They climbed as high as 27,300 feet before bad weather and an avalanche that killed seven porters forced the expedition team to retreat. The team’s final attempt to climb Mount Everest in 1924 also ended in tragedy–and mystery. Climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine made a push for the summit on June 8, 1924, and they were last seen about 500 feet below the summit. A wintery mist blew in, and both climbers vanished.
Were Mallory and Irvine the first humans to stand atop Mount Everest? We may never know, but the stories of these three British expeditions caught the attention of the entire world. In 1922 and 1924, the filmmaker Captain John Noel captured on film and in photographs some of the first and most widely-seen images of Mount Everest and Tibet, making this remote and pristine corner of the world come to life for the general public in the West. Captain Noel’s films, Climbing Mount Everest (1922) and The Epic of Everest (1924), are the subject of a new exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society in London called “Everest Through the Lens”. Much has changed on and around Mount Everest in the 100 years since Captain Noel brought the stories of Mallory, Irvine, and their fellow explorers to life, and this exhibition takes a critical look at how Noel’s films helped to shape the popular image of Mount Everest for decades to come, and how today we can learn more about the local people and their essential contribution to these expeditions
Let’s journey to London and walk through the “Everest Through the Lens” exhibition together! You can experience Captain Noel’s films, and through his lens, see exactly what it looked and felt like to explore the breathtaking slopes of Mount Everest in the 1920s.
