Last month, a team of climbers filming a National Geographic documentary stumbled (3)______________ a preserved boot, revealed by melting ice on a glacier.
This boot was believed (4)______________ belong to Andrew Comyn "Sandy" Irvine, who disappeared while attempting to climb Everest in June 1924 with his partner George Mallory.
What's (5)______________, it could potentially help solve one of mountaineering's biggest mysteries: (6)______________ or not the pair succeeded (7)___________ becoming the first people to summit Everest, 29 years before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the top.
Well-known adventurer Jimmy Chin, who led the team for National Geographic, hailed the discovery of the boot - with a foot inside it - (8)_______________ a "monumental and emotional moment".
A number of people have searched (9)____________ Irvine's body over the years, partly because the 22-year-old is said to have been carrying a camera with an undeveloped film inside, potentially with a photograph of the pair at the summit.
Could the discovery of the boot be the first step to finding his body - and the camera?
The family have now given a DNA sample to help confirm the foot is indeed Irvine - but the filmmaking team is fairly confident it belongs to the mountaineer. The sock found inside the boot has a name tag stitched into it with the words "A.C. Irvine".
"I mean, dude... there's a label on it," Chin, who is known for making Oscar-winning climbing documentary Free Solo alongside his wife, (10)____________ quoted as saying in a National Geographic report.
The team made the discovery as they descended the Central Rongbuk Glacier by the north face of Everest in September.
Along the way, they found an oxygen bottle marked with the date 1933. An Everest expedition that year had found an item belonging to Irvine.
Energised by this possible sign that Irvine's body could be nearby, the team searched the glacier for several days, before one of them saw the boot emerging from melting ice.
It was a fortuitous find - they estimated the ice had only melted a week before their discovery.
The foot has since been removed from the mountain because of concerns that ravens were disturbing it, according to reports, and passed to the Chinese mountaineering authorities who govern the north face of Everest.
For Irvine's descendants, the discovery has been emotional - especially in this, the centenary year of his disappearance.
Summers had grown up hearing stories of her grandmother's adventurous, Oxford-educated younger brother, who they knew as "Uncle Sandy".
"My grandmother had a photo of him by her bed until the day she died," she recalled. "She said he was a better man than anyone would ever be."
Birkenhead-born Irvine was just 22 when he disappeared, the youngest member of an expedition that has intrigued the mountaineering world for a century.
He and Mallory were last seen alive on 8 June 1924 as they set off for the peak.
Mallory's body would not be found until 1999 by an American climber.
In recent decades, the search for the climbers' remains has been mired in controversy amid suspicions that the bodies were moved.
Summers has always dismissed those stories and suspicions, revealing her feeling of "relief" following the Chin's call that "he was still there on the mountain".
But what if it could now be proved that Irvine and Mallory reached the summit, becoming the first to do so - an idea which, Summers acknowledged, would "turn mountaineering history onto its head"?
"It would be nice - we would all feel very proud," she said. "But the family has always maintained the mystery, and the story of how far they got and how brave they were, was really what it was about."
And anyway, she said, "the only way we will ever know is if we find a picture in the camera he was believed to be carrying".
The search, she suspects, will now continue for that camera. "I think it will be irresistible," she said. Whether it will be found remains to be seen.
Chin, meanwhile, is hoping that the boot's discovery - "a monumental and emotional moment for us and our entire team on the ground" - will "finally bring peace of mind to his relatives and the climbing world at large".
For Summers, it is a chance to remind the world about a young man "who took life and lived it", embracing every opportunity - and above all, was "having fun". But perhaps surprisingly, she and her cousins are grateful the older generation were not here for this discovery. "For them, Everest is his grave," she explained.
Adapted from The BBC
KEY
1. who
2. up
3. on/ upon/ across
stumble across/on/upon something/somebody
to discover something/somebody unexpectedly or by chance. Come across.
E.g.
I stumbled across Thompson outside the hotel.
Researchers have stumbled upon a drug that may help patients with Parkinson’s disease.
4. to
5. more
6. whether
"whether or not" focuses on the uncertainty or doubt about a particular event
7. in
8. as
hail somebody/something as something
to describe someone or something as being very good. Sp. considerar como
E.g.
Union leaders hailed the socialists’ victory as a huge step forward.
This latest piece of technology is being hailed as the answer to all our problems.
9. for
10. was
A sock (2)_______________ with Mr Irvin name AC Irvine and a boot have been found on the North Face of Mount Everest.
The two explorers disappeared together during their (3)________________ attempt to summit the highest mountain on Earth.
It is hoped that this discovery will help us understand more about what happened in that (5)_____________ climb.
He was a brave young man with an (6)________________ for adventure.
His name is (7)_____________ linked with George Mallory and Mount Everest and the tragedy of 1924.
His name is (7)_____________ linked with George Mallory and Mount Everest and the tragedy of 1924.
AC Irvine was a great (8)_____________ and a skier.
The sites of Irvine's great adventure became his final (9)_____________ place.
KEY
1. renowned
2. embroidered
3. ill-fated
4. stitched
The sites of Irvine's great adventure became his final (9)_____________ place.
KEY
1. renowned
2. embroidered
3. ill-fated
4. stitched
5. fateful
fateful:
having an important, often very bad, effect on future events.
E.g.
She looked back now to that fateful day in December. his final fateful journey to Moscow
Sp. fatídico, transcendental
6. appetite
fateful:
having an important, often very bad, effect on future events.
E.g.
She looked back now to that fateful day in December. his final fateful journey to Moscow
Sp. fatídico, transcendental
6. appetite
7. inextricably
if two things are inextricably linked, etc., it is impossible to separate them.
E.g.
Europe's foreign policy is inextricably linked with that of the US.
She had become inextricably involved in the campaign
8. oarsman
/ˈɔːzmən/ a man who rows a boat, especially as a member of a crew (= team)
if two things are inextricably linked, etc., it is impossible to separate them.
E.g.
Europe's foreign policy is inextricably linked with that of the US.
She had become inextricably involved in the campaign
8. oarsman
/ˈɔːzmən/ a man who rows a boat, especially as a member of a crew (= team)
9. resting
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