In 1923, Irvine took part in the Merton College Arctic Expedition to Spitsbergen, where he excelled on every front. The expedition's leader, Noel Odell, and he discovered that they had met before in 1919 on Foel Grach, a 3000-foot-high Welsh mountain, when Irvine had ridden his motorcycle to the top and surprised Odell and his wife Mona, who had climbed it on foot. Subsequently, on Odell's recommendation, Irvine was invited to join the forthcoming third British Mount Everest expedition on the grounds that he might be the superman that the expedition felt it needed. He was at the time still a 21-year-old undergraduate student.