NZ Scene: Hillary, Tenzing reached the highest place on earth

They came to conquer a mountain

In 1953, Edmund Hillary and the Nepalese mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Towering a shade over 29,000 feet, they had conquered the highest place on earth.

“By conquering Everest, Hillary and Norgay affirmed the power of humble determination and won for the underdog everywhere,” noted one magazine.

Born near Auckland in 1918, Hillary, a bookkeeper, cut his teeth on the New Zealand Alps. In 1951 he was a member of two “curtain raiser” expeditions. He joined a New Zealand expedition in the Central Himalayas in 1951, and later took part in a reconnaissance of the southern flank of Everest.

By the time he was aged 33, Hillary, lanky in build, had reached the “foremost rank” among mountaineers in New Zealand. John Hunt, the leader of the ascent of Everest in 1953, was convinced “that the Kiwi would not only be a strong contender for Everest, but for the eventual summit party.”
 

‘We went for outstanding stamina, skill and unflinching resolve of
 Hillary and Tenzing.’

Eric Shipton who led a training expedition to the Himalayas the previous year, which included Hillary, predicted that the New Zealander had the steel to leave his footprint on Everest. “How right he was,” writes Hunt. Hillary, according to Hunt, was quiet, exceptionally strong “and abounding in restless energy.”

According to Hunt, he was “possessed of a strong mind which swept aside all unproved obstacles.” From 1921 to 1953 Everest had been an irresistible magnet for adventurers. There had been at least eight expeditions which had “a definite mission” to get to the top but failed.

George Mallory, an English schoolmaster, had three attempts. In 1921, a travelling companion told Mallory he was taking a pink umbrella so as “to protect him from snowstorms and sunlight … to make him picturesque against the landscape.”

In 1924, the last trip he made, Mallory and his companion, Andrew Irvine, both disappeared. Mallory wrote to his wife of his first sighting: “Incredibly higher in the sky than imagination had ventured to dream, the top of Everest appeared … amazing in its simplicity.” 

“Well, George, we’ve knocked the bastard off!”
 

Mallory’s frozen corpse was discovered in 2002 by veteran climbers who retraced his old route.  Charles Warren failed in his bid in 1935; and Charles Houston led an Anglo-American expedition in 1938 and 1953.

A correspondent from The Times, who accompanied the expedition, remembers the Hillary-Tenzing triumph as an enterprise “that involved no great sacrifice.”  

Writing in Time magazine, the correspondent, now a well-known author, noted that neither Hillary nor Tenzing “went in for unnecessary bravado…nobody was killed, maimed, or even frostbitten …They were not the least aggressive, except in a technical sense. They were considerate members of a team.”

Also, part of the team was another New Zealander, George Lowe. It was reported that Hillary’s first words when he returned from the summit to his fellow New Zealander were “Well, George, we’ve knocked the bastard off!”

There is no doubt in Hunt’s mind that the success of the venture was attributed to the “outstanding stamina, skill and unflinching resolve” of Hillary and Tenzing.

The patron of the Expedition, HRH The Duke of Edinburgh, later described the achievement, “in the human terms of physical effort and endurance alone”’ as one which “will live in history as a shining example to all mankind.” Hillary was knighted in 1953.

In 1960 Hillary embarked on a fruitless search for the Abominable snowman. A year later he suffered a mild cerebral stroke while climbing Mt Makalu (8,470m) in Nepal.

Sir Edmund Hillary died on January 11, 2008. He was aged 88.
 

Mount Everest - Hillary and Tenzing