EDMUND HILLARY, TENZING NORGAY AND THE FIRST ASCENT OF MT. EVEREST

FIRST ASCENT OF MT. EVEREST

On May 29, 1953, New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the 8,848-meter (29,029-foot) summit of Mt. Everest. Everest is sometimes called the third pole. It wasn't conquered until about 40 years after Adm. Robert Peary made it the North Pole in 1909 and Norwegian Roald Amundsen made it to the South Pole in 1911. It has been said the summitting of Everest and the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon were the last great accomplishments and adventures of mankind. [Sources: Jan Morris, Smithsonian magazine, May 2003]

Describing Hillary’s and Tenzing’s achievement James (Jan) Morris, the journalist who covered the first ascent, wrote in Time, "By any rational standard, this was no big deal. Aircraft had long before flown over the summit, and within a few decades literally hundred of other people from many nations would climber Everest too...Geography was not furthered by the achievement, scientific progress was scarcely hastened, and nothing new was discovered. Yet the names of Hillary and Tenzing went instantly into all languages as the names of heroes, partly because they really were men of heroic mold but chiefly because they represented so compellingly the spirit of their time.”

The summiting of Mt. Everest was the last hurrah for the British Empire at a time when Britain’s influence in the world was declining. News of the event reached the world just as Queen Elizabeth was preparing to be crowned at Westminster Abbey. BBC radio’s lead story was the Mt. Everest climb not the coronation. It also helped put Nepal on the map. Before 1953 it was almost unknown to foreigners and few outsiders had even been there.

Tenzing Norgay

Tenzing Norgay (1914-1986) is arguably the world's best known Nepalese citizen. The son of yak herder, he was born in May 1914 but he was not born in Thame, Nepal as was long claimed. He was born in Tibet in a village called Moyan, near the great Himalayan mountain of Makula, about a day's trek from Mt. Everest. He wasn't a Sherpa either. He was Tibetan. The fact that he was born in Tibet was kept secret until after his death because Tenzing and the Nepalese government were not so keen on letting it be known that Tenzing was really a "Chinese climber."

Tenzing Norgay was born Namgyal Wangdi and is also referred to as Sherpa Tenzing. When his full names I not used some articles refer to him as Tenzing; others say Norgay. Norgay means “the fortunate one.” According to Tenzing’s son Jamling Tenzin Norgay, Tensing was in Tse Chu in the Kama Valley in Tibet. He spent his early childhood in Kharta, nearby to the north, and went to Nepal as a child to work for a Sherpa family in Khumbu. He grew up in Thame, Nepal, according to his son Norbu Tenzing Norgay.

Tenzing spent the early years for his life herding yaks around the monastery compound near Ghang La, where there are splendid views of Mt. Everest. His family migrated to Darjeeling in the 1930s. Tenzing began his career as a mountaineer there. Beginning at age 18, he served on expedition teams for several different countries and was so good at high altitude climbing he was called "three lung talented man". In 1935, Tenzing worked for Charles Warren on an unsuccessful attempt to scale Mt. Everest. Later Warren introduced Tenzing to Hillary.

Sherpas like to say that Tenzing climbed mountains the way babies climb on their mother’s lap. Morris wrote in Smithsonian: He “was the charismatic leader of the Sherpas with the expedition and a famously formidable climber — he had climbed high on the northern flank of Everest in 1938, and on the southern flank in 1952, and knew the mountain as well as anyone. Tenzing could not at that time read or write, but his personality was wonderfully polished. As elegant of manner as of bearing, there was something princely to him.” Morris also said Tenzing was "a Himalayan fashion model: small, neat, rather delicate, brown as a berry, with the confident movements of a cat."

Sir Edmund Hillary

Sir Edmund Hillary (1919-2008) is the world's best known New Zealander. A beekeeper by profession, he is pictured on the New Zealand $5 note and was introduced to U.S. President Bill Clinton when he visited New Zealand in 1999. At a dinner, Hillary was asked if he compared his achievement to a sports hero like Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantel. No she said, "More like Neil Armstrong."

According to a Dupont/Gallup poll taken in 1996, the most impressive sports figure of the 20th century was: 1) Pele (15 percent); 2) Miguel Indurain (12 percent); Alberto Tomba (12 percent, but number one among women); 4) Muhammad Ali (10 percent), 5) Roald Amundsen (9 percent); 6) Ayton Senna (9 percent); 7) Franz Beckenbauer (7 percent); 8) Michel Schumacher (7 percent); 9) Gérrd D'Aborville (6 percent); 10) Edmund Hillary (6 percent); 11) Carl Lewis (6 percent); 12) Charles Lindberg (6 percent); 13) Alain Prost (5 percent); 14) Florence Arthaud (4 percent); 15) Michael Jordan (4 percent) and 15) Torville and Dean (4 percent).

Hillary was tall and lanky, not necessarily what you would thin for someone who could dexterously pull himself up the tallest mountains. He described himself as a “rough old New Zealander” and an average bloke...with a lot of determination.” Morris wrote in Smithsonian: Hillary was “a big, burly, merry, down-to-earth fellow...your proper, good-humored, imperturbable colonial boy.” He “was tall, lanky, big-boned and long-faced, and he moved with an incongruous grace, rather like a giraffe. He habitually wore on his head a homemade cap with a cotton flap behind, as seen in old movies of the French Foreign Legion."

Hillary is perhaps best compared with Charles A. Lindbergh, the first person to make a solo nonstop trans-Atlantic flight, in 1927. Robert D. McFadden wrote in New York Times: Like Lindbergh, Sir Edmund was a gangling, unpretentious and improbable hero, uncomfortable at first with the abrupt passage from obscurity to dazzling fame. Tough, rawboned, 6 feet 5 inches tall, with a long leathery and wrinkled face, he was an intelligent but unsophisticated man with tigerish confidence on a mountain but little taste for formal social doings. [Source: Robert D. McFadden, New York Times, January 10, 2008]

“For many years after the Everest climb, he continued to list his occupation as beekeeper — his father’s pursuit — and he preferred to be known as Ed. But as a mountaineer and adventurer, his exploits were impressive. He led several expeditions into the Himalayas, scaling many peaks around Everest in the 1950’s and 1960’s. He also led a highly publicized but unsuccessful search for the Abominable Snowman in 1960. “I am inclined to think that the realm of mythology is where the Yeti rightly belongs,” Sir Edmund wrote after weeks of trekking and investigation showed that footprints and sightings all had mundane explanations and relics of supposed Yeti skin and scalp actually came from bears and antelopes.

Hillary's Life

Edmund Percival Hillary was born on July 20, 1919, in Tuakau, near Auckland, the son of Percival Augustus Hillary and Gertrude Clark Hillary. His father, originally a journalist, was a commercial beekeeper. Edmund said he was too “weedy” for sports but the manual labor in the family beekeeping business built up his muscles. He was a professional beekeeper after high school. He shared the family beekeeping business with his brother Rex.

Edmund loved climbing, and at the age of 16 spent a weekend on Mount Ruapehu, a 9,175-foot dormant volcano in New Zealand. Each year after that he climbed New Zealand’s Southern Alps. He attended public schools in Auckland and Auckland University, and served in the Royal New Zealand Air Force as a navigator during World War II. [Source: Robert D. McFadden, New York Times, January 10, 2008]

In January 1940, when he was 21, Hillary visited Mount Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand, to decide whether to enlist to fight in World War II. He chose to be a conscientious objector and spent his time climbing around the mountain. He wanted to a mountains climber. That time in Mt. Cook “was the happiest day I had ever spent,” he later said. He also ended up serving in the British air force any way.

Hillary's Early Climbing Career

Hillary learned to climb in the southern Alps in New Zealand during the winter (that was the off season for a beekeeper). In 1948 he made a first ascent of the south ridge of Mt. Cook. He also climbed in France and in the Himalayas. In 1951, Hillary entered Nepal as part of the British Reconnaissance Expedition to Mt. Everest. Back then explorers had to walk the 280 kilometer (175 mile) distance between Kathmandu and the Everest Base Camp on foot, a process that took weeks and required hundreds of porters. On his seventh trip to Nepal, Hillary made the summit of Mt. Everest. He was 33.

Robert D. McFadden wrote in New York Times: After the war he resumed climbing seriously, taking instruction from leading alpinists and specializing in ice-climbing techniques. In 1950, he climbed in the Swiss Alps and got to know British mountaineers with Himalayan experience. The next year he joined a New Zealand expedition and climbed peaks of more than 20,000 feet in Nepal. [Source: Robert D. McFadden, New York Times, January 10, 2008]

“Sir Eric Shipton, the veteran Himalayan climber, took him on an expedition to reconnoiter the south face of Everest. Sir Edmund performed so well that he was invited to join the 1952 British expedition to Cho Oyu, which tested high-altitude equipment. As his reputation grew, Colonel Hunt chose him as a member of the 1953 expedition that conquered Everest.”

Organizing the 1953 Expedition That Summitted Everest

Eric Shipton (1907-1977) — a great British explorer best known for his adventures in the Himalayan region — was the man originally chosen to lead the 1953 expedition, which planted Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on the summit. In 1933, he came within 300 meters (a thousand feet) of the Everest summit and helped pioneer the route used by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. He extensively explored Western China and the Karakoram range and had a great number of female admirers. He also took a famous photograph of the Abominable Snowman footprints.

Shipton was famous for traveling light and having an uncanny ability to find his way in the most difficult, unmapped terrain. He once bragged he could "organize a Himalayan expedition in half an hour on the back of an envelope." This philosophy cost Shipton a leadership role in the 1953 expedition. After he was forced out in September 1952. John Hunt, a relatively unknown military man, was given the job. His first task was quelling a potential mutiny by Shipton supporters. By November, Hunt had selected the participants of of the expedition.

Packing for the 1953 expedition began in January at Andrew Lusk, Wapping Wall, London. Final equipment coordination meeting with members trying on gear and the like was held on January 20. The Final party conference was held on February 5. The main party and baggage set sail for India on February 12. The advance party flied to Kathmandu on February 20. On March 8, the expedition and baggage is assemble at Kathmandu. On March 27 the main party and advance party rendevous at Thyangboche, today a few days walk from Everest. On April 12 the Icefall party reached Base Camp (5,456 meters, 17,900 feet), about three vertical kilometers (two miles) below the summit. [Source: Robin Pagnamenta, The Times, June 2, 2012]

The climbers were: leader John Hunt 42, Charles Evans 33, Tom Bourdillion 28, Alfred Gregory 39, Edmund Hillary 33, George Lowe 28, Michael Westmacott 27, Charles Wylie 32, George Band 23, Wilfred Noyce 34, Michael Ward 27 (doctor). Griffith Pugh and Tom Stobart were sponsored to join the expedition by the Medical Research Council and Countryman Films Ltd Twenty Sherpas, including Tenzing, joined the party in Kathmandu

John Hunt: Leader of Successful Mt. Everest Expedition

John Hunt was the leader of the 1953 Everest expedition. He was a colonel in the King’s Royal Rifle Corpse and was a staff officer for famed general Bernard Montgomery in World War II. Hunt was a veteran mountaineer and an old India hand. Morris wrote in Smithsonian, Hunt “was in every way an incarnation of a leader, wiry, grizzled, often wry and utterly dedicated. Whatever he was asked to do, it seemed, time and again, he would do with earnest and unquenchable zeal.”

Hunt has been described as the "truest of true English gentlemen." Although would have loved to have made the summit himself he stayed behind at base camp while Hillary and Tenzing made history. He later said, "It was my ambition just as much as everybody else's in the party to be first to the top. I thought about it a lot and concluded that it was important for the leader to be in a position where he could exercise some control if necessary. I did not seem I could do both."

Hunt said his job was to arrange the logistics of the expedition and convince his climbers they were members of a team. He selected Hillary and Norgay out of group of climbers, all anxious to win glory and fame, based on their age, toughness, alpine experience, physical attributes and drive.

No one was killed or injured on the first successful Everest expedition. Hunt told Hillary and Tenzing: “The most important thing is for you chaps to come back safely.” Hunt said even though he was disappointed he didn't make the climb he said Hillary and Tenzing's success was the greatest moment of his life. Hunt was knighted as was Hillary.

Hillary and Tenzing’s Everest Expedition

The expedition that Hillary and Tenzing were part of included more than 400 people, including team of a half dozen climbers as well as a brain surgeon, a doctor, a physicist, a photographer, a physiologist, an agricultural statistician, a schoolmaster, an oil company executive, oxygen tank technicians and a poet and 35 Sherpa guides and climbers and 362 Sherpa and Nepalese porters, many of them veterans of previous British expeditions. The porters carried a total of 18 tons of equipment, food and supplies. Altogether nine camps were set up on Everest.

Morris wrote in Smithsonian magazine: The expedition “had a strong military element — most of its climbers had served in the armed forces. Most had been to the well-known English private schools. Several were at Oxford or Cambridge. Two were citizens of the most loyally British of the British dominions, New Zealand. One was from Nepal, and therefore seemed a sort of honorary Briton. Nearly all had previous Himalayan experience.”

The expedition spent more than three months on Mt. Everest. Morris wrote: “The expedition went like clockwork. It was rather like a military campaign. Hunt took few chances in his organization and tested everything first. He’d brought two kinds of oxygen equipment , for instance, and climbers tried them both. Camps established on the mountain flanks enabled men to haul equipment up in stages, and when they were sick or overtired...they went down to the valleys to rest.”

After the arriving at Everest Base Camp, much of the expedition involved sending coordinated teams up the mountain, carrying supplies to increasingly higher camps on the icy slopes and dangerous rock ledges. The ten tons of supplies was ferried up and down the mountain with everyone doing their share. Hillary estimated that by the time he reached the summit the had climbed Mt. Everest three and a half times: Between Base Camp and Camp I he went back and forth four times over four days in mid April. During the process of moving 1.5 ton of stuff to Camp II Tenzing prevented Hillary from falling in a crevasse. After Camp VI was established at 24,000 feet, Hillary and Tenzing brought up supplies from base camp. They also moved supplies between Camp V at 21,000 feet and Camp VII on the South Col at 26,000 feet.

Hillary and Tenzing Climb Towards the Summit of Mt. Everest

Hillary and Tenzing were the second team to try and reach the summit. The first two-man team — Thomas Bourdillon and Charles Evans — had been sent out earlier — on May 26, two days before Hillary and Tenzing — but they turned back just 96 meters (315 feet) short of the summit after they became exhausted, storm covered them in ice and their oxygen equipment malfunctioned.

Hillary, then 33, and Tenzing, then 39, first established a bivouac at 8,500 meters (27,900 feet) on a rock ledge two meters and slanted at a 30-degree angle. There, holding their tent against a howling gale as the temperatures plunged to 30 degrees below zero, they spent the night and and set out after a breakfast of sardines, biscuits and lemonade. The pair had woke up at 4: 00am ready to climb, but Hillary’s boots were frozen and it took two hours to unfreeze them and they left camp at 6: 30am.

Robert D. McFadden wrote in New York Times: “Cheered by clearing skies, they began the final attack. Carrying enough oxygen for seven hours and counting on picking up two partly filled tanks left by Dr. Evans and Mr. Bourdillon, they moved out. Roped together, cutting toe-holds with their ice axes, first one man leading and then the other, they inched up a steep, knife-edged ridge southeast of the summit. Halfway up, Sir Edmund recalled in “High Adventure”, they discovered soft snow under them. “Immediately I realized we were on dangerous ground,” he said. “Suddenly, with a dull breaking noise, an area of crust all around me about six feet in diameter broke off.” He slid backward 20 or 30 feet before regaining a hold. “It was a nasty shock,” he said. “I could look down 10,000 feet between my legs.” [Source: Robert D. McFadden, New York Times, January 10, 2008]

Describing the final climb towards the summit, Morris wrote: "At 9 a.m...the two summit climbers had been seen by their support group...already crossing the South Summit at about 28,500 feet, and going strongly up the final ridge. The weather had been perfect, the gales of the preceding days which so ravaged Camp VII on the South Col had died down. Hillary and Tenzing were known as two of the most powerful climbers in the world, and were using the well-tested open-circuit oxygen equipment. Reports...seemed to show that the unknown final ridge was not impassable, though undoubtedly difficult."

Hillary and Tenzing Near the Summit of Mt. Everest

One of the most difficult part of the final assault is a cornice ridge with a 3,000 meter (10,000) drop into Tibet on one side and an equally precipitous drop into Nepal on the other side. Crossing this section is particularly difficult when the Mt. Everest is buffeted by 60 and 70 mile per hour winds. Here at 8,550 meters (28,050 meters) climbers have to walk along a 60 meter (180-foot) -long knife edge ride that is only 8 to 12 inches wide.

THE most difficult part of the final assault is Hillary Step, a sheer, near-vertical rock outcropping that is about 13 meters (40 feet) high and located at an elevation of 87,90 meters (28,839 feet), 61 meters (200 feet) below Everest’s summit. Hillary called it “the most formidable obstacle on the ridge.” He managed to climb it using a crack to one side. Tenzing Norgay followed and the pair continued to the summit. [Source: Jason Burke in Khumjung, The Guardian., May 27, 2013]

Hillary and Tenzing managed to climb the vertical crack it by bracing their feet against one side and backs against the other. Hillary later wrote in National Geographic: “Tenzing and I faced the icy, narrow final ridge to the summit. Some on our team predicted the ridge would be impossible to climb, but it didn’t look so bad to us. After attaching fresh oxygen bottles to our masks, we set off. I led the way, hacking a line of steps with my ice ax. After about an hour we came to a 40-foot-high rock buttress [Hillary Step] barring our path — quite a problem at nearly 29,000 feet. An ice cornice was overhanging the rock on the right with a long crack inside it. Beneath the cornice the mountains fell away at lowest 10,000 feet to Kangshung Glacier... Would the cornice hold if I tried to go up? There was only one way to find out.”

“Jamming my crampons into the ice behind me, I somehow wriggled my way to the top of the crack, using every handhold I could find. For the first time I felt confident we were going to make it all the way. To the right I saw a rounded snow dome and kept cutting steps upward...We were starting to tire. I had been cutting steps continuously for almost two hours and wondered, rather dully, if we would has strength enough left to get through. I cut around the back of another hump and saw that the ridge ahead dropped away and that we could see far into Tibet.”

Hillary and Tenzing Reach the Summit of Mt. Everest

The last few yards meters to the summit were relatively easy. “As I chipped steps, I wondered how long we could keep it up,” Sir Edmund said. “Then I realized that the ridge, instead of rising ahead, now dropped sharply away. I looked upward to see a narrow ridge running up to a sharp point and there above us was a round snow cone. A few whacks of the ice-axe, a few cautious steps, and Tenzing and I were on top.”

At 11: 30am, May 29, 1953, Hillary and Tenzing became the first men to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. Hillary later said, "My first sensation was one of relief. But mixed with relief was a vague sensation of astonishment that I should have been the lucky one to have attained the ambition of so many brave and determined climbers...Even on top of Everest I was still looking at other mountains and thinking of how to climb them."

Robert D. McFadden wrote in New York Times: “The vast panorama of the Himalayas lay before them: fleecy clouds and the pastel shades of Tibet to the north, and in all directions sweeping ranks of jagged mountains, cloud-filled valleys, great natural amphitheaters of snow and rock, and the glittering Kangshung Glacier 10,000 feet below. It was a scene Sir Hillary would recollect many times in lectures and quiet conversations. “The whole world around us lay spread out like a giant relief map,” he told one interviewer. “I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men.” [Source: Robert D. McFadden, New York Times, January 10, 2008]

Hillary and Tenzing also surveyed the area for signs of George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, two climbers who disappeared in 1924. At least 16 men who tried to reach the summit had died. For years Hillary insisted that he and Tenzing reached the summit at the same time. In 1986, shortly before he died, Tenzing admitted that Hillary had preceded him to the summit. Hillary never said anything, knowing how important the achievement was to Sherpas and Nepalese.

Hillary and Tenzing at the Summit of Mt. Everest

"I stretched out my arms for a handshake but this was not enough for Tenzing who threw his arms around my shoulders in a mighty hug...For ten minutes I photographed Tenzing holding flags, the various ridges and the general view," Hillary wrote of his 30 minutes or so on the living-room-size summit, but he didn't think to have Tenzing take a picture of him.” the most famous photograph of the event shows Tenzing standing on the summit holding an ice ax aloft with the flags of Britain, Nepal, India and the United Nations.

Hillary photographed each major ridge to prove they had made it to the top. Morris wrote: "Hillary describes this as 'a symmetrical, beautiful snow-cone summit' — very different from the harsh rock ridge which all that can be seen from below. The view was not spectacular. They were too high for good landscape, and all below looked flat and monotonous." On why he didn’t have his picture taken at the summit, Hillary said,“Why did I need a photograph? I knew I’d been there and that was good enough for me.”

"To the north the route to the summit on which pre-war Everest expeditions pinned their hopes looked in its upper reaches prohibitively steep. Tenzing spent the fifteen minuets on the summit eating mint cake and taking photographs, for which Hillary removed his oxygen mask without ill effects. Tenzing produced a string of miscellaneous flags and held them high, while Hillary photographed them...Tenzing, who is a devout Buddhist, also laid on the ground in offering some sweets, bars of chocolate, and packets of biscuits." The offerings were to spirits of the mountain, sacred to Sherpas. They also left a crucifix for Colonel Hunt, the expedition leader. [Source: “Eyewitness to History”, edited by John Carey, Avon, 1987]

Hillary and Tenzing Return to Everest Base Camp

Morris was at Camp 4 at 22,000 feet with other members of the expedition. He wrote: "Soon after 1: 30, just as the radio was announcing the reported failure of the assault, the party emerged from a rise in the ground 300 yards or so above the camp...Hillary and Tenzing were leading...There was a sudden rush up the snow slope in the sunshine to meet them."

Hillary wrote: his team mates came to greet him, breaking “into a shambling trot with a look of unbelievable hope on their faces.” Morris said: "Hillary looking extraordinarily fresh raised his ice axe in greeting.Tenzing slipped sideways in the snow and smiled, an in a thrice they were surrounded. Hands were wrung ecstatically, photographs taken...and laughter interrupted congratulations."

"As the group moved down the hill into the camp a band of Sherpas came diffidently forward to pay tribute to the greatest climber of them all. Like a modest monarch, Tenzing received their greeting. Some bent their bodies forward, their hands clasped in prayer. Some shook hands lightly and delicately, their fingers scarcely touching. One veteran, his pigtail flowing, bowed to touch Tenzing's hand with his forehead."

Hillary's first words to at the camp, "Well George, we knocked the bastard off." His friend, George Lowe, another New Zealander, replied "thought you must have" and offered him a cup of tea.. Morris wrote: "Over an omelet served in an aluminum plate, Hillary told the story of the final climb...It was 11: 30 a.m., 29 May, 1953, that they stepped on to the snow-covered final eminence of Everest."

Morris was with the climbing party at Camp IV, at an altitude of 22,100 ft, anxiously awaiting news. He later described the wait as “a decidedly pre-dentist feeling”. When Hillary and Tenzing finally appeared at 2.30 pm the expedition leader John Hunt recorded: “When we realised by their unmistakable gestures that they had been to the top, we temporarily went mad.” “It was a moment so thrilling, so vibrant, that the hot tears sprang to the eyes of most of us,” wrote Morris. [Source: Ben Macintyre, The Times of London, January 13, 2008]

Celebration Over Hillary and Tenzing’s Conquest of Everest

Describing the return to the base camp after his and Norgay's achievement Hillary wrote, "The party drifted out of camp towards us, not knowing if we had been successful or not. When [they saw] the thumbs up signal of success they rushed towards us and soon we were embracing them all, shaking hands, and thumping each other on the back. It was a touching and unforgettable moment; and yet somehow a sad one too."

The news of the Everest ascent reached England on Queen Elizabeth's coronation day on June 2, 1953 — four days after it actually happened. A headline in the Daily Mail described Hillary and Tenzig's triumph as "The Crowning Glory: Everest Conquered." Before Hillary's and Tenzing's success, several expeditions had failed to reach the summit after several assaults and 13 men had died. The year before Tenzing and a Swiss climber had to turn back just short of the summit. “We tuned into the BBC for a description of the Queen’s Coronation, and to our great excitement heard the announcement that Everest had been climbed,”Sir Edmund recalled in his autobiography, “Nothing Venture, Nothing Win”.

Morris wrote: "The Times had printed the news in the morning's editions, the vast Coronation crowds waiting in London’s rain had been told in the dark of the night: the world was rejoicing with us; all was well." The expedition was remarkable by the fact that no one killed, injured or even frostbitten. The five previous expeditions, all British, between 1922 and 1938 all ended with at least one man dead. Most climber today follow the same route that Hillary and Tenzing took.

James (Jan) Morris and the Story of the First Conquest of Everest

The 27-year-old Welshman James Morris — later the Welsh woman Jan Morris — was only journalist to accompany the 1953 expedition, covering the event for the Times of London. He said, “I think I was selected because everyone else was about 80 years old,”

Ben Macintyre wrote in The Times, “The 1953 expedition was, in part, sponsored by The Times, which obtained exclusive rights of publication in return for a fee. The newspaper had been associated in the same way with earlier attempts to scale the peak, including George Mallory’s ill-fated attempt in 1924. Morris, the Times journalist selected to accompany the expedition as special correspondent, was a former soldier and intelligence officer who was working as a sub-editor on the foreign news desk. Morris, needless to say, was thrilled to be offered the journalistic break of a lifetime. “I wish that Morris didn’t look quite so pleased,” the foreign editor had remarked. Morris said: “I was young and fit, and really very ambitious.” Although The Times had secured exclusive reporting rights, other newspapers and reporters, inevitably, were on the scent, most notably Ralph Izzard of The Daily Mail and Colin Reid of The Daily Telegraph. Both had travelled to Kathmandu, with instructions to intercept the news, if possible, and spoil The Times’s scoop. Competition for the story, Morris predicted, would be “ruthless and unremitting”. [Source: Ben Macintyre, The Times of London, January 13, 2008]

In 1964, Morris stopped living as a man. In 1972, she had a sex change operation and took the name Jan. Morris died at the age of 94 in 2020. She was a skilled writer and covered a lot of major events and top stories but in the end is probably remembered most for her sexual transition and descriptions of what it was like. Hillary would later become godfather to one of Morris’s sons and the two remained lifelong friends until Sir Edmond’s death in 2008.

Morris had never climbed before and Hunt was initially not impressed. “Utterly inexperienced and physically substandard.” Hunt told The Times, “I thought they should find someone else.” Hillary described Morris as “a slim and sensitive intellectual.” But Morris was up for the job. After the expedition got going, Hunt marveled at his “mental, moral, and physical stamina . . . as he matched the veteran climbers”. Readers also enjoyed his entertaining, beautifully-written, descriptiveness, dispatches that detailed the frostbite, avalanche and meals of “snowman pie” — chopped yak meat and mashed potatoes. “Excellent if indigestible,” he said. this Morris followed the expedition over three-quarters up Everest to the higher camps, doing his share of portering along the way.

Morris dispatches “went via cable station in Kathmandu....There was no road to Kathmandu from the mountain. We had no long distance radio transmitters, and certainly no satellite telephones, so they went by the hands of Sherpa runners — perhaps the last time news dispatches were transmitted by runners. It was 180 miles from the mountains to the capital, and the faster my men ran, the more I paid them: ” £10 if the journey was completed in eight days, but £30 if the runner achieved it in six. “The journey was very hard. The best of them did it in five days — 36 miles a day in the heat of summer, including crossing three mountains ranges more than 9,999 feet high. They very nearly broke the bank.”

Getting the First Everest Ascent Story Off Everest

But the first Everest summitting story had to be dispatched with greater urgency. Morris had the story of the century but he had to get it London without rival journalists finding out. Michelle Moore wrote in TG History: “Carrier pigeons, signal fires, even floating a message in a waterproof canister down the river to India had all been rejected. “One enthusiast even wondered if use might not be made of those strange powers of telepathy for which Tibetan sages are allegedly noted,” Morris whimsically wrote. [Source: Michelle Moore, TG History, June 7, 2010]

It was four days between the time of the Everest summiting and the reporting of the event. From Everest base camp, Morris’s dispatch, Ben Macintyre wrote in The Times, “was taken by runner to a police post with a radio transmitter 48 kilometers (30 miles) down the mountain at Namche, from where it was transmitted to Kathmandu. From there the British Embassy wired it to London. It reached The Times at 4.14 pm on June 1. The news of the first ascent of Everest duly appeared in The Times on June 2, 1953, the day of Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation. [Source: Ben Macintyre, The Times of London, January 13, 2008]

“It was decided to draw up a code, similar to those used during the war, in which the message of success could be concealed within one of failure. Robin Pagnamenta wrote in The Times: “Rivals had also been packed off to Kathmandu and instructed to intercept the story, using whatever means necessary. Some of them had brought powerful radio receivers to try to pick up signals from base camp. Editors at The Times also feared that they might try to bribe local radio operators to give them the story first. Morris, a former soldier and intelligence officer, had dreamt up the code as a way of throwing rivals off the scent. A whole menu of phrases with different meanings had been prepared and discussed. If Morris wired “South Col Untenable”, for example, that would mean George Band had made the ascent; if the message said “Awaiting improvement”, that meant Tenzing had done so. “Snow conditions bad” signified success. [Source: Robin Pagnamenta, The Times, June 2, 2012]

When Hillary and Tenzing returned from their triumph, for Morris there was little time for celebration as he was on a strict deadline. “In a moment of wild optimism,” Morris reflected, “The Times could conceivably print the news on the very day of Queen Elizabeth's coronation.” Morris sat with Edmund Hillary in his tent while the conqueror of Everest ate an omelette and described the experience. “Edmund Hillary was a really good man,” Jan Morris said. “His life had such a wonderful shape. It was a colossal life, and a moral life, that had at its core a lifelong obligation to the Sherpa people.”

“The young reporter then set off down the mountain, accompanied by the mountaineer Michael Westmacott. “We stumbled and slithered our way through the ice blocks,” he wrote. “The dark was coming on and I was fairly exhausted, often losing my footing on the crumbly ice, getting entangled with the rope, or tottering on the brinks of crevasses.” History does not record whether any of The Times’s rivals managed to intercept the message and believed it to be as non-newsworthy as it seemed.

“In London it was decided that the Queen-to-be could be informed ahead of publication, on the eve of her coronation. The next day, The Times described the feat as “a tribute of glory” to the new Queen. Under normal circumstances such a scoop would have been kept back until later editions, to prevent other newspapers from copying it, but the fact that Everest had been finally conquered was so momentous it was decided all Times readers should know about it. Morris’s despatch ran through all editions.

“Back on the slopes of Everest, Morris first discovered that the ruse had worked and his message had got through safely, and exclusively, when he heard the news on the BBC World Service. Hillary remarked of his achievement: “Well, we knocked the bastard off.” Morris was more lyrical. His triumphant article in The Times on June 2 concluded with a celebratory paean to more than 16 men who had previously died attempting to climb Everest. “Today, high above the rugged Nuptse ridge, Everest looks as surly, as muscular, as scornfully unattainable as ever: but after 30 years of endeavour the greatest of mountains is defeated, and many are the ghosts and men far off who share the triumph.”

Tenzing After Everest

After the Mt. Everest success, Tenzing and Hillary becane worldwide heroes overnight. They were welcomed by huge crowds in India and London. They became hoarse from telling their again and again. When Tenzing was invited to England he was put in an awkward position because he didn't possess a passport. The Indian prime, Pandit Nehru, stepped in and helped him get a passport, Nehru later became his patron and helped him establish a mountaineering school in Darjeeling. After that Tenzing said he was "born in the womb of Nepal and raised in the lap of India."

Tenzing received the George Medal of Britain, the Star of Nepal from King Tribhuvan and other honors from the Soviet Union, Italy, India France, and the United States. Morris wrote: “He had never set foot in Europe or America then, but in London later that year I was not at all surprised to hear a worldly man-about-town, eyeing Tenzing across a banquet table, say how good it was to see that “Mr. Tenzing knew a decent claret when he had one.”’”

After the initial euphoria wore off Tenzing became the focus of nationalist debates. Why was it a British expedition not an Asian was one the first on the top when so Many Sherpas took part. Why was it always Hillary and Tenzing or just Hillary rather than Tenzing and Hillary. Who actually set first on the top became a matter of great interest and controversy.

Known as the "tiger of the snow mountain", Tenzing had there wives, all of them Sherpas (1) Dawa Phuti, m. 1935; died 1944, 2) Ang Lahmu, m. 1945; died 1964, and 3) Dakku m. before or in 1964). In 1954, Tenzing established the Institute of Mountaineering in Darjeeling. Though often sought by visitors, for the most part he lived quietly — with a few ups and downs — in a three-story villa with his third wife and six children in Darjeeling. He died at the age of 72 on May 9, 1986 in Darjeeling.

In 2003, on the 50th anniversary of the historic ascent, Hillary said, “After the expedition, Tenzing and I spent quite a lot of time together, but we never, ever, talked about the climb up Everest. I don’t know why. We talked about our families; talked about the world and its problems; talked about just about everything. But we never ever once talked about Everest.”

Ignoring warnings not to be a mountain climber, Tenzing's son, Jamling took up climbing and has reached the summit of Mt. Everest several times. Tenzing’s grandson Tashi Tenzing also reached the summit of Mt. Everest. In 2003, he told AP, “My grandfather did not get the recognition he deserves. He should have been knighted by the British queen for his achievement along with Hillary and Hunt.”

Hillary’s Fame

Hillary was unprepared for the fame that awaited him after his adventure on Mt. Everest. He told National Geographic, “I felt the mountaineering community would be quite interested by our success but I didn’t have any concept of the reaction from the media and the general public,”

Over the years Hillary gave countless lectures and interviews and wrote several books about his adventures. He had lucrative endorsement deals with Rolex, Sears and Toyota and made enough to give up beekeeping. He established the Himalayan Trust an help establish Sagarmartha National park, which includes Mt. Everest. He was also knighted and given the title Sir. He served as New Zealand’s ambassador to India from 1985 to 1989 and gave periodic pep talks to the All Blacks, New Zealand equally famous rugby team.

Hillary turned down an invitation from Queen Elizabeth II to come to London for the 50th anniversary of here coronation in 2003 so he could go to Nepal. to celebrate the 50th anniversary of climbing of Mt. Everest. The 83-year-old mountain climber stayed mostly in Kathmandu and was paraded through Kathmandu in a carriage escorted by bagpipers. He said in a speech that he was just as proud of what he had done to help the Sherpas as he was reaching the summit of Mt. Everest. He said he wanted visit his Sherpa fiends in their villages but he said, “I am affected quite a bit these days by altitude.”

Robert D. McFadden wrote in New York Times: “Besides his 1953 knighthood, Sir Edmund was named a Knight of the Order of the Garter by Queen Elizabeth II in 1995, and received many other awards, including the Star of Nepal and the Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographical Society. Although featured in books, magazines and newspapers, on postage stamps and television, and seen and heard by millions, he remained a modest man, friends said. “I’ve always hated the danger part of climbing, and it’s great to come down again because it’s safe,” he said in 1977. “But there is something about building up a comradeship — that I still believe is the greatest of all feats — and sharing in the dangers with your company of peers. It’s the intense effort, the giving of everything you’ve got. It’s really a very pleasant sensation.” [Source: Robert D. McFadden, New York Times, January 10, 2008]

Hillary After Everest

Four months after the Everest success, Hillary married Louise Rose in September 1953 in Auckland, New Zealand. More than 1,500 well-wishers turned up. Hillary’s mother-in-law helped him propose, he was too shy to do it himself, The couple had three children Peter, Sarah and Belinda. In 1975 Louise and Sarah were killed in a small plane crash in Nepal on the way to a hospital Hillary was helping to build. Hillary was devastated. At the age of 70 he remarried in 1989 to June Mulgrew, the widow of the wife of former climbing partner, who also died in a plane crash. The two had appeared together on a New Zealand version of “This Your Life”.

Hillary followed his Everest triumph with the first overland journey in vehicles to the South Pole and across Antarctica, in 1958. His team made their journey in modified farm tractors. He also climbed three other Himalayan peaks, returned to Nepal to study the effects of high elevations on the body and searched for the Yeti and the source of the Ganges and tested camping equipment for Sears. In 1985, he and Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon, flew a twin-engine ski plane over the Arctic and landed at the North Pole, making him . the first to stand at both poles and on the summit of Everest.

Robert D. McFadden wrote in New York Times: During the Southern Hemisphere summer of 1957-58 a British Commonwealth team that included Sir Edmund crossed the Antarctic Continent on an overland route that traversed the South Pole. The expedition, using tractors, was led by Sir Vivian Fuchs, but Sir Edmund and a party of New Zealanders — ostensibly a group laying supply depots for Sir Vivian — made the dash over the pole. There was debate afterward about credit, but a book by Sir Edmund and Sir Vivian belittled differences and stressed the feat of crossing Antarctica, perhaps the last adventurer’s trek on the planet. [Source: Robert D. McFadden, New York Times, January 10, 2008]

Sir Edmund wrote or co-authored 13 books, including “No Latitude for Error,” (1961, Hodder & Stoughton), about the Antarctic experience. Besides writing and lecturing, he formed a foundation, the Sir Edmund Hillary Himalayan Trust” to help the Sherpas. In 2003, Nepal conferred honorary citizenship upon Sir Edmund, the first foreign national to receive that distinction. For many years, Sir Edmund also was president of New Zealand’s Peace Corps, and an important voice in his country’s conservation efforts. He never ran for public office, but was a frequent critic of New Zealand’s Government, calling for antipollution and other measures to improve the quality of life.

Hillary died of a heart attack at the age of 88 in 2008. The government of New Zealand held a state funeral for him. New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark announced his death.

Hillary and the Sherpas

When Sir Edmund Hillary finished his expeditions he asked his Sherpa companions what they desired most. "Schools" an old Sherpa answered, "Our children have eyes but they are blind." Hillary then help open some schools in the Khumba Valley. One Sherpa who attended a school set up by Hillary and went on to fly Boeing jets said: “We were 47 scrappy children with no schools in 1960... It was one of the biggest excitements for us to have the opportunity to learn what the English alphabet looks like, to understand Nepali writing.”

Sherpas uses both Western medicine and health services, which are available for a very small cost through the various organizations set up by Hillary, and use faith healing and herbal medicines prescribed by shaman known as “lhawas.” They see no contradiction going to a clinic to get a flu vaccination and purchase an amulet at a monastery that wards off evil spirits. Among the local cures are herbal medicines, shamanic exorcism, the reading of exorcism texts by lamas, and the use of amulets and medicines made or blessed by high-level lamas. Walking is generally the only way to get to a clinic. People with broken legs are carried in on boards. It is not unusual for a woman to give birth on a trail trying to get to a doctor. Even those who make it in time walk home after two days with their baby on their back.

Sir Edmund Hillary Himalayan Trust’s raised millions and built more than 30 schools, a dozen clinics, two hospitals, a couple of airfields, and numerous foot bridges, water pipelines and other facilities for the Sherpa villages in Nepal. Thanks to Hillary the Sherpas now have some of the best schools and hospitals in Nepal. Early doctors in the area found that the high incidence of goiter and mental retardation was directly linked to a lack of iodine in their local diet. After iodinized salt as introduced to their diet the number of cases of mental retardation dropped dramatically and goiter virtually disappeared. Hillary and his climbing buddies personally helped vaccinate hundreds of Sherpas against small pox, which was a serious problem in rural Nepal until the 1960s.

Hillary on Climbing After His Everest Ascent

On modern climbing, Hillary said in 2003: “It’s hardly mountaineering: more like a conducted tour. Commercial climbing has developed with so many inexperienced enthusiasts, dozens of aluminum ladders, thousands of meters of fixed rope...I’m not very happy about the future of Everest. Yesterday there were 1,000 people there and some 500 tents. There was a booze place for drinks. Sitting around in a big base camp and knocking back cans of beer — I do not particularly view that as mountaineering.”

In 2006 he said. “I thinks the whole attitude toward climbing Mount Everest has become rather horrifying. Those people just want to get to the top.” On another occasion he said. "I feel sorry for today's climbers trying to find something new and interesting to do on the mountain, something that will get both the public attention and the respect of their peers. Up and down the mountain in 24 hours, a race to the top — what will they think of next?"

Hillary's son, Peter Hillary, reached the summit of Mt. Everest twice; The first time in 1990 and a second time in 2003 at the age of 47. He also was one of three men who completed an 84 day trek from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole in 1998. Peter Hillary and two Australians traveled on foot and on skis, pulling 100-kilogram sleds along a route used by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott on has ill-fated journey in 1910-13.

First Ascent of Mt. Everest by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay

See Separate Article EDMUND HILLARY, TENZING NORGAY AND THE FIRST ASCENT OF MT. EVEREST

Everest Expeditions After Hillary and Tenzing

After Hillary and Tenzing’s success, Swiss, Chinese, American and Indian teams summited in 1956, 1960, 1963 and 1965, respectively. Expeditions from Switzerland France had permission to climb Everest in 1954 expedition if the 1953 British expedition did not reach the summit. The Swiss expedition of 1956 put the next four climbers on the top of Everest after Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. The expedition made the first ascent of Lhotse (the world’s fourth highest mountain). The expedition set up camp 6 on the South Col and camp 7 at 8,400 meters (27,600 ft). On May 23, Ernst Schmied and Jürg Marmet reached the summit of Everest followed by Dölf Reist and Hansruedi von Gunten on May 24. [Source: Wikipedia]

Woodrow Wilson Sayre and three others made an illegal incursion into China in 1962 from Nepal and reached about 7,620 meters (25,000 ft) on the North Ridge before turning back from exhaustion. The attempt was documented in a book by Sayre entitled Four Against Everest. The First ascent by an American — Jim Whittaker was in 1963. He was accompanied. first ascent of the West Ridge on May 22 by Americans Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld. Hornbein and Unsoeld descended by the South Col, making the ascent the first traverse of Everest.

In 1965, a 21-man Indian expedition, led by Lieutenant Commander M.S. Kohli Lieutenant Commander Captain M S Kohli, succeeded in putting nine men on the summit. Nawang Gombu Sherpa became the first person to reach the summit twice. He was on the 1963 American expedition and 1965 Indian expedition.

Megan Gambino wrote in smithsonian.com: “The next challenge was forging new routes. All but the Chinese, who ascended the northern route, had stuck largely to the British route up the Southeast Ridge. But between the 1960s and 1980s, Everest's formidable West Ridge, Southwest Face and East Face were tackled. Others continued to expand the definition of what was possible on Everest. Japanese climber Tabei Junko became the first woman to climb Everest in May 1975, backed by an all-female (besides the sherpas) expedition. [Source: Megan Gambino, smithsonian.com, March 1, 2008]

“Other climbers sought challenge in climbing techniques. On May 8, 1978, Italian Reinhold Messner and his Austrian climbing partner Peter Habeler scaled Everest without supplemental oxygen. They trudged at a pace of 325 feet per hour in the final stretch to break a 54-year, sans-oxygen record of 28,126 feet. Messner went on to complete the first solo climb of the mountain in 1980, an endeavor that left him, as he described, "physically at the end of my tether." [Source: Megan Gambino, smithsonian.com, March 1, 2008]

“Messner's successors used Everest as a testing ground for their limits as well. A Polish team completed the first winter ascent in 1980, and two Swiss climbers — Jean Troillet and Erhard Loretan — broke record times in 1986, climbing the North Face in 41.5 hours and descending in 4.5 hours. Two years later, French climber Jean-Marc Boivin paraglided from the summit. American Erik Weihenmayer, who is blind, defied his own physiological challenge to summit in 2001.

Chinese Expedition — First on Tibetan Side, Third Overall to Summit Everest

A Chinese team made the first ascent of Mt. Everest from the north (from Tibet) and was the third team to reach the summit after Hillary and Tenzing. Led by Shih Chan-Chun, the team reached the summit on May 25, 1960. No teams from other countries tried from this side until 1980 because Tibet was closed from 1950 to 1980. Three Chinese climbers — Wang Fuzhou, Gong Bu and Qu Yinhua — reached the summit. Qu was recruited from a logging camp in Sichuan and lost a finger and toes to frostbite. He told a Beijing magazine,"We were aware that the climb was of national importance. We knew other Chinese teams had failed, and we knew that it had become an issue of China's “face."

The expedition was originally supposed to be a joint Soviet-Chinese expedition but troubles between the two Communist giants prevented that from taking place. The Chinese team underwent training in the Pamirs in the Soviet Union and received $70,000 worth of foreign equipment. Before the climb the team were told by Chinese Premier Zhou El Lai: “Get to the top, or die trying."

There biggest obstacle for the Chinese Everest team was a sheer face of ice-covered rock called the Second Step. Qu said, “We made three attempts at the 30-meter cliff. We went this way and that way, but it was no use. We were exhausted and night was falling...The English had said that not even a bird could fly across the Second Step. But then we noticed a crevice of 20-30 centimeters in width."

Unable to get a good grip, Qu took off his four-kilogram boots and socks and climbed the crevice in -40 degrees C barefoot. Qu said, “I could just hear Premier Zhou words in my head. I knew that greater things than one man's feet were at stake — it was a question of national honor." It took more than five hours for Qu to get over the Second Step and help Wang and Gong. Just after midnight they began the final ascent," reaching the summit at 4: 25am.

At the summit the scribbled the time and date on a piece of paper and placed a statue of Mao and a Chinese flag in a canister which they buried at the summit and picked up a rock which the presented to Mao (the rock now sits in the National History Museum in Tiananmen Square). The team spent less than a minute at the summit. Because it was dark they took no photographs.

Because not photos were taken there have been allegations that the feat was faked and was not recognized by the international climbing community until 1975, when another Chinese team made it the summit using the same route, bringing along a 25-meter ladder to get over the Second Step.

First American Mt. Everest Expedition

The first American expedition to Mt. Everest was launched in 1963. Sponsored in part by the National Geographic Society, it was a huge undertaking with 27 tons of equipment including 52 tents, two miles of nylon rope and 216 cylinders of oxygen. To carry it all on the 185 mile journey from Banepa, near Kathmandu, to Everest base camp 909 porters were hired. Along the way several mishaps occurred: a chain gave way on a primitive bridge plunging 11 loaded-down porters into a river; a smallpox outbreak among the porters; and a shortage of toilet paper brought on by gastrointestinal disorders. [Source: "How We Climbed Everest" by Barry Bishop, National Geographic, October 1963 /*]

On March 23, 1963 a wall of ice in the ice field collapsed on top of five climbers in the American expedition. Two escaped injury. Ten minutes of frantic chopping freed another man pinned under a half-ton block of ice. A forth was freed, upside down, badly lacerated, and with a skull fracture. Jake Breitenbach died. He was buried so far underneath an enormous wall of ice no one could reach him./*\

Three American groups from the 1963 expedition reached the summit. On May 1, 1963. James “Big Jim” Whitaker, accompanied by Sherpa Nawang Gombu reached the summit climbing the Southeast Ridge, the same route pioneered in 1953 by Hillary and Tenzing. Three weeks after Whitaker, Thomas Hornbein and William Unsoeld made it to the top, pioneering a route via the West Ridge and North Face. Barry Bishop and Luther Jesrstad followed Hillary’s route. Jerstad and Bishop made it the summit but the day of their final assault began rather inauspiciously with Luke spilling fuel from a stove and burning their tent town. This mishap caused a two hour delay which turned out to be crucial./*\

Mark Jenkins wrote in National Geographic: “Whittaker had climbed Mount McKinley a few years before, and it was Gombu’s third trip to Everest....In an unprecedented act of boldness, teammates Tom Hornbein and Willi Unsoeld clawed their way up a completely new route, the West Ridge. (The two men had been teammates on the 1960 American Pakistan Karakoram Expedition.) On that same day Barry Bishop and Lute Jerstad made the second American ascent of the Southeast Ridge. The two teams managed to meet below the summit, but by then it was dark, and they were forced to bivouac at 28,000 feet — a risky, last-ditch option never before attempted. Without tents, sleeping bags, stoves, Sherpas, oxygen, water, or food, they weren’t expected to survive. “God, they were lucky,” says Whittaker. “If there had been any wind, they would have all perished. It would have been horrible.” All four men lived — although Unsoeld and Bishop lost 19 toes between them. And despite “the death of Breitenbach” the 1963 American expedition became a tale of heroic success, the moon shot of mountaineering.” [Source: Mark Jenkins, National Geographic, June, 2013]

Problems for Bishop and Jesrstad During the Descent

When Bishop and Jersted reached the summit the first thing they did was cry, out of joy and the relief of having tortuous climb finally over. But even here their troubles didn't stop. In the process of shedding his mittens to take pictures Jersted froze his fingers and Bishop’s feet began to freeze. When the pain in his toes sharpened to the edge of agony and then went numb he knew frostbite was starting to creep in. They had also taken so long to get to the summit it got dark as they were descending and they had to bivouac for the night. [Source: Barry Bishop, National Geographic, October 1963 /*]

Finally Bishop and Jersted made it back to their camp early the next day. Jersted's finger were so frozen he couldn't close his jacket. Small hemorrhages around his eyes, induced by the winds, also made him nearly blind. One of the members of the American team warmed Bishop's feet by warming them on his belly. When he tried to wiggle his toes he felt nothing. When he finally was able to take off his boots his toes were white, hard and ice to the touch. At this point Bishop and Jersted had to descend some distance to get to base camp./*\

Bishop and Jersted trudged down the Khumbu Ice Fall. To get over a wall of ice that had collapsed and killed Breitenbach they slide down a rope — monkey-fashion — in a move called a Tyrolean traverse. At the base it was decided that Bishop and Jersted needed to be helicoptered out to get their frostbite treated. By this time their toes and finger had turned black, meaning gangrene was starting to set in. Bishop was carried piggyback the entire two day journey to Namche Bazaar by a relay team of Sherpa porters. In the end Bishop lost all ten of his toes and Jersted lost the tips of his little fingers on each hand./*\

Reinhold Messner: First Person to Climb Everest, Solo with No Oxygen

According to Guinness World Records Reinhold Messner of Italy and Peter Habeler of Austria made the first successful ascent of Mt Everest without supplemental oxygen on May 8, 1978. This feat is regarded by some purist mountaineers as the first 'true' ascent of Everest, since overcoming the effects of altitude (i.e. the low oxygen content of the air) is the greatest challenge facing high-altitude climbers. Reinhold Messner was also the first person to successfully climb Mt Everest solo, reaching the summit on August 20, 1980. It took him three days to make the ascent from his base camp at 6,500 meters (21,325 feet). He made this ascent too without bottled oxygen.

Messner began his 1980 ascent of Everest without oxygen or a radio on the Tibetan side at 6,439 meters (21,125 feet), where he had camped out with his girlfriend. After his 1978, experience Messner wrote, “I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and the summits.”

Unlike large expeditions which use large numbers of Sherpas and porters to carry up the equipment and spend months going back and forth supplying camps for a dramatic final assault from 27,000 feet, Messner carried everything on his back — essentially just food, tent, a few carabineers, sleeping bag and camera — in what was to be a three day climb. All of his warm clothing was on his body, he carried only enough rope to tie down his tent and his only real tools were an ice ax and a ski pole. He had no radio. In 1970 Messner lost seven toes on Pakistan's Nanga Parbat, which claimed the life of his brother. To spare the three toes he had left he slept with his boots on on Everest. [Source: "I Climbed Everest Alone...At My Limit" by Reinhold Messner, National Geographic, October 1981☜]

Messner was not the first man to try to climb Everest alone.In 1934 a religious zealot by the name of Maurice Wilson tried to reach the summit. With no experience as a mountain climber he believed that God would guide him safely to the top. After plunges and snowstorms forced him to return to camp after his four day attempt he tried again as soon as he recovered...His body was found a year later on the North Col. The last words in his diary read: "Off again, gorgeous day."☜

Messner's Solo Climb of Mt. Everest

Trouble hit Messner's solo ascent of Everest early when a snow bridge on a glacier collapsed and he fell into a crevasse. Bouncing back and forth against the crevasse walls, he eventually settled on a small ledge unhurt, but he had no walkie talkie to call for help. With some effort Messner got out of the crevasse and made it to 7,798 meters (25,584 feet), where he set up his tent. Even though he still had two day to go he was already getting delirious. He barely had the energy to eat or melt snow for tea. He conversed with his 33 pound backpack and shared food with an imaginary tent mate. [Source: Reinhold Messner, National Geographic, October 1981☜]

On the second day Messner made it to 27,000 feet where he camped on a ledge. He wanted to take a picture of himself here but he didn't have the energy. On the third day he left his pack with his tent and was so delirious he climbed "instinctively not consciously." One section he had to crawl on his hands and knees but otherwise it wasn't technically difficult. His reached the top of Everest at 3: 20 on August 20th, 1981. It was his second time there. He been here in 1978 as part of an Austrian expedition. Like his first trip it was cloudy and couldn't see anything. After staying for 40 minutes he descended to his tent.☜

Messner spent his third night on Everest there. He couldn't sleep yet was he too tired to pour himself some water to drink. The next day he left everything behind except for some extra woolen mittens and sunglasses. About half down he said he was starting to lose his wits and came stumbling into camp like a drunken man. His girl friend applied ice packs for heat exhaustion and fed him fruit juices to resupply his dehydrated system.

Messner is as famous as soccer star in Europe. He has climbed all of the world's highest peaks solo, and without oxygen, but after finishing his climb of Everest he said, "I don't think I could handle it again. I was at my limit." When Messner climbed Everest in 1978, without oxygen, the trick was to climb fast. But on the way down he so tired he couldn't walk for part of the descent. As of 2003, about 70 climbers have summited Mt. Everest without oxygen. ☜

East Face of Everest

One of the most difficult challenges of mountain climbing is the East Face of Mt. Everest on the Tibetan side. In 1983 six American climbers made it to the top of Everest following this route. Their most dangerous obstacle was a 1067-meter (3,500-foot) rock wall, which the climbers said was the equivalent of taking a rock face in Yosemite Park and covering part of it with ice, jacking it up to 6070 meters (20,000 feet) and immersing it in snowstorms with 50 mile-per-hour winds. Above the rock wall was 2,346 meters (7,700 feet) of avalanche-prone slopes. [Source: Andrew Harvard, National Geographic, July 1984 ♦].

Mallory had climbed part of it. It took the American climbers 28 days to climb the rock wall, but only ten days to cover the remaining 2,346 meters to the summit. The last camp before the top of the wall was set up on an ice ledge, barely wide enough for a two man tent. During their ascent of the 1,067-meter cliff, the climbers wore eight kilogram (30 pound) packs and relayed their supplies using pulleys, 1220 meters (4000) feet of rope and 80-pound supply bags propelled upwards by rockets normally used to launch lines between ships on the open sea. ♦

One camp was set in place the climbers nicknamed the Bowling Alley because of the rock and ice that fell on them. At the summit the Americans met two Japanese and Sherpa who had come up from the Nepalese side. On the way down these three climbers plunged to their death and the Sherpa fell right in front of one of the Americans.♦

First Woman to Climb Everest: Junko Tabei

The first woman to reach the summit of Mt. Everest was Japanese climber Junko Tabei. Even though was less than a meter and half tall and weighed around 40 kilograms, she achieved the feat at 12:30pm on May 16, 1975, twelve days after being pulled out of an avalanche by her ankles by her Sherpa guides. She was the 36th person overall to reach the summit which she described as "smaller than a tatami mat and beat out two Chinese women coming from the Chinese side by 11 days. If people want to call me “that crazy mountain woman” Tabei said in an interview, then so be it. [Source: Robert Horn, Sports Illustrated, 1996]

Ed Douglas wrote in The Guardian: “Junko Tabei not only was the first woman to climb the mountain she also challenged cultural stereotypes in her homeland about a woman’s role in society while at the same time drawing on the deep spiritual feeling many Japanese people have for mountains. [Source: Ed Douglas, The Guardian, November 10, 2016]

Tabei died in October 2016 of cancer. She described herself as an individualist. She often lectured about the downside of conformity, telling her listeners to be "the nail that sticks out." She also said she refused corporate sponsorship. "If I accept sponsorship," she told Sports Illustrated, "then climbing the mountain is not my own experience. It's like working for the company."

Tabei had scaled 69 other major mountains as of 1996. In 1992, she became the first woman or climb the tallest mountains in the world's seven major regions. Her goal after that was to climb the highest mountains in every country in the world. In 1995, a typical year, she climbed the highest mountains in Panama, Costa Rica, South Korea, Venezuela and Sri Lanka.

The fifth daughter in a family with seven children, Tabei was born in 1939 in the small town of Miharumachi in northern Japan. She was labeled a weak child in elementary school and developed her interest in mountain when a teacher dragged her on a hike to nearby mountains at the age of 10. A few years later she climbed Mount Fuji and later married mountain climber Masanobu Tabei. In 1970, she climber Annapurna III.

Tabei said she had difficulty securing funding for her Everest climb because she said, "Most companies' reaction was that for a woman, its impossible to climb Mount Everest." She eventually got help from the Tokyo newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun and Nihon Television.

Alison Hargreaves First Woman to Climb Everest, Solo with No Oxygen

Alison Hargreaves was the first woman to climb Mt. Everest alone and without oxygen. She died on the slopes of K2 in Pakistan in 1995.. The Scotland native once said "it is better to have lived one day as a tiger than a thousand as a sheep."

British climber Alison Hargreaves was the first woman to reach the summit of Everest without supplemental oxygen or the help of sherpas. She performed the feat on May 15, 1995. The Guardian reported: “Hargreaves, aged 33, reached the summit on after an ascent hailed by colleagues as the most important climb ever by a woman. Her first act after reaching the top was to radio her base camp with a message for her two young children. “I am on top of the world and I love you dearly,” she said. Ms Hargreaves is only the second climber in history, and the first woman, to reach the top of the 29,028ft mountain via the north ridge without artificial oxygen or sherpas to carry her gear. She spent more than a year preparing for the trip by training on Ben Nevis, where her husband, climber Jim Ballard, works part-time. It was her second attempt on the summit; last year she was driven back by freezing winds when only 1,500 feet from the top.”

“She began climbing as a 14-year-old in the Peak district, Mr Ballard said. He said his wife had been forced to take the most arduous route, almost on top of the north ridge, as the wind had left the slopes below virtually bare of snow. This was the route taken by the 1924 expedition which claimed the lives of George Mallory and Sandy Irvine. Reinhold Messner, the only solo climber to have achieved the feat before, was able to take an easier line of approach in 1980 because of different snow conditions, Mr Ballard said.” Hargreaves died tragically on K2 three months later.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Lonely Planet Guides, Library of Congress, Nepal Tourism Board (ntb.gov.np), Nepal Government National Portal (nepal.gov.np), The Guardian, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, Time, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Wikipedia and various books, websites and other publications.

Last updated February 2022