Mt. Everest is two feet taller!
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“... Mount Everest is 29,031 feet above sea level, according to survey results presented today. That is two feet higher than the altitude previously recognized by the government of Nepal.
The elevation, which was announced on December 8 in a joint statement by the Survey Department of Nepal and Chinese authorities, is the culmination of a multiyear project to definitively measure the legendary mountain. As the first serious survey of Everest in 16 years, the effort has been closely followed by the geographic community—particularly scientists analyzing how a devastating 7.8 magnitude earthquake in 2015 affected the region.
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Great article in National Geographic this summer.
It is about two British climbers in 1924 that were on a trip to the summit of Mount Everest. They were spotted making the final climb to the top, before the clouds disappeared them. They were never seen again, so it is unsure if they ever reach the top or not.
They found the body of one of the guys about 20 years ago but there is a chance the other guy had a camera which could solve if they reached the top.
This current expedition was to see if they could find the second body.
Very interesting.
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I was going to climb it next year but now I’m going to have to rethink this.
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The reason it’s two feet taller because of the God knows how many climbers left dead in the ice. all those bones piled up can certainly be two feet tall. In fact I bet it’s even taller.
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I was thinking discarded oxygen tanks.
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I believe that now, they (China and Nepal) are requiring climbing teams to carry out as much trash as they brought in on a kg basis.
Here is the story of trying to find Andrew "Sandy" Irvine body.
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A friend of mine climbed it almost 20 years ago and was shocked at the amount of litter.
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@taiwan_girl said in Mt. Everest is two feet taller!:
Great article in National Geographic this summer.
It is about two British climbers in 1924 that were on a trip to the summit of Mount Everest. They were spotted making the final climb to the top, before the clouds disappeared them. They were never seen again, so it is unsure if they ever reach the top or not.
They found the body of one of the guys about 20 years ago but there is a chance the other guy had a camera which could solve if they reached the top.
This current expedition was to see if they could find the second body.
Very interesting.
Follow up on this.
https://apnews.com/article/george-mallory-letters-from-everest-c204f7f3348a413d39a84f1a1b93c8cd
In his final letter to his wife before he vanished on Mount Everest a century ago, George Mallory tried to ease her worries even as he said his chances of reaching the world’s highest peak were “50 to 1 against us.”
The letter, digitized for the first time and published online Monday by his Cambridge University alma mater, expressed a mix of optimism, exhaustion and the difficulties his expedition encountered on their quest to be the first party to conquer the peak.
“Darling I wish you the best I can — that your anxiety will be at an end before you get this — with the best news,” he wrote to Ruth Mallory on May 27, 1924 from Camp I. “It is 50 to 1 against us but we’ll have a whack yet & do ourselves proud.”
It remains a mystery whether Mallory, who once famously said he wanted to conquer Everest “because it’s there,” and climbing partner Andrew Irvine reached the summit and died on the way down or never made it that far. Mallory’s body was found 75 years later far below the peak but Irvine’s has never been located.
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Now there is a new mystery to solve about the fate of Mallory and Irvine: what has happened to their bodies?
Mallory’s was discovered in 1999 by American climber Conrad Anker who left it where it lay; researchers had also zeroed in on the location of Irvine’s resting place. But Jamie McGuinness, who has reached the summit five times from the Tibetan side, said that following an extensive search of the area during an expedition in 2019, he has concluded the bodies of both British climbers were removed at some point in the 2000s.
“Irvine’s body is almost certainly no longer up there,” said McGuinness. “We gave it a good search with drones, and we spotted several other bodies, so we know we weren’t missing anything of the right size.”
and
All those with detailed knowledge of the story agree that if anyone removed the bodies of Mallory and Irvine, it was China’s mountaineering authorities. Negative publicity around corpses abandoned high on the mountain might have been one reason. Yet while Irvine’s remains were close to the modern climbing route, Mallory’s were some distance below and hard to locate. It is more likely connected to longstanding sensitivities in China about the sceptical western reaction to China’s ascent of the mountain more than 60 years ago. What’s more, China literally knew where the bodies were buried.
And if anyone is interested, here is an article (reprint) from the 1924 Popular Science magazine that covered the original attempt.
https://www.popsci.com/science/george-mallory-1924-everest-climb/
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In September, on the broad expanse of the Central Rongbuk Glacier, below the north face of Mount Everest, a National Geographic documentary team that included the photographer and director Jimmy Chin, along with filmmakers and climbers Erich Roepke and Mark Fisher, examined the boot more closely. Inside, they discovered a foot, remains that they instantly recognized as belonging to Andrew Comyn Irvine, or Sandy, as he was known, who vanished 100 years ago with the famed climber George Mallory.
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examined the boot more closely. Inside, they discovered a foot, remains that they instantly recognized as belonging to Andrew Comyn Irvine
The unmistakable foot of Andrew Comyn Irvine.
