Fearless on Everest

""Mallory and Irvine." These names have been inextricably joined since the two climbers disappeared on Mount Everest more than seventy-five years ago. Could they have been the first to reach the summit of the world's highest mountain - some thirty years earlier than Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay?" "Mallory's story has been well chronicled, but Irvine has always been overshadowed by his more famous climbing partner and little has been written about him. Who was he? Why was he invited by the British Everest Committee to join the 1924 expedition despite his limited mountaineering experience? And why did Mallory, sixteen years his senior, select Irvine as his partner for the final assault on the summit?" "Julie Summers, great niece of Sandy Irvine, has been fascinated since childhood by the story of "Uncle Sandy." His family believed that nothing survived from the expedition except those details that were already well known to the public. But in May 2000 Julie made an astonishing discovery: a long forgotten and unopened trunk in the attic of an Irvine family home turned out to contain a stash of unsuspected source material including Irvine's letters and photographs from Everest." "In addition to the photos and letters, this treasure trove also included Sandy's engineering drawings for his detailed redesign of the expedition's capricious oxygen apparatus - just one example in a long line of his creative solutions to engineering problems."

Author: Julie Summers

Publisher: Phoenix

Released Date: 2001

ISBN: 9780753812655