It is the mythic peak that has fascinated climbers for 150 years and lured many to their deaths. With courage, ego, adventurism and obsession, he was the fi rst to conquer the roof of the world. Now, 50 years later, SIR looks back on his heroic feat in this exclusive interview with DAVID LESER.

Sir Edmund Hillary was a modest New Zealand beekeeper driven by a passion to prove himself, when, aged 33, he defi ed death and nature’s fury to become the fi rst man to conquer Everest. GETTY IMAGES. EVERETT COLLECTION. HEADPRESS. EVERETT IMAGES. GETTY HSireroe Edmundro Hillaryooff Everest

54 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – APRIL 2003 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – APRIL 2003 55 o t thehe o outsider,utsider, i itt l looksooks l likeike sheersheer mmadness,adness, aann aactct bbeyondeyond thethe rreacheach ooff rrationalational ddebate.ebate. HHumanuman beingsbeings areare notnot meantmeant toto trytry toto existexist 6000m6000m aboveabove seasea level,level, letlet alonealone twotwo verticalvertical kkilometresilometres bbeyondeyond tthishis ppoint.oint. AndAnd certainlycertainly notnot whenwhen thethe temperaturetemperature isis minusminus 50°C50°C andand there’sthere’s a hhurricaneurricane ssweepingweeping tthehe mmountain.ountain. That’sThat’s whywhy mountainmountain climbersclimbers callcall thisthis regionregion aroundaround 8000m8000m thethe DeathDeath ZoneZone – becausebecause upup therethere inin thethe frigidfrigid ppeakseaks aandnd rridgesidges ooff tthehe world’sworld’s highesthighest mountains,mountains, you’reyou’re livingliving onon borrowedborrowed time.time. So thin is the air, so horrendous the conditions, that the human body simply tbegins to collapse. Muscle tissue withers, red blood cells multiply, stamina all but disappears. Even if you can avoid frostbite, hypothermia, dehydration and snow blindness, you are still at risk of pulmonary (lungs) or cerebral (brain) oedemas. With a cerebral oedema, such is the altitude-induced pressure building inside your cranium that, within a few hours, it’s possible to lose all motor and mental skills. Unless you’re evacuated quickly, death is almost certain. The slopes of Mt Everest are littered with the corpses of those who have been From far left: Sir Edmund Hillary, now 83, is celebrating 50 years since deaf to the entreaties of their loved ones, or climbing the world’s highest mountain in 1953; Hillary and the cautioning sounds of their own inner after their triumph; Sir Edmund marries Louise Rose on September 3, 1953. voices. For them, the magnetic pull of the world’s tallest and most hallowed mountain has been – and remains – too strong. FIFTY YEARS AGO, AT THE AGE OF 33, SIR EDMUND HILLARY, TOGETHER with Tenzing On May 10, 1996, eight climbers died on what was the single worst day in Everest Norgay, stunned the world by becoming the fi rst men to successfully scale the history. Caught in a murderous blizzard world’s tallest mountain. FOR BOTH OF THEM LIFE WAS NEVER TO BE THE SAME AGAIN. near the summit and confounded by a series of small but highly significant mistakes, 24 climbers from five expedition without oxygen or shelter, gale force winds a shallow ice hollow buried beneath a snow who, when asked once to explain his No one knows for sure. Only that in to the top is half the battle, but getting to parties found themselves stranded and swirling around him and a wind chill factor drift. It remains there to this day. obsession with the mountain, famously 1999, 75 years after the attempt, George the bottom is an important part, too.” fighting for their lives. of 100 degrees below zero, literally freezing replied: “Because it’s there.” Mallory’s body was found at 8100m, almost One of them was Rob Hall, the acclaimed him to death. TIBETANS CALL HER JOMOLUNGMA. In early June 1924, Mallory and his perfectly preserved in his tweed jacket and THE 83-YEAR-OLD MAN SITTING New Zealand climber who had first reached In a special satellite phone hook-up with Nepalese use the Sanskrit, Sagarmatha. companion, Andrew Irvine, had attempted hobnailed boots. before me knows only too well the the summit six years earlier with Peter his wife, Jan Arnold, then seven months They mean, respectively, Goddess Mother to conquer Everest from the north face after His injuries and the broken rope around importance of getting down from the top Hillary, son of the legendary Sir Edmund pregnant with their first child, he tried to of the World, and Head of the Sky. their companions, Major Edward Norton his waist suggest a fall from a considerable of Mt Everest. Fifty years ago, at the age of Hillary. Four years later, Rob Hall had again conceal his appalling predicament. At 29,028ft or 8848m, Mt Everest – as and Dr T. Howard Somervell, were forced distance. There was also a letter in his 33, Sir Edmund Hillary, together with proved his mountaineering credentials by Their conversation was recounted in Jon she is better known to Westerners – towers back at 8572m by gale-force winds. breast pocket from his devoted wife, Ruth, Tenzing Norgay, stunned the world by climbing, in the space of two months, Krakauer’s best-seller, Into Thin Air. above the Tibetan-Nepalese border like a Norton went snow blind and Somervell but no photograph. Mallory had promised becoming the first men to successfully Everest, K2 and Lhotse, the world’s highest, “I haven’t taken me boots off to check, gleaming watchtower of ice and rock. was wracked by such violent coughing that to leave her picture at the summit. Was scale the world’s tallest mountain. second highest and fourth highest peaks. but I think I may have a bit of frostbite ...” Screaming and howling with all the he ruptured the membranes in his throat, this an indication he might have actually For both of them life was never to be the He was as good a climber as you’d hope he said. elemental furies in her possession, she is the causing him to nearly choke on his own made it? Again, no one knows for sure. same again, and not because of what they to find, and yet here, now, after trying to “I’m looking forward to making you highest place on earth and, to a special breed blood. Still, the two men managed, without “I’ve had 45 years of being seen as the saw at the top, magnificent though it was. rescue one of his American clients, Doug completely better when you come home,” of adventurer, one of the most coveted. supplementary oxygen, to get higher than first person to get to the top,” Sir Edmund Rather it was because of how they came to Hansen, from the notorious Hillary Step just Arnold said. “I just know you’re going to be Between 1852 and 1952, 15 exploration anyone in history. Hillary said at the time, just after Mallory’s be treated once they’d stepped back into below the summit, he’d become trapped. rescued. Don’t feel that you’re alone. I’m parties tried and failed to reach the summit A week later, Mallory and Irvine made body had been found. “I don’t think it civilisation’s rapturous embrace. Having ignored calls to abandon Hansen sending all my positive energy your way.” with varying degrees of success. Twenty- their bid for the peak and were last seen would worry me too much if it was Edmund Hillary, the socially awkward and save himself – Hansen had eventually “I love you,” Hall said. “Sleep well my four people died in the process, one of them scaling a ridge 300m from the top. Did discovered that [he] had been there before bee farmer from Auckland, found himself fallen 1828m to his death – Hall was caught sweetheart. Please don’t worry too much.” being the dashing figure of Sir George they make it all the way after becoming me. Of course, he didn’t get down again, so suddenly the toast of the Commonwealth, ▲

on a “balcony” 8747m up in the air, Twelve days later, Hall’s body was found in Mallory, leader of three British expeditions AAP. enveloped in mist? he didn’t quite complete the job. Getting knighted by a newly crowned Queen

56 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – APRIL 2003 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – APRIL 2003 57 Elizabeth, feted by kings, presidents and with the daring Swiss climber Jean-Jacques his face, there was no disguising his prime ministers. Women wrote to him – Asper; had shouldered double loads up infectious grin of pure delight as he looked complete strangers – asking him to marry sheer spurs and ridges; pitched tents, all around him. them; huge crowds gathered wherever he checked supplies and even served up hot “We shook hands and then Tenzing went; his face appeared on stamps, coins, chocolate in minus 50 degree temperatures threw his arm around my shoulders and we five-dollar bills. He turned into the most for his incredulous team members. He was, thumped each other on the back until we famous New Zealander of all time and, like said Lambert, a man “with three lungs”. were almost breathless. It was 11.30am. his hero Sir Ernest Shackleton, the great Yet after spending the night at 8382m The ridge had taken us two-and-a-half Antarctic explorer, possibly one of the most and then making their way to within 238m hours, but it seemed like a lifetime. I turned famous men in history. of the summit, the two of them found they off the oxygen and removed my set. I had And yet Hillary, perhaps to his great could go no further. They’d climbed higher carried my camera, loaded with colour credit, was never to feel like a hero. Not than anyone in history, but could not film, inside my shirt to keep it warm, so I even after his momentous Everest climb, prevail against bone-snapping cold and an now produced it and got Tenzing to pose on when he went on to become a member of accursed, roaring wind. top for me, waving his axe on which was a the first expeditionary party to travel by Such was Tenzing’s reputation with the string of flags – United Nations, British, vehicle to the South Pole. Not when he Swiss that the following year he was Nepalese and Indian. Then I turned my travelled to the North Pole with Neil invited to join John Hunt’s British military- attention to the great stretch of country Armstrong, the first man on the moon. Not style expedition to Everest, although not as lying below us in every direction.” when he became the first man to climb part of the first assault team. That honour Before they descended, Tenzing made a Antarctica’s Mt Herschel, and not even was to go to Charles Evans and Tom hole in the snow and placed some small when millions of Indians and Nepalese After climbing Mt Everest, Sir Edmund Bourdillon, who set out on May 26 and offerings to the Goddess of the Mountain: a poured onto the banks of the Ganges River (left), joined expeditions to both Poles; his appeared to be heading for the South bar of chocolate, a packet of biscuits and a to witness and honour his team’s pioneering son Peter (above) scaled Everest in 1990. Summit when their closed-circuit oxygen handful of lollies. Hillary buried a crucifix voyage to their sacred river’s source. equipment failed and the weather turned. which expedition leader John Hunt had “I feel that I know myself a good deal Although utterly exhausted, Bourdillon given him. Then the two men emptied better than all these people who built me the clouds; he taught himself how to cut wanted to press on despite the risks. Evans their bladders. up as being a heroic character,” he says steps in the ice with a pick axe; he climbed knew better. “If you do that Tom,” he said, As writer Jan Morris wrote, “it was the now. “I had the very strong view, which on in agony when his feet were nearly “you will never see [your wife] Jennifer last innocent adventure” in history. basically in my heart I still have, that I was frostbitten; he learnt how to hunker down again.” On the way down, the men slipped a very plain, uninteresting sort of person. and survive blizzards. and fell towards the hanging glaciers and IN THE HALF CENTURY SINCE THE “I suppose when I climbed Everest I He became the first man to scale the avalanche gullies of the Kangshung Face. beekeeper and the Sherpa made it to the realised, ‘Well, I wasn’t too bad. Done a south ridge of New Zealand’s highest Only soft snow stopped them plummeting roof of the world, Mt Everest has become a pretty good job on Everest’. Then, I travelled mountain, Mt Cook; he was a member of part or all of the way to . kind of prized trophy for the brave, the fit, around the world talking to vast numbers the first all-New Zealand team to tackle Three days later, on May 29, 1953, it was the rich and the foolhardy. A certain kind of people ... and I came to the view that the Himalayas, and, of course, the first Hillary and Tenzing’s turn, and the Goddess of mad adventurer confronts his demons up although I didn’t think myself as good as man, along with Tenzing Norgay, to reach Mother of the World beckoned them there; nations compete for glory on her they thought I was, I couldn’t be too bad.” the top of the world. He was a man who onwards and upwards. slopes; and alpine companies vie for a Recently, in Australia as part of the 50th loved being first, in fact, needed desperately As Hillary was to recall: “I had been lucrative piece of the action, charging up to anniversary celebrations of his Everest to be first. cutting steps continuously for two hours $150,000 for an expedition. In the process, ascent, one is struck by two things about Sir Edmund Hillary. Firstly, at 83, he is still “I WAS A SOMEWHAT LONELY CHILD WITH ALMOST NO FRIENDS ... I gained my release a powerful and lucid man with a handshake that can crush wood and a mind that can by reading voraciously of adventure stories and dreaming of adventure as I walked for navigate widely and freely. Secondly, that mile after mile around the lonely countryside ... I DID NOTHING PHYSICALLY EXCITING.” despite the enormity of his achievements, he has never quite overcome his childhood when in the first week the muscle-bound from his elder son. “When he felt I had done “The desire to overcome something that and Tenzing, too, was moving very slowly. something is taken from the mountain, sense of himself. gymnastic instructor cast a jaundiced something wrong,” Hillary offers now, “he hasn’t been overcome before is a driving As I chipped steps around still another some sense that perhaps she is less “I was a somewhat lonely child with eye over my scrawny physique. He rolled would conduct me over to the woodshed factor in mountaineering,” he says. “In corner, I wondered rather dully just how formidable than she really is. Scores of almost no friends,” he said. “I gained my his eyes to the heavens and muttered: and he had a chunk of wood there and he fact, I believe that to actually succeed in long we could keep it up. Our original zest people have died making this mistake. release by reading voraciously of adventure ‘Whatever will they send me next?’ He then would give me a substantial thrashing. doing something physically which has had now quite gone and it was turning more And while Hillary and Tenzing were the stories and dreaming of adventure as I told me my ribs flared out in a most “What he was really wanting, I realised never been done before is probably the most into a grim struggle. ones who broke the spell, there were others, walked for mile after mile around the unnatural fashion, my back needed later, was for me to admit that I had done satisfying thing you can do.” “I then realised that the ridge ahead, extraordinarily courageous individuals all lonely countryside. But that was all in my straightening and my shoulders were these wrong things, but I never would. I just instead of still monotonously rising, now of them, who conquered Everest as well. dreams. I did nothing physically exciting. unpleasantly rounded. He placed me in refused, whether I was right or wrong. I was SOMETIMES, NO MATTER WHAT THE dropped sharply away, and far below I could Many were Sherpas simply trying to make “I went to Auckland Grammar School the misfits’ class with the other physical as determined as he. And bloody minded.” powers of endurance and strength, faith see the North Col and the Rongbuk Glacier. a living by helping Westerners fulfil their more than 70 years ago. I was very much a freaks. And I never got over this sense of The only way Hillary knew how to even, it all comes down to luck. The day I looked upwards to see a narrow snow ridge dreams – people like Apa Sherpa, who got skinny country boy and only 11 years old. I physical inferiority.” overcome his own sense of mediocrity was dawns crisp and still or the weather turns, running up to a snowy summit. A few more to the top 11 times. Or Babu Sherpa, who don’t think in the first week I talked to This inferiority complex was matched to become a “mountaineering enthusiast”. sending heavy clouds scudding in to whacks of the ice-axe in the firm snow and did it in a record 16 hours and 56 minutes. anyone. At lunch time, I’d go to a little by a quality he saw in his father: a fierce, “[I wanted to] do things in the mountains swallow up the mountain. we stood on top. In 1978, Reinhold Messner, the Italian scruffy area at the back of the school and eat almost ruthless, determination. which were challenging, and frequently In 1952, Tenzing Norgay and his Swiss “My initial feelings were of relief – relief mountaineer, together with Austrian Peter my sandwiches. There were quite a lot of A small newspaper publisher-turned-bee frightened me to death,” he says. partner, Raymond Lambert, would have that there were no more steps to cut, no Habeler, achieved what scientists had said ants and I used to watch the ants moving farmer, Hillary’s father was shot through And so having built himself up through almost certainly climbed into the history more ridges to traverse and no more humps was impossible – they summited without steadily around ... so by the end of the first the nose at Gallipoli and laid low by his younger days by running with huge books had they not been confronted by a to tantalise us with hopes of success. I using supplemental oxygen. Two years week I was much more friendly with the dysentery before being sent home in 1916. loads of honey on his back, he then took to wild storm. Tenzing had forged a route looked at Tenzing and, in spite of the later, Messner did it again – completely on ants than I was with my fellow students. He was a deeply conservative man who the mountains with an almost frightening over the terrifying Khumbu Icefall; balaclava, goggles and oxygen mask all his own. He described the last few minutes: ▲

“My confidence received another blow responded at times violently to challenges zeal. He camped on ice shelves high up in HEADPRESS. RDA IMAGES; GETTY negotiated a wide, bottomless crevasse encrusted with long icicles that concealed “I can scarcely go on. No despair, no

58 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – APRIL 2003 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – APRIL 2003 59 Tenzing and the Sherpas of Everest. “But Tenzing’s and he reassured him that not what was the goal if I lost my life? I had a wife only was he a superb mountaineer, he was and a son at home. I had a family to whom I a wonderful husband and father, too; that was far more important than Everest. I his life had been a considerable one. thought of my mother. What would she tell The same and more can, of course, be me to do? Descend, descend, descend.” said about the beekeeper. In 1953, the Goddess of the Mountain gave to Sir JUDY TENZING, TASHI’S WIFE AND Edmund Hillary more than he could have co-author, believes that to be a mountain ever dreamt of in terms of international climber you have to be an egomaniac, and fame and glory. Then, in 1975, she took she includes her own “dear husband” in from him in the most tragic of ways. this category. “They are so focused on what His beloved wife, Louise, had always they want to do,” she explains, “that they hated flying in small planes, but Hillary don’t think about anything else. They don’t had encouraged her and their youngest think about family or future, just about daughter, Belinda, 16, to join him in the where they are going to put their foot next; Himalayan town of Phaplu, where he was at least until it all goes wrong.” building a hospital. Shortly after take-off Even Sir Edmund Hillary, as self-effacing from Katmandu, the plane crashed in a a man as you could hope to meet, was wheat field, killing all those aboard. Hillary Sir Edmund in Sydney in June 2002 with determined to get to the summit before has never forgiven himself. his second wife June – they wed in 1989. Tenzing, despite asserting for years that it Four years after this, his best friend, never mattered. He and Tenzing were a Peter Mulgrew, was killed in the now team, he continually claimed, and these infamous Mt Erebus plane crash in the happiness, anxiety. I have lost the mastery sorts of questions were irrelevent to Antarctic. Hillary went on to marry of my feelings. I consist only of will.” mountain climbers. Besides, the two men Mulgrew’s widow, June, in 1989, after just In 1984, Tim McCartney-Snape and had made a pact after their climb never having completed his stint as New Zealand Greg Mortimer became the first Australians to publicly discuss the subject and it was High Commissioner to India and . to get to the highest place on earth, and did only a journalist’s persistent questioning “After the death of my wife and my so by charting a new route, without bottled in 1993 that had finally prompted Hillary youngest daughter, who was really my oxygen and carrying their own equipment. to blurt out the truth – that he had actually pride and joy,” he says now, “there didn’t It was a world-class feat of endurance. got there first. seem much purpose to life. Then, I realised As was the effort of Mike Groom, the Now, however, he elaborates on the that to carry on at all I had to keep doing the first Queenslander to get to the top in 1993. subject and, in so doing, offers a revealing things we’d been doing together.” Having had 30 per cent of his frostbitten insight into the kind of burning passion he And of course this had nothing to do with feet amputated six years earlier, Groom had for being first. being first to the top of anything any more. not only learned to walk again but, over “Once we got to the South Summit,” he It had to do with being of service to people, the next decade, willed himself to scale the says, “and I looked along that long, narrow in this case the Sherpas of the Himalayas. world’s five highest mountains. summit ridge, I never for a moment thought “What can I do for you?” he had asked a In 1993, he reached the summit of of asking Tenzing to lead. I felt ‘this is my group of them in 1961. Everest with Lobsang Bhutia, the 40-year- sort of country, this is alpine country’.” “Our children have eyes,” replied their old nephew of Tenzing Norgay. Lobsang Even though it was actually Tenzing’s spokesman, “but they cannot see. They later slipped and fell from somewhere country? “[Yes], even though it was his must have education.” The Goddess of the Mountain gave to Sir Edmund Hillary more than he could have ever dreamt of ... THEN, IN 1975, SHE TOOK FROM HIM IN THE MOST TRAGIC OF WAYS. near the South Summit. His body was country,” Hillary says with a chortle. “But And so in the years since his triumph, found at the bottom of a gully 200m above it was my sort of country.” Sir Edmund has ensured just that. Through Camp IV. Groom helped carry the body to his Himalayan Trust, he has built 27 the bottom, where it was then given a THROUGHOUT INDIA AND NEPAL, schools, two hospitals and a dozen medical traditional Buddhist cremation. millions of people continue to believe that centres for these strong, proud people of the The leader of that 1993 expedition was Tenzing Norgay got to the top first. They or mountains. He has also constructed several Tashi Tenzing, not only Lobsang’s nephew, their parents and grandparents remember airfields and rebuilt monasteries and but the grandson of the great Tenzing the banners held aloft in 1953 showing the cultural centres in their honour. Norgay. Tashi had sold his house in Sydney triumphant Sherpa marching towards the “I have little doubt that the most to pay for this historic expedition, so summit with an apparently unconscious worthwhile things I have done have desperate was he to emulate his famous Hillary dragging along behind him. It was a not been standing on the summits of grandfather. But he would have to wait falsehood, and one which Tenzing’s family mountains, or the North and South Pole, three more years to fulfil his dream. Just readily acknowledges today. great experiences though they were,” he 400m short of the summit, he went Tenzing Norgay died in 1986, a sad and says. “My most important projects have snowblind and he realised that, even broken man. He died believing that – unlike been the building and maintaining of though he could get to the top, he wouldn’t Hillary – he had not done enough with his schools and medical clinics for my good be able to get down again. He turned back. extraordinary fame for his own people, friends in the Himalayas. These, indeed, are “Would I let it end here, so close to my many of whom were poor and illiterate. the things I will always remember.”

goal?” he was to later write in his book Hillary was by now a close friend of As we will surely always remember him.W AUSTRAL.

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