원정 개요

The purpose of the expedition was to find the body of Andrew Irvine, who disappeared high on Everest with George Mallory in June 1924. Hemmleb, who is an historian of climbs on Everest with special interest in the British 1924 expedition, knew exactly the area where his searchers on this team should find Irvine. In 2001 and 2008 he had met a Chinese climber, Xu Jing (Hsu Ching), in Beijing, and Xu said that he had seen an old body in a ditch (translation from the Chinese in 2001) or cave (2008 translation) along the North Ridge off the normal route and below the First Step, in the general area where an old ice axe had been found in 1933.

Five of the team's six members, not counting the leader, were supposed to be the searchers, while the leader, Hemmleb, and Salmina stayed at C1 on the North Col, Hemmleb to direct the search above and Salmina, also staying at the Col, to watch through their cameras' powerful long lens and to take photos of anything notable. Several Sherpas, including two from the climbing team lead by Jamie McGuinness, were needed to carry the camera equipment to C1. Unfortunately, there was nothing to be photographed.

The members who actually did any searching were Bachmair and Goeberl, who started looking for Irvine above C3 (8250m) on 25 May. They had two Sherpas with them, Pemba Kitar and Bal Bahadur Tamang. But two to three meters of old snow covered the search area; the men went up to 8445m and found nothing. Then Hemmleb decided to call off the search on the 26th because it would be impossible to detect a body under the deep snow cover, and the men had been too long at high altitude.

Both Bachmair and Goeberl developed health problems. Goeberl's toes had become frostbitten at 8400m standing while waiting for Fritsche to fix his oxygen mask on 25 May. Bachmair developed a lung infection on 28 May during in C1 in his descent. Getting him down to BC at 10:30 pm involved his being carried down on men's backs, then on a stretcher and finally on his own feet; he was driven to Kathmandu on the 29th.

Holzner had turned back at C2 on 23 May. He "was sick of Everest."

Naglich had turned back from C3. The forecast was for poor weather and he had no motivation to continue.

Fritsche's oxygen system suddenly failed when he was at 8400m on 25 May; he was trying to go up from C3 to the search area. He was without supplemental oxygen for 40 minutes. He descended to C2 that day and was in ABC the next day.

All members and Sherpas used oxygen above C3 (some in C3) to their high points to C3.

Hired:
Pemba Kitar, 29/1/64, Sotang-6, Solu
Bal Bahadur Tamang, 14/1/74, Terang-7, Rasuwa