In 1979, a Chinese climber named Wang Hungbao reported to a Japanese expedition leader that, in 1975, he had discovered the body of an "English dead" at . Wang was killed in an avalanche the day after this verbal report, so the location was never more precisely fixed. The Chinese Mountaineering Association officially denied the sighting claim. In 1986, Chinese climber Zhang Junyan—who had been sharing the tent with Wang in 1975—confirmed, to Tom Holzel, Wang's report of finding a foreign climber's body. Zhang stated that Wang had been out for only 20 minutes. If this report was accurate, at that altitude and date, the body must have been that of Irvine.