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Lost on Everest (2020) is a fascinating and visually striking documentary that explores one of the most enduring mysteries connected to the world’s highest peak. Featuring breathtaking scenery, thoughtful interviews, and careful exploration, the film highlights curiosity, teamwork, and the spirit of discovery as experts work together to uncover new insights. With its inspiring sense of adventure, engaging storytelling, and stunning natural landscapes, the documentary offers an informative and captivating experience for audiences who enjoy real-life explorations and stories of human determination.
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Lost on Everest, Lost on Everest 2020, Everest documentary, mountain exploration film, adventure documentary, real life exploration, inspiring documentary, teamwork story, natural landscape film, breathtaking scenery, thoughtful documentary, engaging storytelling, exploration journey, informative film, high altitude adventure, captivating documentary, mystery exploration film, discovery themed documentary, outdoor adventure movie, real life adventure story, visually stunning documentary, nature themed film, inspiring journey, character focused documentary, exploration team film, mountain adventure movie, educational documentary, fascinating real life story, scenic documentary
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00:00:00it's the traffic jam atop the world droves of climbers waiting for their
00:00:20chance to summit Mount Everest with a large number of people the longer wait
00:00:27means climbers are spending more time in what's called the death zone the second
00:00:33American dying in just days bringing the total to 11 deaths already this season
00:00:41locals view Everest essentially as a god and by climbing the mountain you're
00:00:48stepping on the heads of their gods I've never been an Everest person the
00:00:56definition of adventure for me is an endeavor where the outcome is totally unknown
00:01:09the Mallory and Irvin mystery is one of those stories like you can't imagine an
00:01:14endeavor with more unknowns than what they were facing in the 1920s climbing to the
00:01:21highest point on earth I think in those days wasn't too much different from the
00:01:27idea of going to the moon George Mallory pioneered the first expeditions to
00:01:33Everest the world was shocked when he and his climbing partner Sandy Irvin
00:01:37disappeared they were spotted just 800 vertical feet from the summit and were
00:01:45never seen again the essence of the Mallory and Irvin story for me is the spirit of the climbers
00:01:55themselves what was driving them what happened to those guys it's not just solving the mystery of two
00:02:06guys who disappeared it's solving the mystery to try to figure out if they might have been the first
00:02:14first to summit the greatest mountain in the world
00:02:29back in 1999 I had the opportunity to go look for the bodies of George Mallory and Sandy Irvin
00:02:41our goal was finding the Kodak VPK or vest pocket camera they're believed to have carried with
00:02:49them on that final day the hope is that the film inside it will prove if they actually made it to the
00:02:57summit on the very first day of searching we found a body
00:03:05his body appears to be mummified
00:03:12there's rope around his waist
00:03:17you can see a bird
00:03:19you're great this is George Mallory
00:03:24really oh my god oh my god
00:03:29he was face down in the surface his face was completely in and his hands were like this
00:03:40around especially around the left part of his waist it looked like the rope really pulled tightly like you could actually see the rope kind of imprinted into the side of his waist below his right knee his leg was broken completely in half
00:03:56and it was an open wound fracture and up there an injury like that is there's no way you're getting out of it and I can remember how overwhelming it was to be in the presence of this guy this man this icon of exploration but we had a job to do we wanted to try and tell his story
00:04:24so we searched the body as carefully as we could we found some personal effects but the most important thing that was not with Mallory was of course the camera
00:04:31burying George Mallory
00:04:35we didn't find the camera
00:04:46since then people have speculated I think
00:04:50have speculated and I think this is logical that Irvin had the camera Mallory was the leader so it
00:04:59would have made sense for Irvin you know as his almost like assistant to be the one taking pictures
00:05:08of the you know the boss can you imagine that camera it's the pot of gold at the end of the
00:05:15rainbow if we find that camera let me tell you something it's gonna just change things it's
00:05:22gonna be the greatest event in the history of Mount Earring history books say the first climbers to
00:05:28summit Mount Everest were Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953 if Irvin took a photo on
00:05:36the summit in 1924 it would rewrite history he's out there somewhere the camera exists it's it's
00:05:44there it just has to be found we're on our way to go see Tom Holzel who is an Everest historian he has
00:06:00more knowledge about this than anyone alive and he just contacted Tom the other day and said that he
00:06:09had GPS coordinates for the location of Irvine he did the first expedition to try to find these guys
00:06:17in 1986 but there was too much snow on the mountain so they got shut down and when they eventually found
00:06:25Mallory in 99 he was very close to where Ozell had thought that he would be it's interesting to see
00:06:37when you have an assembly of facts can you figure out what happened can you get to the conclusion I
00:06:42think you can that's what is so interesting about history Mallory and Irvin went missing on June 8th 1924
00:06:51in 1960 the Chinese made their first attempt from the north side and one of the climbers climbed down a more
00:07:01direct route and he said he saw a dead British climber a British how do you know that he was
00:07:07wearing braces braces are suspenders all the English wore braces so that was a fantastic clue and then in
00:07:161995 a Sherpa named cheering Dorje also took a more direct route and also saw a body so we have now two
00:07:23eyewitness accounts that means there is a body there so that's when I went to Brad Washburn at the Museum of
00:07:29Science and said Brad do we have any good aerial photographs and he says Tom you've come to the
00:07:33right place they flew over Everest in a Learjet at 40,000 feet and did extensive mapping photographs
00:07:45and they seamed them together and I made this eight-foot picture you can see the two trails where
00:07:53they diverge and there's only a very short area where the more direct route the lower route passes
00:07:59by these slots so if he's in a slot and we know he is because two people say he is there's only one
00:08:07place where Irvin can be this is what you've come up with yep Tom and I are proposing to be your boots
00:08:15on the ground yep what are you given the odds that he's actually there he can't not be there you're
00:08:21he has worked for years on identifying the exact location of that spot and he swears if we go there we
00:08:37will find Sandy Irvin climbing an adventure and exploration for me is kind of like a compulsion I've
00:08:50been on a lot of expeditions in my life and it's just something that you that you feel where it feels
00:08:57right Tom Pollard is an old friend of mine and I said to Tom this is a story that needs to be told this
00:09:08is the trip that you and I were always meant to take together ever since that day in May of 1999
00:09:17this thing has just become part of the fabric of who I am here we are 20 years later I'm finally
00:09:24getting back to have another look around to try to wrap things up I shared the idea for this
00:09:35expedition with Renan Osterk Renan is a filmmaker we've done a lot of adventures together in the past
00:09:43and he's one of the very best climbers in the world
00:09:48mark has specifically avoided Everest in his career because Everest isn't true exploration and I think
00:09:59this mystery is his way of connecting with Everest he's the chief detective I have no idea what it will
00:10:09be like up there I've never done anything like this but I know what it will be like for me will be
00:10:16similar to what it was like for them a hundred years ago we can actually see what that expedition was
00:10:30like for them back in 1924 team member John Newell brought a film camera all the way to Everest and
00:10:38be captured incredible footage of the entire expedition
00:10:45we're gonna go just like they did through the mountains on the south side of the Himalaya
00:11:10across the border onto the north side of China
00:11:14up into the Tibetan plateau
00:11:22the focus is on the urban location and finding the body but it's the whole journey to get there
00:11:34and seeing the places that they were and putting myself into some of the exact positions that they
00:11:44were in makes this so compelling for me I've pictured finding Sandy Irvin many many times his mom and dad
00:11:55left their back door open and unlocked for three years just in case he came home and I feel like if I could
00:12:03go and find Sandy Irvin they could lock their door
00:12:18we're getting our first proper view of Mount Everest and it is absolutely off the hook spectacular awe-inspiring
00:12:30more than a little intimidating
00:12:33Mallory wrote in his journal
00:12:39it is like the wildest creation of a dream
00:12:43Everest a rugged giant
00:12:46a prodigious white fang
00:12:48a colossal rock plastered with snow
00:12:52from a mountaineer's point of view
00:12:54no more appalling sight can be imagined
00:12:57Mallory and Irvin were really special
00:13:03Mallory was this guy who just couldn't get it out of himself that he had to go to every length to try to be the first person to stand on the summit
00:13:13and now here comes this young kid 22 years old Sandy Irvin who's really strong great athlete knew how to fidget with the oxygen apparatus
00:13:23and there they are just sealed together in history for eternity as the symbol of going after things that everybody thinks is impossible
00:13:33it's a hundred years later and I'm very unsure about whether I could do any of this stuff using oxygen with fixed ropes the whole way and a guide and these guys were doing it back when doctors were telling them that if you slept at 23,000 feet that you would die
00:13:42so the daring the boldness and their role as explorers in history is unparalleled
00:13:48let's take all the gear out of the vehicle we can drop it in the dining tent
00:13:54Jamie is the guide
00:14:11Jamie is the guide
00:14:13he's summited Mount Everest five times
00:14:17his primary job apart from logistics and getting us from point A to point B is to make sure that we come home from this expedition
00:14:30when we're on Everest life is simple
00:14:32it's much more about life or death black or white yeah it's not about a color world up there at all
00:14:39and the basics of it is Everest is so tall that it sticks up in the jet stream
00:14:45when the jet streams on top of Everest there can be raging winds
00:14:49there might only be one or two or three days suitable to climb Everest for the whole year
00:14:57in terms of what it's like to search high on Mount Everest for a body I have no idea
00:15:03that's one of the reasons why I'm so enthralled with this expedition
00:15:09because I just have this singular focus
00:15:12which is
00:15:14Mallory and Irvin
00:15:16Mount Everest and following in their footsteps
00:15:18and there's kind of nothing else
00:15:20Mallory and Irvin were last seen climbing a rock face just below the summit
00:15:26climbing that high has to be done in stages
00:15:30by hiking along a glacier from base camp to advanced base camp
00:15:36then climbing to the top of a ridge called the North Coal
00:15:41from there it's a final two day push up the ridge
00:15:45all the way to the summit
00:15:47today's a big day we're doing our puja which is a ceremony that the Sherpas do to ask for permission and good luck to climb the mountain
00:16:06we just crested 18,000 feet so we've gained about a thousand feet from base camp this is another milestone in the journey in that we just turned off the main wrong book cross
00:16:20glacier which is the route that we're going to follow up to the North Coal
00:16:30I'm really psyched I'm excited and I'm looking up at this mountain and the thing is calling to me I want to get up there
00:16:47final push
00:17:02ah
00:17:04wow
00:17:06it's been a great day
00:17:07it's been a great day
00:17:08but I think everyone's hurting a little
00:17:10the last push is uh
00:17:12is hard
00:17:20Climbing Mount Everest has to do with cardiovascular fitness
00:17:24how your physiology of your body actually handles the altitude
00:17:29you can be one of the strongest climbers in the world but your physiology just doesn't work for Mount Everest
00:17:37it's a slow cold agonizing process
00:17:42it slams you
00:17:47what I want to do right now is I want to chart out where we're going to go and then the point at which we're going to fix our rope and rappel down to Hozel's spot
00:17:57okay
00:17:58here's the second step
00:18:00and then this is the Hozel Shuzhing area
00:18:04so we have to go to this spot
00:18:08our search zone is high on the mountain in an area known as the death zone
00:18:14our time at that altitude will be extremely limited
00:18:19the plan is to follow Mallory and Irvin's route to the summit
00:18:24then traverse back across the ridge to find Tom Hozel's spot
00:18:31and go off rope searching
00:18:34across a steep slope of loose rock
00:18:37with a 7,000 foot drop below
00:18:41the sun's just hit we're moving out of ABC to the north coal
00:18:51I know I'm not dying because I desire coffee so badly
00:18:56it's pretty important to note that Everest doesn't get climbed alone
00:19:01we've got all of our Sherpas taking all of our advanced camera loads
00:19:07and all of the little things we need to survive the north coal
00:19:10off we go
00:19:12not sure how it's going to go but a lot of vert to climb 2,000 feet
00:19:23we just started up the technical part to the north coal
00:19:36I can't believe the Congo line
00:19:42there must be 200 people up there
00:19:47it's a little scary
00:19:52if you look above us there's a giant Serac just waiting to cut loose in the hot sun
00:19:57like textbook you don't want to be under
00:20:02let's move
00:20:17that was burly
00:20:20my lungs are not feeling great
00:20:27we're all just hurting just trying to acclimatize
00:20:30it's just a lot
00:20:32I was feeling decent
00:20:35and then
00:20:36hit a pretty big wall
00:20:38but
00:20:40at least we all made it
00:20:42yeah
00:20:43you literally were only like 20 minutes behind
00:20:45like nobody was here so long
00:20:47yeah yeah
00:20:48don't worry about it
00:20:49you're looking really good Matt
00:20:50I gotta say
00:20:52ah
00:20:53yeah
00:20:54yeah
00:20:55it was a sufferfest
00:20:57we were all suffering
00:20:59and the 100 mile an hour death winds were coming
00:21:04charts of the jet stream passing right through the summit
00:21:10that does not look good
00:21:15yeah
00:21:16yeah
00:21:17when we woke up in the morning poked my head out the door of the tent looked up at the north face which had been beautiful that was now replaced with this
00:21:22nasty swirling cloud
00:21:47holy crap
00:21:50holy crap
00:21:52holy crap
00:22:02hold on
00:22:06do you want to come in here
00:22:07want to come in here
00:22:08come in here
00:22:12It threw a tank to the air and nearly killed a few people.
00:22:27I'm glad they were clipped into the fixed lines because it threw them off the ridge
00:22:31and they were just hanging limp halfway down the face.
00:22:42It's pretty windy now, but not nearly as bad, so I'm going next door.
00:23:02Lunan's going to launch the drone and see what happens.
00:23:12We can search a thousand times more just through this technological advancement
00:23:19of what the drones are capable of.
00:23:25It was kind of our vision to do all these drone flights and to photograph the terrain
00:23:31rather than having to put boots all over the mountain, which is incredibly dangerous.
00:23:38This is good. We're cranking.
00:23:42It's unbelievable what you're doing, Lunan.
00:23:55Take a photo here.
00:23:56Yeah.
00:23:59And then try going a little tighter.
00:24:02If you can.
00:24:03He's going to get right in there this time.
00:24:05He's going to really push it.
00:24:07Oh, my God, dude.
00:24:08You're freaking right there.
00:24:12You're so there.
00:24:14Yep, get that ledge and up in here.
00:24:21Got my thumb workout.
00:24:22Oh, Zell would be losing his mind if he could see this right now.
00:24:30Are you fired?
00:24:30I'm going to come home?
00:24:31Bring her home.
00:24:35Oh, he just flew a drone to 28,300 feet on Mount Everest.
00:24:41No one's ever done that before.
00:24:44You're in uncharted territory.
00:24:46Yeah.
00:24:46Okay.
00:25:02First-hand view.
00:25:04Drone POV.
00:25:05Yeah.
00:25:05Just a little.
00:25:06Oh, man.
00:25:07I haven't seen this yet.
00:25:09Holy, dude.
00:25:10So we have two eyewitness accounts, Sharon Dorje and Xu Jing.
00:25:15But Xu Jing said that Irvin was in a slot.
00:25:18I see a slot there.
00:25:19But it's shadowy.
00:25:21Wow.
00:25:22I think this matches up really closely with Ozell's theory.
00:25:29Ozell's theory goes like this.
00:25:32Mallory and Irvin are returning together down the North Ridge.
00:25:35We don't know if they made it to the summit, but we know they're on the way back down.
00:25:41And they're in a hurry.
00:25:42It's a snowstorm.
00:25:44Mallory falls.
00:25:46The rope catches him.
00:25:47But Irvin can't pull him up.
00:25:49So he cuts Mallory loose.
00:25:53Mallory continues on.
00:25:54But he falls again.
00:25:56And dies from his injuries.
00:25:59Irvin is still working his way down, following the line of least resistance.
00:26:03He's exhausted.
00:26:05He's cold.
00:26:06He's run out of oxygen.
00:26:08He crawls behind a rock to take shelter from the weather.
00:26:11And he freezes to death.
00:26:14This zone right in here.
00:26:16This is where I want to go on foot.
00:26:18Okay.
00:26:19Let's talk a little strategy quickly.
00:26:21In terms of what we should do for the next few days.
00:26:25With our weather forecasts, we go to ABC.
00:26:28It's hard work going down, but we recover so well.
00:26:32With Everest, with Chomalongma, it's not a question of when we're ready.
00:26:37It's a question of when she's ready for us.
00:26:40The equivalent of going for a three-mile run is the energy it takes to put on your boots.
00:26:51All right, dude.
00:26:57I'll follow you down.
00:26:58It's a little bit demoralizing to lose all this ground that we've gained, but that's what we have to do.
00:27:08Got to go down, recover as best we can, then come back up.
00:27:13Honestly, it feels like a low point in the expedition.
00:27:28We're all just really tired, and a lot of us are getting sick.
00:27:33But the main mission was to fly the drones really close to the search area, and I think we really accomplished that.
00:27:41We got to pull them up on the laptop, take a closer look.
00:27:44There's all these little crevices where we think the body might be.
00:27:48This photo right here, it's absolutely incredible.
00:27:53And, um, I think I'm looking at the whole Zal spot right here.
00:28:05What's that?
00:28:11Whoa.
00:28:12Yeah, there's something.
00:28:15That's a dead body.
00:28:17Oh, holy s***.
00:28:19Not an old dead body.
00:28:22Is that black?
00:28:23That's his leg?
00:28:25Yeah, feet in red jacket.
00:28:28This is probably a Japanese guy that during the night somebody said, did you see him in trouble?
00:28:34And we said no, but he was only 10 meters away from the trail.
00:28:40There's over 100 bodies on Everest frozen in the place where they died.
00:28:46It's crazy, but there's just no good way to get them down.
00:28:50Imagine dragging a 200-pound, frozen, stiff body down the mountain.
00:28:56It's nearly impossible.
00:28:58And the fact is, is that no matter how many bodies are on it, it is the highest point in the world.
00:29:05There's nothing that's going to stop people from wanting to touch it.
00:29:08Oh, wow.
00:29:14The conga line at the top.
00:29:18Holy s***.
00:29:20There's only a few days a year suitable for a summit climb.
00:29:24And there was an early weather window.
00:29:27And there was, I don't know, something like two, three hundred people trying to climb Mount Everest from the north.
00:29:32Every single one of them went for the first weather window.
00:29:38Wow.
00:29:38That's really inspiring to see that.
00:29:43That's incredible.
00:29:45Do you wish you were there with them?
00:29:46Yes.
00:29:48Let's be real.
00:29:49I do.
00:29:49I mean, I'm not going to lie.
00:29:53It feels weird to be sitting here while all the action is going on up high.
00:29:58There are queues of people, lines and lines of people.
00:30:02Jamie said to us, you know what, this is a bad idea.
00:30:07I got a bad feeling about it.
00:30:08There's going to be huge lines and we're going to get entangled up in the whole thing.
00:30:13And it's going to be a mess.
00:30:14It's going to be a s*** show.
00:30:19It's the traffic jam atop the world.
00:30:22An image now emblematic of a deadly new normal.
00:30:25Droves of climbers waiting for their chance to summit Mount Everest.
00:30:29On Everest, climbers are forced to wait for windows of good weather.
00:30:33When it clears, everyone moves to the summit.
00:30:35And with a large number of people, the longer wait means climbers are spending more time in what's called the death zone.
00:30:41That's above 28,000 feet, where the lack of oxygen can be lethal.
00:30:46Most of the fatalities this year came on the way down with climbers dying from exhaustion, dehydration, heart attack, stroke, or simply running out of oxygen.
00:30:56That growing crisis on Mount Everest, a second American dying in just days, bringing the total to 11 deaths already this season.
00:31:04The news is going crazy.
00:31:09I've gotten texts from people I haven't heard from in ages.
00:31:14We are not these people who are on this line getting to the summit.
00:31:19First of all, that's the south side.
00:31:20We stayed down to let the crowds disappear.
00:31:26The press goes crazy.
00:31:28Every freaking reporter is talking about what a bunch of arrogant people are who climb that mountain.
00:31:37It's not true.
00:31:38You're sitting at home and you're looking at the photos on CNN and you just think, oh, what a bunch of selfish jerks.
00:31:44But when you're here, you realize that there's actually something kind of special going on here.
00:31:57The spirit that's driving those people is, I think, the same spirit that was driving Mallory and Irvin.
00:32:03We want to solve the mystery, but this mountain is pretty alluring.
00:32:07There's a lot of freaking people waiting in line.
00:32:11I had the opportunity to actually experience and be beside George Mallory's body.
00:32:18I looked right into his face.
00:32:21This is the face of a man who had three children.
00:32:25He had a wife at home.
00:32:27He was just a guy who was out there doing what he loved.
00:32:30People have lost their lives here for almost 100 years, and they're going to keep coming here no matter what, no matter how many people die.
00:32:43A hundred could have died.
00:32:44They'll be coming back next year.
00:32:45We were waiting in advance base camp for the crowds to clear, and the day before we were set to leave,
00:33:05we went for a little hike around camp, and on the way back, Tom had some kind of bizarre neurologic episode.
00:33:18Tom, what's going on?
00:33:21Getting my blood pressure taken.
00:33:23I had this, just before I popped into my tent, I had this really, this tingling, kind of almost pleasant, believe it or not.
00:33:35Feeling here in my cheek, and it moved kind of up into my eye area.
00:33:40Throughout the expedition, I've been communicating with Dr. Peter Hackett.
00:33:45You know, he's a high-altitude doctor, and I told him about Tom's symptoms.
00:33:52He said, hmm, that doesn't sound good.
00:33:54You know, it's possible that he had a TIA, which I think stands for trans ischemic attack.
00:34:01It's kind of a miniature stroke.
00:34:05Numbness can occur from Diamox, but not trouble moving lips.
00:34:13So you definitely had trouble moving your lips?
00:34:15Yeah.
00:34:16Yeah?
00:34:17He probably shouldn't go up because of chance this is a TIA.
00:34:22If it was a TIA, you don't want to go up.
00:34:30Yeah.
00:34:30No one would go up because you could have a stroke and die.
00:34:37Yeah.
00:34:37I don't want to go up there without him.
00:34:48I kind of want to encourage him to just go anyway, but I feel like that would be irresponsible
00:34:53because if he really did have a TIA and then he died up on the mountain, you know, that would be on me if I encouraged him to go.
00:35:04It's your call, Tom.
00:35:11It is your decision.
00:35:13It's just a really hard one because this story isn't life or death.
00:35:20Absolutely.
00:35:20And, uh, yeah, you've got kids.
00:35:25I mean, I have four of my own, so I kind of have a unique perspective on that.
00:35:30And, uh, for me, I think about them, you know, like, is it worth it for them?
00:35:43Tom's my original partner in this whole endeavor.
00:35:47He's sitting right next to me, and I'm looking at him, and he's realizing that his climb is over.
00:35:54His dream, you know, to try to find Sandy Irvin and try to solve this mystery is over.
00:36:04Oh, my God.
00:36:06That's the hardest thing in the world, watching your blood brothers go onward.
00:36:24Five minutes later, we were on our way up the trail without him.
00:36:41How are you feeling?
00:36:42What's going on?
00:36:44I'm just trying to frickin' survive so that I can actually climb up near the top of Everest and look for Sandy Irvin.
00:36:52And as we get deeper and deeper into this, I realize how absolutely insane this whole project is.
00:37:01You know, that's the whole reason we're here is because of the mystery.
00:37:05If fate had dealt them a different hand in that last attempt, maybe they would have lived.
00:37:12The last photograph of Mallory and Irvin was taken at the North Cole camp.
00:37:18Irvin is standing there sort of with a hurry-up stance.
00:37:21He's got his two oxygen bottles.
00:37:23Mallory is fiddling around with some strap or something like that.
00:37:26The apparatus was heavy, 35 pounds for three tanks.
00:37:30They would have had to take three if they wanted to make the summit together.
00:37:34Mallory wrote in a note, it's a bloody load for climbing.
00:37:38But it makes a huge difference.
00:37:40It at least doubles your climbing speed.
00:37:42We're going up to the next camp.
00:37:52All the surfs packing up.
00:37:56Wow.
00:37:57This was the final push up the mountain.
00:38:09I think we all understood that if we made a misstep, the entire endeavor could just go off the rails.
00:38:17It was grueling.
00:38:24It's incredibly tedious.
00:38:28The altitude is kicking your ass.
00:38:31Imagine what that must have been like in 1924.
00:38:35Back in the day when it wasn't festooned with fixed ropes like it is now.
00:38:39I can't believe those guys did this aeromonic gear.
00:38:46It was really pathetic what they had.
00:38:49The tents were drafty.
00:38:50The sleeping bags were inadequate.
00:38:53The stoves were woefully weak.
00:38:56To be dressed the way that they were.
00:38:58In tweed and burberry and all these layers of silk.
00:39:01with their bomber caps and their little goggles and their leather hobnail boots and their 100-foot manila rope that was that thick.
00:39:13It's mind-boggling.
00:39:16Professor George Havanis in England did a complete replica of the clothing they wore and said the clothing they wore was enough to keep them going when it was sunny and not too windy.
00:39:26But if the weather got bad, they could not survive.
00:39:31We start moving up from camp two and it's windy enough that it's not comfortable you can't just like hang out you get cold even with a down suit.
00:40:01It's a little scary snowstorm above 8,000 meters.
00:40:06This is the spot where Odell had his last sighting of Mallory and Irvin.
00:40:27And it's kind of fitting that it's a snow squall because it was squalling and then it lifted out and he turned the corner here and he had that famous sighting.
00:40:44Team member Noel Odell was the last person to see Mallory and Irvin.
00:40:59He describes them high on the ridge going for the summit.
00:41:03And then the mist came over and engulfed them and they were never to be seen again.
00:41:13Everybody's been disputing since 1924 about Noel Odell's sighting of the two climbers.
00:41:20He saw them surmounting a rock step.
00:41:25And the question is whether it was the first step or the second step.
00:41:29And the idea is that if they were that far along and that if Odell saw them surmounting the second step that they probably could have made it to the summit.
00:41:37Because it's the crux of the whole route.
00:41:44If Odell says he saw them over the second step, I'm pretty sure nothing would stop them going to the summit.
00:42:04We got to Camp 3.
00:42:17We got there at like 5 or 6 p.m.
00:42:20And we were told we were going to leave at 10.
00:42:23And we were going to go to the summit.
00:42:25We have about six hours of relaxing.
00:42:30How do you feel about throwing the whole zone spot?
00:42:35I'm trying to recover, see that I can do so.
00:42:39To be honest, I feel less confident than I did before.
00:42:45God, it's freaking hard getting up here.
00:42:478,300 meters.
00:42:49The death zone is correctly named.
00:43:02There's nothing dramatic about it.
00:43:04It's just the truth.
00:43:06You can't eat enough.
00:43:07You can't sleep enough.
00:43:08You can't drink enough.
00:43:09Your body is literally wasting away up there.
00:43:13And if you fall asleep one too many times, you never wake up again.
00:43:17It is 10.30.
00:43:36We just slept in some abandoned tents up here in the death zone.
00:43:42Scrounged some random food.
00:43:45And against all odds, we're launching to try to solve this mystery.
00:43:55We were working our way up to the summit.
00:43:58And how are we going to have the energy to do this?
00:44:03I mean, we'll be lucky if we even make it to the top.
00:44:13We get to the first step.
00:44:14You know, it's pitch black.
00:44:16This is like a 60 foot high vertical cliff.
00:44:20I'm like, holy .
00:44:22This is the first step?
00:44:24What the hell is the second step like?
00:44:29I think we all underestimated how hard Everest and the climb was going to be.
00:44:37Eventually you get to the second step.
00:44:40You know, this is the most famous part of the route.
00:44:43The big question has always been, could Mallory have even climbed it?
00:44:47David Brashears estimates that Mallory had a 5'8 climbing ability and it was a 5'9 climb.
00:44:56So that makes it be right at the borderline of what Mallory could possibly have done.
00:45:00I've been a climber for my whole life, so I wanted to make my own assessment.
00:45:05And I had this little fantasy that maybe I would try to free climb the second step
00:45:10to get my own sense of whether I think Mallory and Irvin could have done it.
00:45:19Marking the second step.
00:45:21It does look doable, but not doable enough that I wanted anything to do with it.
00:45:26And so I hopped on the ladder.
00:45:29I think Mallory, in particular, being as skilled of a climber and as determined as he was, I think he probably could have done it.
00:45:38I just see Mark climbing up the ladder and I had a little panic.
00:45:51The regulator on the top of the oxygen bottle, which feeds the oxygen down the hose, cracked.
00:45:57And there's dead bodies on either side.
00:46:02One of them from a couple of weeks ago.
00:46:07That's spooky.
00:46:12Horrifying.
00:46:14Gnarly, huh?
00:46:15Yeah, I just lost my oxygen.
00:46:19You did?
00:46:20Yeah.
00:46:22You run out of oxygen, you become one of the dead guys lining this side of the route.
00:46:29But one thing you realize quickly when you're up there is that it's kind of every man for himself.
00:46:34I mean, I was barely even alive myself.
00:46:39So I couldn't really do anything for anybody else.
00:46:46The severity of the whole situation really hit home.
00:46:49And from that point on, I had the hardest climb of my life.
00:46:53Mallory wrote to his wife, Ruth, that other members of the expedition didn't have the guts to like really lay it on the line.
00:47:11And I think that he had taken Irvin's measure and he knew that Irvin would follow him no matter what.
00:47:18And that he had the heart to just lay it all out, go right to the edge.
00:47:30Third step.
00:47:46How are you feeling?
00:47:49Hammered.
00:47:53Couldn't have picked a better day.
00:47:58Incredible.
00:48:14There's no one on the mountain except for us.
00:48:16We had the entire peak to ourself and it was an absolutely perfect day.
00:48:33That was something really special to feel the power and the energy of the tallest place on earth.
00:48:39The same power that drew Mallory and Irvin.
00:48:46After that last sighting by Odell, Mallory and Irvin were never seen again.
00:48:51Odell led a search party up to their high camp.
00:48:55And after two days they marked a signal in the snow.
00:49:00It was a black cross made out of sleeping bags.
00:49:06Whether they made it to the top or not, they probably died on the way back down.
00:49:11We went for the summit and now we're trying to make it down safely.
00:49:23We have to be determined if we go searching for Irvine.
00:49:29Personally, I barely made it.
00:49:32And I just hope to have a safe descent at this point.
00:49:38We're on the summit of Mount Everest.
00:49:43We're supposed to descend and on the way down, go off the routes and go out exploring solo across the yellow band.
00:49:52And I thought to myself, I'm going to do this.
00:50:17I'm going to find Hozell's spot.
00:50:18I'm going to find Sandy Irvin.
00:50:19I'm going to find the camera.
00:50:20I've showed them where I think it is.
00:50:23And I hope they follow that advice and find it.
00:50:26To me, it's been a science project.
00:50:28And the nice thing about a science project is at the end, you prove your theory or you disprove it.
00:50:35But hey, they're the explorers, not me.
00:50:39We're getting closer and I'm thinking, okay, when and if I find this spot, am I really going to be able to do this?
00:50:50I was smoked, more tired than I'd ever been in my life.
00:50:53You have to be able to move under your own power.
00:50:57And if you can't, that's it.
00:51:01Then you're going to die.
00:51:03And as evidence of that, you see dead bodies.
00:51:05I could see Mark's brain thinking when we stopped at Mushroom Rock with our backs against a frozen body.
00:51:15I'm looking at the GPS and I'm trying to collate things in my mind, like where am I, and trying to get oriented.
00:51:26And one of the distinguishing features, unfortunately, was a dead body of this Japanese climber that we had spotted when we were looking at the drone footage.
00:51:35And then I looked down and all of a sudden, I could see it.
00:51:41There's the drone from here.
00:51:45There's Hoselle's spot.
00:51:50Yeah, I want to do it.
00:51:58This is the accident.
00:51:59This is the accident.
00:52:04Careful.
00:52:06And it was the moment of truth.
00:52:07I was off the rope and it was very clear that it was not something that they had wanted me to do.
00:52:28Just an absolute emotional rollercoaster.
00:52:41Determination.
00:52:43I got to do this.
00:52:44I have so much into this.
00:52:46And then self-preservation.
00:52:48Dude, you have four kids.
00:52:50Like, this is not worth it.
00:52:52It's not worth risking your life.
00:52:58Finally, I just said,
00:53:08**** it.
00:53:09I'm going for it.
00:53:15He cast off into the unknown.
00:53:17And neither Matt nor I had the wherewithal to follow him.
00:53:25I was on the edge of my seat wondering what the answer to the mystery is going to be.
00:53:42As I started dropping elevation and traversing on these ledges, I realized that I was very close to where Mallory might have fallen and where Irvin might have fallen.
00:54:10And there were spots where if my crampons skated off, I would just fall into the abyss.
00:54:19As I was going, I was looking into these slots because the two eyewitness accounts said that they saw the body in a slot.
00:54:39In a slot of rock.
00:54:40In a slot of rock.
00:54:41And a slot of rock.
00:54:42So anyway.
00:54:48In a slot of rock, the Tokyoulosh, which has been seen for both pilots and loads of online tickets, each andUST135isations1 Est Bivolt.
00:54:50Wie is the pist conscien Lucian ours at the torive regionalzzoUFOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO gro
00:54:55ерж
00:55:11drop, where if I slipped and fell, I would essentially suffer the same fate as Mallory.
00:55:20I didn't see anything.
00:55:50Then that was it.
00:56:03I went to Hosell's spot.
00:56:10There was nothing there.
00:56:15I went against the Sherpas, which I feel really bad about.
00:56:23I almost didn't go.
00:56:25But I spent so much time studying that spot, I just had to go there.
00:56:32Even after going to the summit, seriously, this is the hardest day that I've ever had
00:56:36in my life.
00:56:41I had to get boots on the ground to either prove or disprove Hosell's theory.
00:56:53I think that's ultimately our contribution to this mystery.
00:57:04And I think that Irvin was there in 1960.
00:57:09I think it's corroborated by Shearing Dorje in 1995.
00:57:14And I think sometime between then and now, Irvin and the camera went to the bottom of the
00:57:19north face.
00:57:22And I don't think there's a chance in hell of anyone ever finding it.
00:57:27Because I looked down there and I saw the size of the pervasses and just the way that the sweep
00:57:34of the avalanches would just flush things down into the abyss.
00:57:42I'm never going to find them down there.
00:57:56This was the most frantic, intense, dangerous thing that I've ever done in my life.
00:58:08We gave it absolutely everything that we had and the mystery remains.
00:58:25People who don't really know about this mountain are very quick to criticize it.
00:58:32What happens when people set their focus on this mountain is that the people become driven
00:58:39by ambition.
00:58:42And ambition is a really tricky thing because sometimes it will cause us to cross over this
00:58:49line that can bring us to the point of no return.
00:58:54Which is exactly what happened to George Mallory and Sandy Irvin.
00:59:01We all have sort of an imaginary fence that we draw as far as how much risk we're willing
00:59:07to take.
00:59:09And I think for a father of four, I stepped over onto the wrong side of the fence on this
00:59:16trip.
00:59:19What I hope people will understand is that everybody that's here that's trying to climb Everest,
00:59:26they're embodying the same spirit of Mallory and Irvin.
00:59:31What they did is unimaginable.
00:59:35The sheer grit it took to climb that high and into the unknown at that point in time and the
00:59:41odds of them making it to the summit and being the first to stand on top of Chioma Longma Everest,
00:59:49I don't know man.
00:59:53It's the story that keeps us coming back.
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