New Expedition Split on Mount Everest Mystery

Mount Everest is being stubborn about revealing its secrets. The international expedition which set out to find the remains of George Mallory, the Briton who 75 years ago died in his attempt to be first to climb the world’s highest mountain, has returned from its search -- and is split about whether Mallory succeeded. Although the team did find the explorer’s frozen remains in the snow -- including several letters, goggles, and other personal effects -- they did not find the body of his climbing partner, Andrew Irvine, nor the object they dearly hoped to find: a Kodak camera, which might have yielded photos of the pair at the summit.

"Few people expected the expedition to find conclusive results," says TIME senior science writer Jeffrey Kluger. But one wonderful thing that did result from the undertaking, he notes, was the expression of good will and good nature that emerged from everyone connected to the search. "No less a person than Edmund Hillary said he was willing to accept the possibility that Mallory got there first," says Kluger. "That was a generous statement from the person who would be surrendering his place in the pantheon of explorers." Hillary and sherpa Tenzing Norgay, were the first to successfully reach Everest’s peak in 1953. Team members expressed the hope to return another time to search for Irvine and the camera. Before leaving Mallory, they paid him their last respects. They gathered rocks and buried him, to rest forever in peace in the mountain he tried to conquer.