Sandy and Mallory leave for their summit bid

6th June 1924

Last photograph of Mallory (left) and Irvine (right). Photo by N. E. Odell, courtesy of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)

Sandy and Mallory left Camp IV at 7.30 a.m. on 6 June 1924. 

Odell and Hazard were up early preparing a breakfast for them of fried sardines, biscuits and ample hot tea and chocolate. Their packs, which included the modified oxygen apparatus with two cylinders each, some food rations and a few other small items, weighed some 25 lb. It may sound like a heavy load, which indeed it was, but it was considerably less than the 35 lb the load would have weighed with the apparatus of the original design. Sandy’s assiduous work had not been in vain. They were accompanied by eight porters who had in their packs bedding, provisions and the additional oxygen cylinders. The porters were not using oxygen. They looked in on Norton who was lying in his sleeping bag still suffering badly from snowblindness. 

‘My last impression of my friends', he wrote later, ‘was a handshake and a word of blessing, for it was only in my imagination that I could see the little party winding its way amid the snow humps and ice crevasses leading to the Col'. Odell took out his camera just as they were preparing to leave and snapped a shot of the two men, Sandy with his hands in his pockets, head bowed, waiting patiently, while Mallory fiddled with his oxygen apparatus. Little did Odell know that this would be the very last photograph taken of Mallory and Sandy alive. He watched them as they climbed the Col and disappeared out of sight amidst the broken ice masses. The weather that morning was brilliantly sunny although later in the afternoon cloud gathered and it began to snow a little in the evening. They made good progress from the Col up to Camp V at 25,600 feet and at five o’clock that evening four of Mallory’s porters returned with a note for Odell to say that there was no wind and that things were looking hopeful.

Mallory’s letter sent from Camp V, received by Odell at Camp IV about 6 p.m. on 6 June, reads: “Dear Odell, Herewith Ang Tenjin, Tewang, Nimya, Dareda. The first is anxious to go down to III & as he has done well I should be glad if you could let him go. The provision rucksack which he carries has been pretty well gone through by us. No wind here and things look hopeful, GM.”