[pct-l] I've heard rumor that Tenzing Norgay made it to the top first...

[Mike Saenz]

Goodbye, Sir Ed.

 

Edmund Hillary, first to climb Mt. Everest, dies

His exploit brought him worldwide fame and a lifelong fealty to Nepal.

By Dennis McLellan

January 11, 2008

Sir Edmund Hillary, the mountain-climbing New Zealand beekeeper who
became a mid-20th century hero as the first person to reach the summit
of Mt. Everest, has died. He was 88.

Hillary, who made his historic climb to the top of the world's highest
peak with Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay of Nepal, died today at a
hospital in Auckland City, New Zealand, according to Prime Minister
Helen Clark. A statement from the Auckland District Health Board said he
died of a heart attack.

"Sir Ed described himself as an average New Zealander with modest
abilities. In reality, he was a colossus," Clark said.

Ed Viesturs, who has climbed Everest six times and was the first
American to climb all of the world's mountains over 8,000 meters -- or
26,200 feet -- without supplemental oxygen, said Hillary was "definitely
a hero of mine."

"He's iconic," Viesturs told The Times. "I mean, he went to a place
where no other man had gone before."

Eight previous British expeditions had failed to reach the top of the
29,035-foot mountain, and a number of expedition members had died in the
process, most famously climbing partners George Mallory and Andrew
Irvine, who went missing on Everest in 1924.

But at 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, Hillary and Tenzing made it to the
top of the world.

Hillary's first words, to fellow climber George Lowe, when he and
Tenzing returned from the summit were, "Well, George, we knocked the
bastard off!"

Word of the Everest expedition's success reached England the night
before the coronation of Elizabeth II, resulting in a memorable
newspaper headline the next morning: "All this and Everest too!"

Hillary and John Hunt, the British army colonel who led the Everest
expedition, were knighted by Queen Elizabeth. Tenzing received the
George Medal, the second-highest award for gallantry that can be given
to a civilian.

Hailed as one of the 20th century's great adventurers, the 33-year-old
Hillary became one of the most famous men alive, his long, rugged face
appearing on magazine covers and postage stamps.

The tall and lean Hillary never expected to become a celebrity.

"I was a bit naive, really," he told the Detroit Free Press in 2000. "I
was just a country boy. I thought the mountaineering world would be
interested, but I never dreamed that it would have that effect on people
who didn't climb."

And, he maintained, he never regarded himself as a hero.

"I was a mountaineer who worked to reach the summits of mountains," he
told USA Today in 1998. "Even in my 79th year, I don't believe a word of
the rubbish printed over the years."

Conquering Everest wasn't the last of Hillary's epic adventures.

He later climbed other peaks in the Himalayas, and in 1958 led a team of
New Zealanders past a British team in a race to the South Pole in large
snow tractors across 1,200 miles of glaciers and heavily crevassed snow
fields.

In 1960, he was back in the Himalayas, attempting to track down the
legendary Yeti -- the Abominable Snowman -- with animal expert Marlin
Perkins, and to conduct high-altitude physiology experiments.

In 1977, he led a jet-boat expedition up the Ganges River from the Bay
of Bengal to as close to the river's source in the Himalayas as they
could go -- a 1,500-mile journey.

That was followed by 100 miles on foot to more than 18,000 feet, where
Hillary was stricken with a cerebral edema and had to be rescued by
helicopter after being carried to 15,500 feet.

In 1985, he became New Zealand high commissioner -- or ambassador -- to
India and was based in New Delhi for several years.

But along with the triumphs came tragedy.

In 1975, Hillary's wife, Louise, and their 16-year-old daughter,
Belinda, were killed when the single-engine plane they were flying in
crashed on takeoff at the airport in Katmandu, Nepal.

In 1989, he married June Mulgrew, a longtime family friend and widow of
fellow mountaineer Peter Mulgrew, who had taken Hillary's place as a
commentator on a 1979 Antarctic sightseeing flight and died when the
plane crashed.

Over the years, Hillary served as a camping equipment advisor for Sears,
lectured widely and wrote a number of books, including "High Adventure,"
"The Crossing of Antarctica," "No Latitude for Error," "From the Ocean
to the Sky," "Nothing Venture, Nothing Win" and "View From the Summit."

Hillary spent much of his time raising funds for his Himalayan Trust. He
founded the nonprofit organization in 1961 as a way to give back to the
Sherpas, one of the many ethnic groups native to Nepal, who served as
guides for Western expeditions in the Himalayas.

By 2006, the trust had built 27 schools, two hospitals and 13 village
health clinics, in addition to rebuilding bridges, constructing
drinking-water systems and providing scholarships, among other projects.

"Nothing in life can be more satisfying than being the first," Hillary
said in 2000, "but what I'm proudest of is my work in the Himalayas."

The middle of three children, Hillary was born July 20, 1919, in
Auckland.

His father ran a small weekly newspaper in the country town of Tuakau,
where the family lived on seven acres that included half a dozen cows, a
large vegetable garden and orchards. His father's hobby was beekeeping,
and he eventually abandoned journalism to run what had become a
profitable commercial beekeeping enterprise.

Introverted and bookish, Hillary did so well in grammar school that he
skipped two grades. But the gawky boy was shorter and weaker than his
classmates.

Intending to become an engineer, he entered the University of Auckland.
But he found it difficult to adapt and lacked interest, so he dropped
out after two years and went to work in his father's beekeeping
business.

Hillary, who first saw snow at 16 when he went on a school skiing trip
to Mt. Ruapehu on New Zealand's North Island, began climbing four years
later when he, a friend and a guide climbed a small peak near a resort
on South Island.

In 1944, he was called up for service in the Royal New Zealand Air Force
and flew on search-and-rescue operations in Fiji.

After the war, he returned to climbing and scaled New Zealand's
snow-covered 12,349-foot Mt. Cook, which he later described as "the
ambition of all local climbers."

"I knew right away that this is what I wanted to do -- spend my life
among the mountains and the snow and the ice," he told the Detroit Free
Press in 2000. "I had never been happier in my life, and I couldn't wait
to do it again."

After a trip to the Alps in Europe, Hillary made his first climbing
venture to the Himalayas in 1951. A year later, he joined a "training
run" in Nepal for the team the Everest Committee intended to send to
Everest in 1953.

In his 1975 autobiography "Nothing Venture, Nothing Win," Hillary said
Everest "represented the ultimate in achievement; the supreme challenge
for flesh and blood and spirit."

Launched with what Hillary described as "an atmosphere of excitement and
optimism," the large team of Britons, New Zealanders, Sherpas and
supply-carrying porters established base camp on April 12.

On May 26, Charles Evans and Tom Bourdillon, who had been chosen to make
the first assault to the top of Everest, made it over the South Summit.
But they had problems with their oxygen equipment, and because of that
and their exhaustion, they decided to turn back at 28,700 feet. The next
day, the two climbers were taken down to safer levels.

That left the second assault team, Hillary and Tenzing.

On their final ascent May 29, Hillary and Tenzing awoke at 4 a.m. in
their small tent perched on a sloping ledge they had dug out with ice
axes the day before. The temperature at 27,900 feet was minus 27
degrees. But, Hillary wrote in "Nothing Venture, Nothing Win," "the
weather looked perfect and the view superb."

At 6:30 a.m., after eating, loading up on fluid and thawing out their
frozen boots, the two men started climbing.

At 9 a.m., Hillary wrote, "we cramponed up onto the fine peak of the
South Summit." After about an hour, they encountered a vertical rock
step in the ridge.

"This appeared to be quite a problem," Hillary wrote. "However, the step
was bounded on its right by a vertical snow cliff, and I was able to
work my way up this 40-foot crack and finally get over the top."

After bringing Tenzing up, he wrote, "I really felt now that we were
going to get to the top and that nothing would stop us."

At 11:30 a.m., the two men were standing on the summit of Mt. Everest.

"I stretched out my arm for a handshake, but this was not enough for
Tenzing, who threw his arms around my shoulders in a mighty hug and I
hugged him back in return," Hillary wrote in "View From the Summit."

Concerned about their oxygen supply, they began the climb down after 15
minutes.

From the beginning, Hillary was asked whether he or Tenzing was actually
the first to set foot on the summit of Everest.

"This has always been a controversial thing, but not between Tenzing and
myself," Hillary said in 1984. "I actually did lead the last few hundred
feet up to the summit. But it was of complete unimportance as far as the
mountaineer is concerned."

In 2000, Hillary said, "It was a very silly thing, really. We were a
team, and what difference did it make that one of us reached the top a
few seconds ahead of the other? But I finally got tired of all the
questions, [so] when Tenzing wrote [that Hillary was about 6 feet ahead]
in his book, I admitted it too."

Before Hillary and Tenzing reached the summit, no one really knew
whether it was humanly possible to do so, Hillary told People magazine.

"The physiologists had warned us that they weren't sure we would
survive. They felt that the human body might not be able to withstand
the lack of oxygen. So once we climbed it, we removed the psychological
barrier for everyone else."

In the years since Hillary and Tenzing made history, many others have
followed in their footsteps.

By 2006, aided by advances in tents, sleeping bags and climbing gear,
about 3,000 people reportedly had reached the top of Everest; 207 had
died trying.

Hillary was bothered by the commercialization of Everest, in which
guides would take anyone to the top who could afford it, with fees
ranging upward of $65,000.

But he and Tenzing "were really the lucky ones," Hillary told the Boston
Globe in 1998.

"We had to do everything ourselves: establish the route, battle our way
up the ice cliffs and across the crevices, make our way up the mountain.
It was up to us to do it all."

Hillary spent his later years living in a roomy but unpretentious home
he built in Auckland in 1960.

Even as he entered his 80s, he continued to travel several months a year
in Europe and the United States, raising funds to maintain the schools,
hospitals and clinics in Nepal built by the Himalayan Trust he had
founded.

"I've discovered you can't just build something and walk away from it,"
he said. "You have to keep involved to ensure it will be a success."

Tenzing died of a lung infection in 1986 at 72.

In addition to his wife, Hillary's survivors include his children Peter
and Sarah.

 

________________________________

Michael Saenz 
Associate Partner


MVE Studio, Inc. | Architecture 
Irvine + Oakland + Honolulu 

1900 Main Street, Suite 800 | Irvine, California 92614-7318 | T
949.809.2700 | www.mve-studio.com <http://www.mve-studio.com/> 

  <http://www.mve-studio.com/> 

 


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