Noel Odell
Noel Ewart Odell (* December 25, 1890, † 21 February 1987) was an English geologist and mountaineer. He was a shrewd rock climber, who was known for his solo ascent of the tennis shoe in Snowdonia since 1919.
In the British Mount Everest Expedition 1924 Odell was the responsible for the oxygen supply organizer of the Everest expedition, during the George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared during a summit attempt.
It was impressive that Odell spent two weeks at an altitude above 7,000 meters, to breathe without oxygen, and a height of over 8,500 meters reached: later an essential motive for Reinhold Messner on Everest twice (1978, 1980) without artificial oxygen go to the top want to.
On June 8, 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine attempted to climb to the summit via the North Col route. Odell, who followed the increase in binoculars, reported that he had seen her at 12:50 clock climb one of the major escarpments of the North-East ridge, and they were " strong in the rise for the Summit " been on the road ( "going 'strongly for the top "). They vanished from his eyes in a gathering fog cloud. However, there is afterwards no evidence that they reached the summit. They never returned to one of the high camp and died somewhere high on the mountain. Odell was the last person who saw the two alive.
After her disappearance, Odell went in search of the two climbers in the north face of Everest to over 8500 meters high.
For all studies, the disappearance of the two climbers Odell played the lead role. Later, he was unsure whether he had seen them at 8610 meters above sea level, on the lighter First Step at about 8,500 meters, or even the also less demanding on the difficult Second Step Third Step to approximately 8700 meters. In the latter case, the two no 200 vertical meters below the summit would have been. However, in the case of the First Step, they would have been much too late to go to have reached the summit in daylight.
Odell took his life the belief that Mallory had made it highly probable the rise to the top and had thus stood before the officially recognized first ascent in 1953, before Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary on the highest point on earth.
1936 Noel Odell reached with Bill Tilman the summit of Nanda Devi, who was the highest climbed mountain at that time and until 1950. Odell returned in 1938 under the direction of Bill Tilman at the Everest back.
Noel Odell had a colorful career off of mountaineering. He served in both world wars at the Royal pioneers ( " Royal Engineers " ), he taught geology at several universities, including Harvard and Cambridge.