Cork climber's role in ill-fated Everest climb is focus of new documentary

The recently discovered diary of a Cork climber who was part of a famous expedition to Mount Everest is the focus of a new RTÉ Radio Documentary which attempts to uncover whether there may have been a successful ascent of the world's highest mountain thirty years before Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay's conquest of the peak in 1953.

Richard William George Hingston, a native of Passage West and a UCC graduate, accompanied George Mallory and Andrew Irvine who set off on an expedition to conquer Everest in 1924.

The expedition was to end in apparent tragedy as neither man was ever seen again after June 8, 1924, when they were spotted from below, close to reaching the summit.

The makers of ‘The Lost Mountaineers’, which will be broadcast today on RTÉ Radio 1, have come upon the diary of the Cork man in Trinity College where it has been rarely seen or examined until now.

Hingston served as the medical officer and naturalist for the expedition led by Mallory and Irvine and gave a unique insight into what happened on the fateful day when the two mountaineers disappeared in the mountain mist.

The latest in the award-winning RTÉ Documentary on One series uses the diary of the Cork man to delve into one of the world’s most perplexing mountaineering mysteries: did Mallory and Irvine reach the summit of Everest almost thirty years before it was famously conquered by New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Himalayan Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953?

The Lost Mountaineers will be broadcast on RTÉ Radio 1 at 2pm today.