Invitation from Mount Everest Committee

24th October 1923

Sandy with his Oxford friend Geoffrey Milling in Spitsbergen.

Sandy Irvine was invited to join the 1924 Everest expedition in autumn 1923. Fundamental to his selection was his participation, that summer, to the second Oxford University expedition to Spitsbergen (Svalbard). The Spitsbergen expedition had been a great success for Sandy. He had had a taste of many of the types of hardships he would encounter on the Mount Everest expedition and had shown himself to be, in every area, an excellent team member. His mechanical expertise had been called upon when it was left to him to fix the aerial aboard the Terningen, but also en route whilst sledging when many small running repairs were effected without the slightest problem. While in Norway, Sandy had impressed Noel Odell, the geologist, with his strength and determination. This was a key person to impress: Odell had already been appointed oxygen officer of the 1924 Expedition, and decided to ask Sandy if he would be interest in being nominated.

Sandy had proved himself to be fit, able and above all to exhibit at all times excellent humour despite the cold and the damp, the frustrations of hauling the sledges across difficult ground and living in the primitive conditions under which he was only able fully to undress and dry out on one single occasion.

Sandy's 'notes for future' in his Spitsbergen notebook.

Although a place on the 1924 Mount Everest expedition was not in Odell’s gift, he knew that any recommendation he might make to the committee would be considered. Sandy did not need to be asked twice and Odell offered to put his name forward.  If Odell had needed any convincing that Sandy was the right person to recommend for inclusion in the 1924 team, he had had ample reason to feel his choice had been fully validated by Sandy’s performance on the sledging party. Moreover, during the long hours they had spent holed up in their tent towards the end of the expedition, when Sandy and Odell had discussed at great length the subject of the oxygen apparatus, it became clear that in Sandy he had discovered a man who would be capable of helping to produce and maintain it -- which was precisely what the Everest Committee was looking for.