Human remains found on Mount Everest apparently belong to famed climber who vanished 100 years ago
A documentary team discovered human remains on Mount Everest apparently belonging to a man who went missing while trying to summit the peak 100 years ago, National Geographic magazine reported Friday.
Climate change is thinning snow and ice around the Himalayas, increasingly exposing the bodies of mountaineers who died chasing their dream of scaling the world's highest mountain.
Briton Andrew Irvine went missing in 1924 alongside climbing partner George Mallory as the pair attempted to be the first to reach Everest's summit, 8,848 meters (29,029 feet) above sea level.
Mallory's body was found in 1999 but clues about Irvine's fate were elusive until a National Geographic team discovered a boot, still clothing the remains of a foot, on the peak's Central Rongbuk Glacier.
On closer inspection, they found a sock with "a red label that has A.C. IRVINE stitched into it," the magazine reported.
The discovery could give further clues as to the location of the team's personal effects and may help resolve one of mountaineering's most enduring mysteries: whether Irvine and Mallory ever managed to reach the summit.
That could confirm Irvine and Mallory as the first to successfully scale the peak, nearly three decades before the first currently recognized summit in 1953 by climbers Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
"It tells the whole story about what probably happened," Irvine's great-niece Julie Summers told National Geographic.
"I have lived with this story since I was a 7-year-old when my father told us about the mystery of Uncle Sandy on Everest," she said. "When Jimmy told me that he saw the name AC Irvine on the label on the sock inside the boot, I found myself moved to tears. It was and will remain an extraordinary and poignant moment."
The first documented ascent of Everest came nearly three decades later when New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay scaled the mountain on May 29, 1953. In 1963, Jim Whittaker became the first American to reach the summit.
Hundreds of climbers have died on Everest
Members of the Irvine family reportedly offered to share DNA samples to confirm the identity of the remains.
Irvine was 22 when he went missing.
He, along with Mallory, was last spotted by one of the members of their expedition on the afternoon of June 8, 1924, after beginning their final ascent to the summit that morning.
Earlier this year, Mallory's final letter to his wife was digitized for the first time and published online by Cambridge University. In the letter, he wrote that his chances of reaching the world's highest peak were "50 to 1 against us."
Irvine is believed to have been carrying a vest camera -- the discovery of which could rewrite mountaineering history.
"This was a monumental and emotional moment for us and our entire team on the ground, and we just hope this can finally bring peace of mind to his relatives and the climbing world at large," said climb team member and National Geographic explorer Jimmy Chin.
Chin did not say exactly where the remains were found because he wants to discourage trophy hunters. But he's confident that other items - and maybe even the camera - are nearby.
"It certainly reduces the search area," he told National Geographic.
More than 300 people have perished on the mountain since expeditions started in the 1920s.
Some are hidden by snow or swallowed down deep crevasses.
Others, still in their colorful climbing gear, have become landmarks en route to the summit and bestowed with gallows humor nicknames, including "Green Boots" and "Sleeping Beauty."
In June, five frozen bodies were retrieved from Mount Everest — including one that was just skeletal remains — as part of Nepal's mountain clean-up campaign on Everest and adjoining peaks Lhotse and Nuptse.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.