| "Message of Death"
After Mallory & Irvine did not return from their attempt at the summit, support climber, Noel Odell, went up to their last camp (Camp VI) and found that the men had not returned. Discouraged, he returned down the mountain to his tent at Camp IV. The next day he once again climbed to Camp VI...and again, no sign of the men. Odell, according to plan, then laid out the ill-fated men's two sleeping bags in the form of a "T", which meant "no trace." Farther down the mountain other climbers saw this and, to signal to men still farther down the mountain, they took some blankets and formed them into a large "X" in the snow, it was the message of death. With this, the 1924 Everest attempt was abandoned; it would be 9 more years before another English team tried the North Face Route again. But it was not until 1953 that the English finally claimed the summit; and the two men who MADE the summit? One was a New Zealand bee-keeper, Edmund Hillary, and the other was the sherpa, Tenzing Norgay. |
