Sir Edmund Hillary
KG. ONZ. KBE.
Mountaineer, Explorer, Humanitarian
Sir Edmund Hillary was born in 1919 and grew up in Auckland New Zealand. It was in New Zealand that he became interested in mountaineering. Although he made his living as a beekeeper, he climbed mountains in New Zealand, then in the Alps, and finally in the Himalayas, where he scaled 11 different peaks of over 20,000 feet. By this time, Hillary was ready to confront the world’s highest mountain.
Mount Everest discovered to be the highest mountain in the world in 1852 lies between Tibet and Nepal. Known as Sagarmatha in Tibet and Chomolungma in Nepal, Peak XV was named Everest to honour Sir George Everest, Surveyor General of India, in 1865. Between 1920 and 1952 seven major expeditions had failed to reach the summit. In 1924 the famous mountaineer George Leigh-Mallory had perished in the attempt. In 1952, a team of Swiss climbers had been forced to turn back after reaching the South Peak, only 1000 feet from the summit.
Edmund Hillary joined Everest reconnaissance expeditions in 1951 and again in 1952. These exploits brought Hillary to the attention of Sir John Hunt, leader of an expedition sponsored by the Joint Himalayan Committee of the Alpine Club of Great Britain and the Royal Geographic Society to make the assault on Everest in 1953.
The expedition reached the South Peak in May, and all but two of the climbers who had come this far were forced to turn back by exhaustion at the high altitude. At last, Hillary and, Tenzing Norgay, a native Nepalese climber who had participated in five previous Everest trips, were the only members of the party able to make the final assault on the summit.
At 11.30 on the morning of May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit, the highest spot on earth. As remarkable as the feat of reaching the summit was the treacherous climb back down the peak.
On the descent the first person he and Tenzing Norgay met was his lifelong friend George Lowe where he uttered the famous words:
"Well, George, we've knocked the bastard off."
By coincidence, the conquest of Everest was announced to the British public on the eve of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The triumph of a British-led expedition combined with the inauguration of the young Queen did much to restore the confidence of a nation weary from years of wartime hardship and post-war shortages. Edmund Hillary returned to Britain with the other climbers and was knighted by the Queen.
Now world famous, Sir Edmund Hillary turned to Antarctic exploration and led the New Zealand section of the Trans-Antarctic expedition from 1955 to 1958. In 1958 he participated in the first mechanized expedition to the South Pole.
Hillary went on to organise further mountain-climbing expeditions but, as the years passed, he became more and more concerned with the welfare of the Nepalese people. In the 1960s, he returned to Nepal to aid in the development of the society, building clinics, hospitals and 27 schools.
2003: The 50th Anniversary of the First Ascent of Everest Replica Ice Axe
The ice axe used by Sir Edmund Hillary during his assault on Mt. Everest was manufactured by Claudius Simond of Mt. Blanc, France using European Ash for the handle with a forged steel head and spike.
The 50th anniversary commemorative axe has been reproduced with meticulous attention to detail based on the original axe, currently on loan to the Auckland Museum. Sir Edmund was renowned for his skills with the ice axe, his high level of fitness and his abilities in both snow and ice.
Official correspondent for The Times of London, covering the 1953 British Everest expedition James Morris was not a mountaineer but towards the end of April, on his first journey above Base Camp, he reached Camp III at the top of the Khumba Icefall. In Coronation Everest Morris describes his feeling of satisfaction at having climbed higher on Everest than any other journalist and collapsing into a sleeping bag, only to have the tent flap thrust aside and Edmund Hillary’s beaming face appear.
“There’s a nasty bit just down here on that last crevasse,” he said in a loud voice. "I’m going down to cut a few more steps in it. What about coming and belaying me? D’you feel like it?”
… I was too vain to explain that I was prostrate with exhaustion. So, heaving a long audible sigh, struggling out of my sleeping bag, twisting and rolling to get my boots out, catching my feet in the flap, searching for my snow goggles, I crept miserably out into the snow and followed him. I am glad, now, that he dragged me out that night; for I remember the incident as characteristic of Hillary, and illustrative of his supreme quality as a mountaineer. It was a horrid night, the snow driving and stinging, no moon, only the faint glow of reflected snow and the great shadow of Everest looming above us.
I stood at the lip of the crevasse, the rope belayed around my ice-axe, while Hillary scrambled expertly down its face. There he worked in the half light, huge and cheerful, his movement not so much graceful as unshakably assured, his energy almost demonic. He had a tremendous, bursting, elemental, infectious, glorious vitality about him, like some bright burly diesel express pounding across America; but beneath the good fellowship and the energy there was a subtle underlying seriousness; he reminded me often of a musician in the hours before a concert, when the nagging signs of nervous tension are beginning to enter his conversation, and you feel that his pleasantries are only a kindly façade. Hillary was as much a virtuoso as any Menuhin and as deeply and constantly embroiled in his art; I first detected this strain of great kindness in him that evening below Camp III. As the ice chips flew across the darkness, his striped hat bobbed in the chasm, and I stood shivering and grumbling, all messed up with ropes, crampons and ice-axes at the top.
From Coronation Everest by James Morris published by Faber and Faber, London 1958
Sir Edmund Hillary's Mountains Climbed
| 1944: | Mt Tapuaenuku, 2885m, Inland Kaikouras |
| 1946: | Mt Sealy (2637m), Mt Hamilton (2995m), Malte Brun (3155m), De La Beche (2992m) - Mt Cook National Park |
| 1947: | Aiguille Rouge (2911m), Haidinger (3066m), Mt Cook (3746m) - Mt Cook National Park |
| 1948: | Nazomi (2811m), Mt Cook, Sth ridge, first ascent |
| 1950: | Mt Tasman (3498m), Dampier (3440m) - Mt Cook National Park; Jungfrau (4156m), Finsteraarhorn (4274m), Monch (4099m), Weisshorn (4504m) - all Switzerland; Schaufelspitz (3332m) Austria; Lyskamm (4526m) - Italy/Switzerland. |
| 1951: | Elie de Beaumont (3117m) first ascent Maximillian ridge Mt Cook National Park |
| 1953: | MT EVEREST, FIRST ASCENT |
| 1971: | Mt Cook Grand Traverse |
Sir Edmund Hillary's Major Expeditions
| 1951: | Mukut Parbat and Everest reconnaissance, Nepal |
| 1952: | Prelude to Everest, Nepal/Tibet |
| 1953: | British Everest expedition |
| 1954: | NZ Makalu expedition (leader) |
| 1956-58: | Trans Antarctic, leader NZ team to South Pole |
| 1960: | Search for the Yeti, Nepal (leader) |
| 1961, 63, 64: | Leader, Himalayan expeditions |
| 1967: | Mt Herschel, Antarctic (leader) |
| 1977: | Ocean to the Sky, jet boat traverse of River Ganges, (leader) |
Mount Everest Historical Information
| English Name: | Mount Everest |
| Nepalese Name: | Sagarmatha |
| Tibetan Name: | Chomolungma |
| Height: | 8,850m/29,035ft |
| First Ascent: | 1953: Sir Edmund Hillary & Sherpa Tenzing Norgay |
| First female Ascent: | 1975: Junko Tabei of Japan |
| First Briton to Summit: | 1975: Dougal Haston and Doug Scott |
| First Solo Ascent: | 1980: Reinhold Messner |
| First British female: | 1993: Rebecca Stevens |
Most Successful British Expedition: |
1993: 16 people on the summit |
| Fastest Ascent: | 2004: Pemba Dorji Sherpa - 8hrs 10mins from base camp |
| Fastest Descent: | 11 minutes: Jean Marc Boivin by paraglider |
| Youngest Ascent: | 2003: Mingkipa Sherpa, 15 year old Nepalese girl |
| Oldest Ascent: | 2008: Min Bahadar Surchan - 76 years old |
| Most Ascents: | 18 by Apa Sherpa as of May 2008 |