Spencer Matthews is the brother-in-law of Pippa Middleton, sister of the Princess of Wales. Photo / Getty Images
Spencer Matthews is the brother-in-law of Pippa Middleton, sister of the Princess of Wales. Photo / Getty Images
Spencer Matthews has set out to climb Mount Everest to find the body of his brother Michael - who died while ascending the peak in 1999.
Matthews, the reality star of Made in Chelsea fame - and the brother-in-law of Pippa Middleton - wanted to retrace his brother’s steps after his death at the summit, reports the Daily Mail. Michael spent around 20 minutes at the top before descending into the “death zone” on May 13, 1999.
Michael, an experienced mountaineer who climbed Kilimanjaro, the Swiss Alps and the Pyrenees, was the 162nd person to die on Everest, and his body has never been recovered. He was 22.
But in a new documentary called Finding Michael, set for release on Disney+ in February 2023, Matthews will embark on a journey to find his brother’s body and bring him home.
He had the support of his parents and of his brother James, husband of the Princess of Wales’ sister Pippa, and had months of therapy before setting out.
Matthews told Holly Rubenstein’s The Travel Diaries podcast that he was “aching to find out more” about his brother’s death.
“I was 10 at the time. I remember thinking it was really unfair. I always believed that I’d see him again and never took it on the chin that he was dead. I thought it was impossible. It never crushed me in the way it affected my parents and my brother,” he recalled.
“I’ve always been uncomfortable with him being up there, especially in plain sight. Around 600 people a year summit Everest. I’ve always been uncomfortable that he could be laying up there like some kind of tourist attraction but also on his own, away from us.
“He died up there and his last thoughts will probably have been that he’s never going to see his family again. We have not seen his body and I set off to go to Everest and find him and bring him home.”
Matthews made it to South Base Camp, which he described as “a brutal place” via Namche Bazaar in northeastern Nepal, making the journey just days after his son Otto’s birth as a “weather window” made it possible to climb the mountain. The base camp is at an altitude of 5,364m.
As part of the film, Matthews and his team retraced his brother’s exact steps, staying in the same places and walking the same paths.
Pippa Middleton married James Matthews in 2017. Photo / Neil Mockford
“It’ll be a really powerful and amazing film ... I’m going to slip and give things away if I carry on. But I do urge people to watch it.”
The events surrounding Michael’s death led to a bitter dispute between his family, the guides who climbed with him and the company that organised the trip. His father David Matthews brought a case against three men working for the company, claiming the guides’ negligence was to blame for his son’s death, but the case was dismissed.
Matthews wrote about the loss of his brother in his 2013 book Confessions of a Chelsea Boy: The Autobiography.
“His loss was devastating for the family and over time this became worse because the circumstances surrounding Michael’s death have never been fully explained.
“James took the news badly. With just a year and a half between them, he and Mike were the closest of friends. The loss was heartbreaking for James.”
