The expedition participants erected a memorial
cairn in honour of the men who had died in the 1920s on Mount Everest. Mallory and Irvine became national heroes.
Magdalene College, one of the constituent colleges of the
University of Cambridge, where Mallory had studied, erected a memorial stone in one of its courts – a court renamed for Mallory. The
University of Oxford, where Irvine studied, erected a memorial stone in his memory. In
St Paul's Cathedral a ceremony took place which was attended by King
George V and other dignitaries, as well as the families and friends of the climbers. The official film of the expedition
The Epic of Everest, produced by John Noel, caused a diplomatic controversy later known as the
Affair of the Dancing Lamas. A group of monks was taken clandestinely from Tibet to perform a song and dance act before each showing of the film. This greatly offended the Tibetan authorities. Because of this and various unauthorised activities during the expedition, the Dalai Lama did not allow access for further expeditions until 1933.
Odell's sighting of Mallory and Irvine The opinion of the Everest climbing community began to challenge the location Odell claimed to have seen the two climbers. Many thought the
Second Step, if not unclimbable, was at least not climbable in the five minutes Odell says he saw one of the two surmount it. Based on their position, both Odell and Norton believed that Mallory and Irvine had made it to the summit, with Odell sharing this belief with the newspapers after the expedition. The expedition report was presented to
Martin Conway, a prominent politician and mountaineer, who expressed the opinion that the summit had been reached. Conway's opinion was based on their location on the mountain and Mallory's exceptional mountaineering skill. A recent theory suggests the two climbers were cresting the First Step after they had given up their climb and were already on the descent. They scrambled up the small hillock to take photographs of the remaining route, much as the French did in 1981, when they too were blocked from further progress. As to which step they were seen on,
Conrad Anker has stated that "it's hard to say because Odell was looking at it obliquely ... you're at altitude, the clouds were coming in" but that he believes "they were probably in the vicinity of the First Step when they turned back, because the First Step itself is very challenging and the Second Step is more challenging.... [T]o put them where they might have fallen in the evening and where Mallory's body is resting, because it's a traversing route, he couldn't have fallen off either the First or Second Step and ended up where he was at, they were well to the East of that descending the Yellow Band".
Findings Odell discovered the first evidence which might reveal something about the climb of Mallory and Irvine among the equipment in camps V and VI. In addition to Mallory's compass, which normally was a critical component for climbing activities, he discovered some oxygen bottles and spare parts. This situation suggests the possibility that there had been a problem with the oxygen equipment which might have caused a delayed start in the morning. A hand-generator electric lamp also remained in the tent – it was still in working order when it was found by the Ruttledge expedition nine years later. During the 1933 British Mount Everest expedition,
Percy Wyn-Harris found the
ice axe of Irvine some 250 yards (230 metres) east of the First Step and 60 feet (20 metres) below the ridge. This location raises additional questions. The area is a 30-degree slab of rock with loose pebbles, according to Wyn-Harris. Expedition leader Hugh Ruttledge said: "We have naturally paid close attention to the problem. Firstly, it seems probable that the axe marked the scene of a fatal accident. For reasons already given, neither climber would be likely to abandon it deliberately on the slabs...its presence there would seem to indicate that it was accidentally dropped when a slip occurred or that its owner put it down in order to have both hands free to hold the rope". In 1937,
Frank Smythe wrote to Edward Norton in reply to Norton's approbation of Smythe's book
Camp Six, an account of the 1933 expedition. Noted in his letter was the discovery of the ice axe in 1933 found below the crest of the Northeast Ridge, where Smythe felt certain it marked the scene of an accident to Mallory and Irvine. Smythe disclosed that during the
1936 British Mount Everest expedition, he scanned Everest's
North Face with a high-powered
telescope from Base Camp and spotted an object, which he presumed was the body of either Mallory or Irvine and it was not to be written about because he feared press
sensationalism. On the second summit climb of the Chinese in 1975, the Chinese mountaineer Wang Hongbao saw an "English dead" (body) at . This news was officially denied by the Chinese Mountaineering Association (CMA), but this report to a Japanese climber, who passed it on to Tom Holzel led to the first
Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition in 1986, which was unsuccessful due to bad weather. In 1999, a new search expedition was mounted, founded by German Everest researcher Jochen Hemmleb, and led by
Eric Simonson. Simonson had seen some very old oxygen bottles near the First Step during his first summit climb in 1991. One of these bottles was again found in 1999 and was one belonging to Mallory and Irvine, thus proving the two climbed at least as high as shortly below the First Step. Their location also suggests a climbing speed of approximately 275 vert-ft/hr, good time for the altitude and an indication the oxygen systems were working perfectly. The expedition also tried to reproduce Odell's position when he had seen Mallory and Irvine. The mountaineer Andy Politz later reported that they could clearly identify each of the three steps without any problems. During their meeting, the deputy leader of the 1960 Chinese expedition,
Xu Jing, said that on his descent from the
First Step, he spotted a dead climber lying on his back, feet facing uphill, in a hollow or slot in the rock. Since no one other than Mallory and Irvine had ever been lost on the north side of Everest before 1960, and Mallory had been found much lower down, it was almost a certainty that Xu had discovered Irvine. However, the sighting was brief, and Xu was in desperate straits during the descent, and while he clearly remembered seeing the body, he was unclear about where it was. The most remarkable discovery was the corpse of Mallory at an altitude of . The lack of extreme injuries indicated he had not tumbled very far. His waist showed severe rope-jerk mottling, showing the two had been roped when they fell. Mallory's injuries were such that a walking descent was impossible: his right foot was nearly broken off and there was a golf ball-sized puncture wound in his forehead. His unbroken leg was on top of the broken one, as if to protect it. General Hospital neurosurgeon Dr. Elliot Schwamm believes it not possible that he would have been conscious after the forehead injury. There was no oxygen equipment near the body, but the oxygen bottles would have been empty by that time and discarded at a higher altitude to relinquish the heavy load. Mallory was not wearing snow goggles, although a pair was stored in his vest, which may indicate that he was on the way back by night. However, a contemporary photograph shows he had two sets of goggles when he started his summit climb. The image of his wife Ruth which he intended to put on the summit was not in his vest. He carried the picture throughout the whole expedition—a sign that he might have reached the top. Since his Kodak pocket camera was not found, there is no proof of a successful climb to the summit. A sock, with "A. C. Irvine" on a
name tape, was found along with a boot and a foot, emerging from the ice. The cameras remain missing. ==First ascent speculation==