Man that’s just cold:D
I’m reading a new book about Everest.
Anyway, modern climbers seem to reject the notion that these gys in 1924, could have gotten to the top. It seems that the last pitch is rather difficult (which is why the Chinese installed the aluminum ladder).
Still, Somervell and Norton (1921) got within 2000’ of the top.
It is amazing to see these 1920’s climbers wearing wool jackets and puttees, hobnailed boots, etc., getting that high up this difficult mountain.
Another question:Mallory and Irvine had oxygen-was their gear sufficient to see them to 29,000 feet?
ralph, did you mean for this to be a new thread?
It totally depends. People have climbed Everest with no oxygen. People with modern gear fail to summit. What was their personal physiology like, how much willpower and conditioning did they have, and most importantly, how lucky were they?
Given the result of their climb, I’d say at least one of those things were deficient, but I don’t think there’s any way to determine which.
Mallory and Irvine would have had significant problems with the technical climbing remaining above them, their poor oxygen supply, and their gear. 2000’ below the summit is no where close to the top; the obstacles remaining are huge. Based on where Mallory’s body was found they probably didn’t get close enough.
But we’ll probably never know for sure.
Didn’t an experienced summiter do the climb in Mallory-era clothing? I know I read an article about it - I recall he liked the natural fibers much better, except for the fly on the pants.
In the documentary The Wildest Dream (on Netflix streaming, btw) a guy tries the climb in Mallory’s style of clothing and decides that it’s just too cold, but there’s also this BBC article and a different guy thinks they would do just fine. He didn’t actually summit though, so he could be wrong.
I suspect it just depends on the weather, much like it does now. I would guess that the Mallory era gear won’t protect you like modern equipment but if you luck out and catch Everest on a good day it would probably do the job.
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I see what you did there. 
Not certain, but due to centrifugal force (yes, I know) the earth is not round, the equator being a bit farther from the center than the poles. I assume that the air in the atmosphere does the same thing, so the atmosphere is “taller” at the equator than the poles, which would mean it is denser at any given altitude above mean sea level.
Another factor may be that during the climbing season at Denali, the days are extremely long, so the temperatures may be higher than mountains in more equatorial regions. Temperature has significant effect on density.
My first guess would have been the same as yours, but apparently it’s almost entirely because the higher latitudes are generally colder. Link