High-fliers who tackled the peak

By EMMA JONES

THE body of legendary climber George Mallory was found 2,030ft below the summit of Mount Everest on May 1 this year.

His body was perfectly preserved and frozen in time, 75 years after he and his companion, Andrew Irvine, vanished on June 8, 1924.

Opinion is divided as to whether Mallory and Irvine ever made the 29,028ft summit, and Irvine's body has never been found.

Mallory's body was found by a BBC team who found a pair of goggles inside his coat, suggesting that light was failing when disaster struck.

It is not known how the pair died but they were last seen through a rift in the mist moving slowly towards the summit 800ft above.

A letter written by Mallory to his wife Ruth was also found tucked close to his heart.

Everest's summit is 8,848 metres in altitude, making it the highest mountain in the world.

The first documented ascent of Mount Everest was in May 1953 by Edmund Hilary from New Zealand and Nepalese climber Tenzing Norgay, in an expedition led by Henry Hunt.

Tenzing Norgay's grandson, Australian travel agent Tashi Wangchuk Tenzing, emulated the feat 44 years later, reaching the summit of the world's highest mountain in May 1997.

Venezuelan Spanish guitar and violin maker Ramon Blanco became the oldest person ever to climb Everest in 1993, at the age of 60.

In May 1994, British climber Alison Hargreaves, 33, became the first woman to reach the top of Mount Everest, alone and without oxygen tanks. The oldest woman to climb Mt Everest was Japanese, Yasuko Nambna, at the age of 47 in 1996.

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