climbers of mount everest

[Jerry_111]

so i've spent the past few hours wiki browsing and have come across a lot of interesting stuff about the first climbers of mount everest. I had known that Hillary and Tenzing were the first ppl to succesffuly climb to the summit and come down alive, but didnt know much about the earlier atempts to scale the mountain.

here's a timeline (it's sad how many ppl have died in total and creepy how contemporary climbers often come across the perfectly preserved remains of those who tried before them):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timelin..._Mount_Everest

the story of mallory and irving's expedition strikes me as both sad and mysterious. In 1924 they made three attempts to reach the top. On their third climb they never returned. So it's a mystery whether or not they had actually reached the summit and died on the way back or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British...xpedition_1924

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mallory

years later a chinese climber saw the remains of a dead englishman who turned out to be Mallory. In 1999 an expedition was sent to determine whether or not Mallory and Irving were in fact the first men to reach the top of earth's highest summit. Both men were known to have carried cameras and it's believed that if they had reached the top, they would've taken a picture... and their bodies and equipment would have been preserved.

and here were the results of that find:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mallory...rch_Expedition

Many artifacts were found on the body, but no camera. Three discoveries in particular fuel continuing speculation.

* First, Mallory's goggles were in his pocket, suggesting he was descending at night when he fell (though he may have had a second pair, ripped off in his fall).
* Secondly, on an envelope he had noted the amounts of oxygen in each of their cylinders, figures which suggest a slight possibility that the pair may have taken three cylinders on their final climb, rather than two as generally believed.
* Lastly it was absence of an artifact which was perhaps most intriguing: it had been reported that Mallory carried a photograph of his beloved wife Ruth with him which he planned to place on the summit in the event of success: it was not among his many personal possessions.

Gives me the chills.