One of the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest is dead at 88. On May 29, 1953 Sir Edmund Percival Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay made history.
Snow and wind held up the pair at the South Col for two days. They set out on May 28 with a support trio of (George) Lowe, Alfred Gregory and Ang Nyima. The two pitched a tent at 8,500 metres (27,900 ft) on 28 May while their support group returned down the mountain. On the following morning, Hillary discovered his boots had frozen solid outside the tent. He spent two hours warming them before he and Tenzing attempted the final ascent, wearing 30-pound packs. The crucial move of the last part of the ascent was the 40-foot (12 m) rock face later named the “Hillary Step”. Hillary saw a means to wedge his way up a crack in the face between the rock wall and ice, and Tenzing followed. From there, the following effort was relatively simple. They reached the summit at 11:30 am. As Hillary put it, “A few more whacks of the ice axe in the firm snow, and we stood on top.”
They spent only about 15 minutes at the summit. They unsuccessfully looked for evidence of the earlier Mallory expedition. Hillary took Tenzing’s photo, Tenzing left chocolates in the snow as an offering, and Hillary left a cross that he had been given. [wiki]
His own words (via CNN):
“Another few weary steps and there was nothing above us but the sky. There was no false cornice, no final pinnacle. We were standing together on the summit. There was enough space for about six people. We had conquered Everest.
“Awe, wonder, humility, pride, exaltation — these surely ought to be the confused emotions of the first men to stand on the highest peak on Earth, after so many others had failed,” Hillary noted.
“But my dominant reactions were relief and surprise. Relief because the long grind was over and the unattainable had been attained. And surprise, because it had happened to me, old Ed Hillary, the beekeeper, once the star pupil of the Tuakau District School, but no great shakes at Auckland Grammar (high school) and a no-hoper at university, first to the top of Everest. I just didn’t believe it.
He said: “I removed my oxygen mask to take some pictures. It wasn’t enough just to get to the top. We had to get back with the evidence. Fifteen minutes later we began the descent.” [CNN]
Hillary was so humble, he refused to say who had reached the pinnacle of Mount Everest first, until well after his dear friend Norgay passed away. He was diffident, too:
Hillary married Louise Mary Rose on 3 September 1953, soon after the ascent of Everest. A shy man, he relied on his future mother-in-law to propose on his behalf. They had three children: Peter (1954), Sarah (1955), and Belinda (1959).
In 1975, while en route to join Hillary in the village of Phaphlu, where he was helping build a hospital, Louise and Belinda were killed in a plane crash near Kathmandu airport shortly after take-off. [wiki]
Hillary remarried in 1990. Among his many roles in life, he was the Ambassador to India from New Zealand, in the ’80s.
Humble and inspirational:
Hillary summarized it for schoolchildren in 1998, when he said one didn’t have to be a genius to do well in life.
“I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it,” he said before planting some endangered Himalayan oaks in the school grounds.
The planting was part of his program to reforest upland areas of Nepal. [CNN]
Hillary was more interested in contributing to Nepal than receiving glory for his accomplishments.
Hillary never forgot the small mountainous country that propelled him to worldwide fame. He revisited Nepal constantly over the next 54 years.
Without fanfare and without compensation, Hillary spend decades pouring energy and resources from his own fund-raising efforts into Nepal through the Himalayan Trust he founded in 1962.
Known as “burra sahib” — “big man,” for his 6 feet 2 inches — by the Nepalese, Hillary funded and helped build hospitals, health clinics, airfields and schools.
He raised funds for higher education for Sherpa families, and helped set up reforestation programs in the impoverished country. About $250,000 a year was raised by the charity for projects in Nepal.
A strong conservationist, he demanded that international mountaineers clean up thousands of tons of discarded oxygen bottles, food containers and other climbing debris that litter the lower slopes of Everest.
His commitment to Nepal took him back more than 120 times. His adventurer son Peter has described his father’s humanitarian work there as “his duty” to those who had helped him. [CNN]
Everlasting be his memory.
