PEAK MYSTERY

Who Moved the Bodies? Guides Baffled in Search for Remains of Everest Climbers

The remains of 20th century climber George Mallory were discovered 25 years ago, but his body is now missing from the same site.

Expert climbers are baffled by a new development in the search for the missing remains of Mount Everest climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine: who moved their bodies? Though Mallory’s body was discovered by a climber in 1999, it now appears that the bodies of both British mountaineers were moved somewhere in the 2000s, according to five-time Everest summitter Jamie McGuinness. “Irvine’s body is almost certainly no longer up there,” McGuinness told The Guardian. “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.” Mark Synnott, an American writer and mountain guide, said that when he led a team to the precise spot where Mallory’s remains were found 25 years ago, there was nothing. “We had GPS co-ordinates for where the body was. We flew the drone to that spot. We took photos,” Synnott said. “I feel if Mallory’s body was still there, we would have seen it. It doesn’t make any sense. Why remove the body?”