of
the First Step, M & I realized that
they were not going to make it
because the oxygen would not
last. However, they continued
upwards and climbed the First
Step (just for the hell of it, you
understand) so that they could
be seen climbing it by Odell at
12.50pm. Just after they had
climbed the First Step they went
into a cloud. This conveniently
prevented Odell from seeing
them almost immediately
reversing the ascent, to arrive
back at the point where Irvine's
axe was found just in time to
have the accident at between
1.25 and 1.55pm. In the article the final snow pyramid’ (ie the there are lots of calculations Third Step or more probably the
was getting Mallory and Irvine
Overload and ducked this and
the Irvine biography until the fuss
died down. I now wonder if the
fuss will ever die down until con­
clusive proof is found of what
really happened on 8 June 1924 Holzel the American Everest Mallory and Irvine Fever has
broken out again this year. June seems to be the month of maximum susceptibility. Now we have news that there may be another search for Irvine’s body and I have just read an article entitled The Final Proof?’ in this month's edition of High magazine. As it happens I am also writing this on the 77th anniversary of that fateful day.
a ARMY MOUWTAIHfEH )
on the question of whether Peary in 1909, or an Englishman by the name of Wally Herbert 60 years later, discovered the North Pole.
This latest article on what really happenedtoM&IisbyTom
researcher but as with so much that has been written recently it is very speculative. Holzel’s article is fascinating but frankly I do not buy it. In fact the ‘evidence’ on which it is predicated is even more flaky than that supporting the ‘third oxygen bottle’ theory that puts M & I comfortably on top at about 3pm with oxygen to spare. I cannot understand why Holzel, one of the most experi­
Holzel discounts Odell’s initial description of his sighting of M & I from Camp 6. In it Odell describes two figures climbing with alacrity up the ‘step before