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When Everest fell
Humble determination in 1953 ... Edmund Hillary (left) and Tenzing Norgay.
The world celebrates 50 years of the conquest of the Mt. Everest (May 29, 1953) this year.
Sir Edmund Hillary and late Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first persons to set foot on the summit of the world's highest peak. Sir Edmund spoke exclusively to NEENA BHANDARI from the quietude of his home in Auckland, New Zealand, where he lives with his wife, June. He looks back at the sanctity and charm associated with the climb in his days. At 83, he still loves the mountains and the challenge of the climb but expressed concern at how the expeditions now are so commercialised.
What was the view from the "Roof of the World" at 29,035 feet?
The view is still distinctly imprinted on my mind — the barren highlands of Tibet, the valleys and big ridges going into India and other great mountains like Kanchenjunga and Chomolhari on the east and west.
Where and how did you meet Tenzing? Did you have a close friendship?
I knew of Tenzing by repute. He was known to be a very competent climber. Before I met him, he had climbed many mountains. The first time I met him was at the start of our Mt. Everest expedition in Kathmandu. I was very impressed. He was a very good-looking Sherpa. Quite tall and big for a Sherpa, very strong and I knew by repute that he was a great acclimatiser and a very good climber. I immediately thought he was a formidable man on a mountain. Initially, when we climbed together, we were good climbing companions.
But I wouldn't have said that when we were actually on Mt. Everest we were close friends. Perhaps communication was one of the problems. I certainly didn't speak Sherpa and his English wasn't great at that time, but we could communicate sufficiently for mountaineering purposes. Later on when I was in Delhi as the New Zealand High Commissioner to India, I saw a great deal of Tenzing. He had become much more fluent in English and we became very good friends. We had lots of discussions about family problems and the problems of the mountains.
It was in his last four or five years that Tenzing and I became very close friends.
June and Sir Edmund Hillary.
Almost 50 years after your conquest, your son, Peter Hillary, and Tenzing's grandson, Tenzing Tashi Norgay, climbed the Everest together last year. What kind of feeling did it arouse in you? Was it nostalgia or pride or may be both?
I was delighted to see that my son and Tenzing's grandson were successful in climbing Mt. Everest. I didn't worry about it too much except in the last couple of days. Peter had radio communication and I was able to talk to him on his way up the upper parts of the mountain.
In a way perhaps that was a disadvantage. I always knew where he was. He would tell me that climbing in some places was difficult and that they were battling their way on and finally they reached the summit. In a way, I was too close to the problems he had to meet.
Of course, when we climbed the Everest, we had no communication with the outside world, so we didn't have to worry about that.
Who between the two of you was the first to put foot on the summit?
We climbed together. We arrived together. I was leading the rope and I cut steps upto the summit and Tenzing joined me.
The point was that we regarded ourselves as a team and who reached the actual summit first was really unimportant to us.
Was it mere chance that you were asked to join Sir John Hunt's team?
I was a New Zealander and in those days New Zealand had a close relationship with the United Kingdom. I was a British subject and a New Zealand citizen. Now it is all different, of course, and we are an independent country. It is because of that and also because Eric Shipton, the famous British climber, had a great respect for New Zealand climbers. He invited me to go on a reconnaissance of the south side of Mt. Everest. I got to know him very well and once you have been successful on an expedition, you tend to be invited once again and that is what happened in 1953.
Why did conquest of the Everest mean so much to the world when you and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay achieved the historic feat?
The Everest then was unclimbed. It was the highest mountain. It was a great challenge and we were successful in reaching the summit. Also, I believe, the work I did for the mountain people with schools, hospitals and airfields has also become very widely known and people regard that as a very worthwhile thing to do. It is a combination of the challenges and overcoming them and of perhaps the good work we have done with our great friends, the local people.
Was it a way of giving something back to the people and the mountains that have given you so much?
Yes, in cooperation with the Sherpas, we have built 27 schools, two hospitals, two airfields and bridges over wide rivers. My wife and my youngest daughter died in a plane crash in Nepal.
Later on I married a very good friend of ours, June, and she has been working with me in the Himalayas.
She is very good at thinking out good ideas and is very warmly accepted by people in Nepal.
The writer is a freelance journalist based in Sydney.
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