Publisher's Synopsis
On May 29th 1953 Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing Norgay became the first men to reach the summit of the highest mountain on earth. Or were they in fact the first? Twenty-nine years previously George Leigh Mallory and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine died during their attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Many believed they had achieved this but had then perished during the descent. The debate has raged over 75 years. In May 1999, an expedition sponsored by the BBC set out to climb the North Face of the mountain. Their discoveries became front-page news, and the astonishing new evidence, combined with research into the background to the 1924 expedition, allows the author to piece together the dramatic events of the tragedy.
