“NO MATTER HOW GREAT THE ODDS THAT ARE STACKED AGAINST YOU, IT IS POSSIBLE TO ACHIEVE WHAT TO MANY WOULD SEEM IMPOSSIBLE.”
WILLEM PELSER
THE EXPLORERS
MOUNT EVEREST
At 11.30am, on 29 May 1953, a lanky beekeeper from Auckland stepped onto the summit of Mount Everest and into the legend books. Together with the Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, Hillary was the first to set foot on the summit of the world’s highest mountain – 29 028 feet above sea level – a feat which had eluded seven major expeditions between 1920 and 1952.
Recalling the details of the epic climb in 1954, Hillary summarized the excitement and relief of the last moments.
“I cut my way cautiously up the next few feet, probing ahead with my pick. The snow is solid, firmly packed. We stagger up the final stretch. We are there. Nothing above us, a world below. I feel no great elation at first, just relief and a sense of wonder. Then I turn to Tenzing and shake his hand. Even through the snow glasses, the ice-encrusted mask, the knitted helmet, I can see that happy, flashing smile. He throws his arms around my shoulders, and we thump each other, and there is very little we can say or need to say.”
Once they have completed the treacherous route down the summit, Hillary’s reaction was more prosaic. “We’ve knocked the bastard off!” he famously told George Lowe, a fellow New Zealander on the expedition. His life would never be the same again. Knighted by the Queen, he became world famous. With Sir John Hunt, the expedition’s leader, he co-authored The Ascent of Everest, an instant bestseller. To this day, all Everest climbers who approach the summit from the south must first negotiate the Hillary step, a forty-foot ice-covered rock step named in his honour.
It is easy now, more than half a century after that legendary ascent, to forget how much uncertainty then surrounded man’s ability to deal with such extreme altitudes.
“We didn’t know if it was humanly possible to reach the top of Mount Everest, and even using oxygen as we were, if we did get to the top, we weren’t at all sure whether we wouldn’t drop dead or something of that nature.”
Hillary was born in 1919 and grew up in Auckland. As a child he was something of a dreamer, who did not have many friends. He was a very keen walker and as he walked along the roads and tracks around the countryside area, he would be dreaming. His mind would be miles away and he would be slashing villains with swords and capturing beautiful maidens and doing all sorts of heroic things, just purely in his dreams. He used to love walking for hours and hours and his mind would be far away in all sorts of heroic efforts. At 16, he made his first visit to the mountains and fell in love with the snow and ice. He went on to start climbing seriously, first in his own country, then in the Alps and later still in the Himalayas, where he demonstrated his prowess and suitability for the attempt on Everest by climbing 11 peaks of 20 000 feet or more.
In 1951-1952, Hillary threw down another marker on two Everest reconnaissance expeditions which brought him to the attention of Colonel John Hunt, leader of the 1953 expedition. A Swiss expedition had turned back 1 000 feet from the summit in 1952 so all knew it was make or break for Hunt’s team. Together, they seized the opportunity.
For a man whose childhood hero was the British explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, it was fitting that Hillary should turn from climbing mountains to traversing the Antarctic. Between 1955-1958, he led the New Zealand section of the trans-Antarctic expedition and reached the South Pole by tractor. Though the expedition continued, - in 1977 he led a jet-boat expedition to the mountain source of the River Ganges – increasingly it took second place to improving the welfare of the Nepalese. Above all, he threw himself into providing the Sherpas with airfields, schools, hospitals, and medical clinics. It was his way of thanking them for Tenzing’s help in getting him to the top of the world.
Personal tragedy intervened in 1975, when his wife and daughter, flying into the hills of Nepal where he was working on a hospital, were killed in a planer crash. It was “an absolute disaster”, he said later. “The two people that meant the most to me in life had been killed in one fell swoop.” Solace was slow to arrive and came only with his marriage to June, a family friend, years later.
Friends and colleagues describe Hillary as a modest man, never one to brag or boast about his achievements. He described himself as a very mediocre person.
With full-blown exploration behind him, the scope of Hillary’s interests and activities broadened. He has worked on medical and conservation campaigns and founded the Himalaya Trust. Whatever his protestations to the contrary, the rest of the world will remember him in grand, heroic terms.
As the Duke of Edinburgh, patron of the 1953 expedition, said: “In the human terms of physical effort and endurance alone it will live on as a shining example to all mankind.”
Hillary’s own message to future generations is typically pithy. He is not a man given to extended monologues. He says: “Aim high! There is little virtue in easy victory.”
We as hikers, explorers and adventurers have the absolute duty to respect and protect our Wildernesses. Nobody else will do it for us. Take ownership!
The End.
Safe Hiking.
References and Acknowledgements
From the book – Faces of Exploration – Joanna Vestey
Photos: ©W Pelser
Compiled by: Willem Pelser
