The Second Step is where most of us - myself very much included - have long wanted to believe Odell saw them, for if they were seen atop it at 12:50 PM, there almost no chance they did not make the summit, for at that point all the difficulty would be behind them.

Additionally, the mountain, from what I can tell, was fairly dry up high in ‘24, much like it was in 1999, when there was little snow on the First Step to accentuate the climbers Odell saw.

The First Step could possibly match Odell’s sighting, but it is tough for climbers today - with oxygen, fixed lines, and a known route - to ascend it in five minutes Mallory and Irvine of course did not know the route (which is not obvious), had no fixed lines, and were using a rudimentary-at-best oxygen system.

The timing, the description, it just doesn’t add up.

I’ve struggled with this for decades: How could this timeline make sense? Put simply, it doesn’t. The Northeast Ridge and the First, Second, and Third Steps are clearly visible above. A single tent under a protective cargo net is perched at 25,600 foot Camp V on the North Ridge of Mount Everest, Tibet. The issue with this, as has been written and discussed at length, is that he saw them only for a brief time, and in that brief time - maybe five minutes at most - he saw them move from the base of a great rock step, and on to the top. Odell himself vacillated on this many times in his life, but overall seemed fairly set on the climbers being on the Second Step. (In October 2021, I was reminded of this old thoughts by a comment from a reader, Milos, on an old Odell post.) I fairly quickly dismissed it as folly, for everything seemed to point to Odell seeing Mallory and Irvine on either the First, Second, or possibly Third Steps. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about it recently, and have come back to a theory which hit me on April 28, 2001, as Brent Okita and I moved up the North Ridge toward the 1924 Camp VI, while following a similar path to Odell 77 years before.

Following up on my post last week on what Noel Odell could see on that fateful day, June 8, 1924.

Norton life rock