The Top of Everest

Part One · The Mountain

Mount Everest, which rises along the frontier between Nepal and Tibet, is the highest mountain on the planet, and its summit towers roughly twenty-nine thousand feet above the level of the sea. For centuries the people who lived in its shadow had regarded it as a sacred peak, but during the early twentieth century it became an irresistible challenge for mountaineers from other countries as well. Numerous expeditions attempted the ascent between the 1920s and the 1950s, and every one of them either retreated or ended in tragedy. The atmosphere near the top contains only about a third of the oxygen available at sea level, the winds are ferocious, and temperatures can plunge far below zero. By 1953 the mountain remained unclimbed, and many experts suspected that it was simply impossible.

In the spring of 1953, a large British expedition arrived in Nepal to make another attempt. Its commander was Colonel John Hunt, who organized the entire enterprise with the precision of a general planning a military campaign. Hundreds of porters transported tons of food, tents, ropes, and bottled oxygen through the valleys to the base of the mountain, and the climbers then advanced steadily upward in careful, patient stages, establishing a chain of camps along the route. Among the members of the team was Edmund Hillary, a tall beekeeper from New Zealand who had prepared himself on the glaciers and peaks of his homeland. Another was Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa mountaineer who had grown up in the Himalayas, who had carried loads for earlier expeditions, and who understood the mountain better than almost anyone alive.

Tenzing possessed far more experience of Everest than his companion. He had worked on expeditions to the mountain since the 1930s, and in 1952 he had helped a Swiss team climb higher than anyone had ever gone before, reaching an altitude of roughly twenty-eight thousand feet. Altogether, this extraordinarily patient mountaineer had already attempted the great peak six times without success. Hillary had never even seen Everest before 1951, but his tremendous physical strength, his skill on ice, and his stubborn determination had impressed the leader. Neither man was considered the obvious choice for the first assault, and Hunt deliberately selected two other climbers to go ahead of them. Those men set out on May 26 and came within about three hundred feet of the summit, but they were exhausted and their oxygen was running low, so they sensibly turned back.

Part Two · The Climb

Now it was the turn of Hillary and Tenzing, and the two quickly formed a genuine partnership, because each depended entirely upon the other. With a support party of fellow climbers, they hauled a small tent and their supplies up the steep slope above the high camp known as the South Col, and on May 28 they pitched the tent on a narrow ridge at about twenty-seven thousand nine hundred feet. It was the highest campsite that anyone had ever occupied. During the night the wind howled around the fabric, and the temperature fell to nearly thirty degrees below zero. The two men melted snow to make tea and soup, and they tried to sleep for a few hours, huddled in their sleeping bags and wearing nearly every piece of clothing that they had brought along.

At dawn on May 29, Hillary discovered that his boots had frozen as hard as stone during the night. He spent two hours thawing them over the stove before he could pull them on, and then the two men inspected their oxygen equipment, roped themselves together, and began to climb the ridge at about six thirty in the morning. The snow was deep, the slope was steep, and every step demanded tremendous effort. Before long they reached the South Summit, where the route narrowed into a knife-like edge with immense drops on both sides. Hillary kicked and chopped a staircase into the snow, while Tenzing carefully paid out the rope behind him, prepared to hold him if he slipped. They advanced slowly, because the thin air compelled them to rest after only a few paces.

Farther along the ridge, they encountered the most formidable obstacle of the entire day. It was a smooth wall of rock about forty feet high, rising in front of them like the side of a building, with a precipice of several thousand feet on one side and a huge cornice of snow on the other. Hillary noticed a narrow crack between the rock and a slab of ice that was attached to it. He wedged his body into the gap and gradually worked his way upward, pressing his back against the ice and pushing with his feet. After a prolonged struggle he heaved himself over the top and onto a ledge, and then he tightened the rope so that Tenzing could follow. The obstacle was later named the Hillary Step in his honor.

Beyond the rock, the ridge climbed gently in a series of snowy humps, and each time the two men believed that they had arrived at the top, another rise appeared ahead of them. Both of them were growing weary from the altitude and the effort. Then, at about half past eleven in the morning, they realized that the ground no longer sloped upward in front of them. Everest lay beneath their feet, and nothing in any direction stood higher. They shook hands, and then Tenzing threw his arms around Hillary in a great hug. They were standing at 29,032 feet, which was the officially accepted measurement of the mountain at that time, although surveyors have refined it slightly since then. Below them the Himalayas stretched toward the horizon, row after row of gleaming white peaks, with clouds drifting through the deep valleys and the whole immense landscape lying silent in the thin, brilliant sunlight.

They remained at the summit for only about fifteen minutes, because their oxygen was limited and the weather could change without warning. Hillary photographed Tenzing holding up his ice axe, which had several small flags tied to it, although Tenzing, who had never used a camera, did not photograph his companion. Tenzing buried a few sweets and a little food in the snow as an offering, in keeping with the customs of his religion, and Hillary left behind a small cross that Colonel Hunt had given him. Hillary also studied the route that later climbers would need to follow, and he searched for any trace of the mountaineers who had disappeared near the top in 1924, but he found none. Then the two men turned around and began the long, careful walk back down the ridge toward their tent, knowing that descending can be just as dangerous as climbing.

The descent proved far easier than the climb, and when the pair reached the lower camps their teammates rushed out to welcome them. The news was sent toward Britain by runners and by radio, and it reached London on June 2, 1953, which was the morning of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth the Second. Newspapers announced that Everest had been conquered, and the whole country celebrated. Colonel Hunt and Hillary were later knighted by the queen, and Tenzing received a medal for bravery. The two men remained close friends for the rest of their lives, and they were frequently invited to appear together at ceremonies around the world. Hillary devoted decades to raising money for schools and hospitals among the Sherpa people, and Tenzing helped to found a training school for young mountaineers in India. Both of them always insisted that the achievement belonged to the whole team.