Hillary: a man to match the mountain

Click to see historic slideshow, "40 Years of Everest"

We would be remiss not to note, and mourn, the passing of Sir Edmund Hillary. The lanky, modest beekeeper with a hankering for adventure was the one of the first two men to climb Everest, in 1953, with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay by his side. It’s often said that someone had to do it, someone had to be the first, but history could not have chosen a better pair of men to accomplish the task.

Ed Hillary was an energetic young man from New Zealand in the early 1951 who showed up in Nepal and Tibet, with fellow Kiwi and climbing buddy George Lowe. Hillary’s own account of these early years, culminating of course with the first summit climb of Everest, is found in High Adventure: The True Story of the First Ascent of Everest, a highly recommended read. This is adventuring at its most direct, before the onset of commercialism and the kind of “jackass” style of one-upsmanship (first without oxygen, first solo, first solo without oxygen, first solo without oxygen wearing ladies’ undergarments) that is hard to miss today.

Hillary’s motivation to climb Everest was pure, and simple: For the love of climbing, of testing oneself, of meeting an objective challenge. Others, primarily British, sought to make the climb for King and Country, ideals rather than the single idea. He was a late addition to John Hunt’s British Expedition of 1953, he was not on the first climbing team, other men were sickened by the altitude. But he was there and he was ready, and of such a conflux are great men made: Hillary and Tenzing reached the summit of Everest on May 29, 1953, just before noon.

When the pair was met by Lowe on their way down the mountain, it was with characteristic directness and perspective that Hillary’s announced success: “Well, George, we knocked the bastard off.” News of the successful climb reached London during the coronation ceremonies for Queen Elizabeth, on June 2, and the historic moment seemed fraught with blessing.

Few men carried the weight of heroism as well as Hillary. He expanded his pursuits to include sub-zero overlanding, making the first wheel-based journey to the South Pole in 1958. In 1977 he led a jetboat expedition from the mouth of the Ganges River to its source. In 1985, he flew to the North Pole with Neil Armstrong, and thus became the first man to stand on top of the “three poles”—North, South, and Everest.

Though he continued to climb until 1965, reaching the summits of ten other Himalayan peaks, he began to develop high-altitude sickness and couldn’t go above 4000 meters in later years. So his attention turned ever-more toward the people of Nepal who had welcomed him at the gateway of his global fame. He organized funding for schools, hospitals, reforestation and other projects for the Sherpa though the Himalayan Trust.

Likewise, Tenzing Norgay ably shouldered the fame and later turned his energies toward the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, which trains nationals to safely and responsibly climb and care for their landscape. Norgay died in 1986, but at least three of his sons have summitted Everest in his wake, and another is vice-president the American Himalayan Foundation, established more than 30 years ago, with the support of, among others, Hillary.

Over 10 years ago I collaborated on a media project celebrating the spirit of adventure, called “The Adventure Disc.” Much of it was retail (Ten Best Trips with MTS, that sort of thing), but embedded within was a feature called “40 Years of Everest.” The AD (for such we had come to call it) came out in 1993, 40 years after the historic climb. We approached Hillary, and he was more than willing to lend what support he could, advocating for access to the Royal Geographical Society’s image library, and lending his voice to our narration.

The result, I think, was pretty good for its time, and through the magic of cross-media transfer (in this case D-A-D-D) I’ve managed to pull out the feature, “40 Years of Everest,” and present it here in our Adventure Channel. There’s an irritating static in the soundtrack, but at least the audio is continuous (narration by Christine Furnas, with Norbu Tenzing reading from his father's account; music and effects by Chip Harris), and the transition effects are improved from the slow top-to-bottom scroll that the original PhotoCD format did. Richard Bangs produced, I did the usual rest, and Mountain Travel Sobek and Custom Process film labs in Berkeley contributed support.

There’s only one thing left to say: Click to play. And think of Ed Hillary once in awhile, and send him your thanks.

Images on this page courtesy Royal Geographical Society.