On June 8, 1924, at 12:50 PM, two tiny figures were seen less than a thousand feet from the summit of Mount Everest. It was George Mallory and Andrew Irvine moving toward the top, hoping to become the first people to reach the highest summit on Earth. But they soon vanished in the clouds and reappeared only in the pages of history: Mallory & Irvine were never seen alive again. Their disappearance sparked what is now a 99-year mystery: Did they reach the summit of Everest on June 8, 1924, 29 years before Hillary and Tenzing climbed from the Nepal side?

On May 1, 1999, Jake Norton was a climber and photographer on the team that discovered Mallory's remains at nearly 27,000 feet on the North Face. While their discovery yielded much new information and artifacts about the duo's final days and hours on the mountain, it did not answer the perennial question about the summit. Jake returned to the mountain on dedicated research expeditions in 2001, 2004, and 2019, discovering new information, artifacts, and more, but still no answers, no certainty.

In this presentation, Jake takes you through the story of Mallory and Irvine, their climb of the mountain, their disappearance, and what may finally have befallen them on that fateful day nearly a century ago. He also reflects on whether the central question in their story is even the right one to be asking in the first place.