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Mahesh

29/05/22 08:20 AM IST

International Everest Day

  • WHAT
  • WHY
  • WHEN
  • WHERE
  • WHO
  • HOW

What was the highest achievement of 1953?

  • Mount Everest sits on the crest of the Great Himalayas in Asia, lying on the border between Nepal and Tibet.
  • Called Chomo-Lungma, or “Mother Goddess of the Land,” by the Tibetans, the English named the mountain after Sir George Everest, a 19th-century British surveyor of South Asia.
  • Sixty-eight years ago today, on May 29, 1953, mountaineers Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay set foot atop Mount Everest, the world’s highest mountain.
  • They were the first ever to reach its 29,029-foot peak, and achieved instant fame upon their return: today their ascent is considered a great achievement of the 20th century.
  • The two men hugged each other with relief and joy but only stayed on the summit for 15 minutes because they were running low on oxygen.
  • Hillary took several photographs of the scenery and of Sherpa Norgay waving flags representing Britain, Nepal, the United Nations and India.
  • Norgay buried some sweets and biscuits in the snow as a Buddhist offering to the gods.
  • They looked for signs of George Mallory and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine who had disappeared in 1924 in a similar attempt to conquer Everest, but found nothing. Then they began the slow and tortuous descent to rejoin their team leader Colonel John Hunt further down the mountain at Camp VI.
  • When he saw the two men looking so exhausted Col Hunt assumed they had failed to reach the summit and started planning another attempt. But then the two climbers pointed to the mountain and signaled they had reached the top, and there were celebrations all round.
  • They were part of the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition. News of the expedition's success reached London in time to be released on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, 2 June.
Why was this feat incredible?
  • Led by Colonel John Hunt, the 1953 British Mount Everest expedition was the ninth attempt for the first ascent of Mount Everest, and the first confirmed to have succeeded when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit on Friday, 29 May 1953.
  • The first recorded attempt to climb Everest was made in 1921 by a British expedition that trekked 400 difficult miles across the Tibetan plateau to the foot of the great mountain.
  • A raging storm forced them to abort their ascent, but the mountaineers, among them George Leigh Mallory, had seen what appeared to be a feasible route up the peak. It was Mallory who said those ‘famous three words’ when later asked by a journalist why he so desperately wanted to climb Everest: “Because it’s there.”
  • A second British expedition, featuring Mallory, returned in 1922, and climbers George Finch and Geoffrey Bruce reached an impressive height of more than 27,000 feet. In another attempt made by Mallory that year, seven Sherpa porters were killed in an avalanche.
  • (The Sherpas, native to the Khumbu region, have long played an essential support role in Himalayan climbs and treks because of their strength and ability to endure the high altitudes.)
  • In 1924, the British launched a third Everest expedition, and climber Edward Norton reached an elevation of 28,128 feet, 900 vertical feet short of the summit, without using artificial oxygen. Four days later, Mallory and Andrew Irvine launched a summit assault and were never seen alive again.
  • In 1999, Mallory’s largely preserved body was found high on Everest – he had suffered numerous broken bones in a fall. Whether or not he or Irvine reached the summit remains a mystery.
  • Several more unsuccessful summit attempts were made via Tibet’s Northeast Ridge route, and after World War II Tibet was closed to foreigners. In 1949, Nepal opened its door to the outside world, and in 1950 and 1951 British expeditions made exploratory climbs up the Southeast Ridge route.
  • In 1952, a Swiss expedition navigated the treacherous Khumbu Icefall in the first real summit attempt.
  • Two climbers, Raymond Lambert and Tenzing Norgay, reached 28,210 feet, just below the South Summit, but had to turn back for want of supplies.
When did the ninth expedition begin?
  • The British felt under particular pressure, as the French had received permission to mount a similar expedition in 1954, and the Swiss another in 1955, meaning that the British would not have another chance at Everest until 1956 or later. They needed their best man for the job.
  • John Hunt, a British Army Colonel, was serving on the staff at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe when to his surprise he was invited by the Joint Himalayan Committee of the Alpine Club and the Royal Geographical Society to lead the British Everest expedition of 1953.
  • Eric Shipton had been widely expected to be the leader, because he had led the Mount Everest reconnaissance expedition from Nepal in 1951 as well as the unsuccessful British attempt on Cho Oyu in 1952, from which expedition most of the climbers selected had been drawn.
  • However, the Committee had decided that Hunt's experience of military leadership, together with his credentials as a climber, would provide the best prospect of success. Several members of the British expedition had a strong loyalty to Shipton and were unhappy that he had been replaced.
  • Charles Evans, for instance, stated: “It was said that Shipton lacked the killer instinct – not a bad thing to lack in my view.”
  • Edmund Hillary was among those most opposed to the change, but he was won over by Hunt's personality and by his admission that the change had been badly handled. Committee member Larry Kirwan, the Director/Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, said that "they had made the right decision but in the worst possible way."
  • In early March twenty Sherpas, who had been chosen by the Himalayan Club, arrived in Kathmandu to help carry loads of the expedition. They were led by their Sirdar, Tenzing Norgay, who was attempting Everest for the sixth time and was, according to many, "the best-known Sherpa climber and a mountaineer of world standing".
  • Then began what would be the world’s first successful expedition to the summit of Mount Everest.
  • Hunt brilliantly orchestrated the necessary equipment and scientific preparations and, through his belief in teamwork, brought together a band of men who together would attempt this lofty peak.
  • From Kathmandu the team set off for Bhagaon with several tons of equipment. After 17 days trekking they reached Thyangboche in Solu Khumbu. On arrival, Hunt sent small teams off to acclimatize and prepare for the ordeal of climbing Everest.
  • Base Camp was established on April 12, 1953 and thereafter the Khumbu Icefall became an important feature of life in climbing Mount Everest. Ever since, the Icefall has been renowned as one of the most treacherous parts on the attempt of Everest.
  • An ever-shifting river of ice, with huge crevasses and frozen blocks of ice and rock, this monster of nature had to be overcome.
Where did success come from?
  • Establishing a route through the Icefall took several days. Thereafter it had to be kept open for a constant succession of men and equipment. The team established nine camps from the Khumbu Glacier, through the Icefall, up the Western Cwm and on to the South Col of Everest.
  • For several weeks Sherpas busily moved supplies ever further up the mountain. By May 21, 1953 Wilfred Noyce and Annullu had reached the South Col, a symbolic and crucial objective.
  • The final objective, however, was the summit. On May 26, 1953, the first assault party comprising Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans set off for the south summit, using closed-circuit oxygen equipment.
  • At the south summit they realized that they would not be able to reach the summit owing to lack of time. Wearily, they returned to Camp XIII. On May 28, the second assault party comprising Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made their bid.
  • Together they set off, establishing Camp IX at 27,900 feet (8503 m) before spending a bitterly cold and desolate night trying to sleep.
  • At 4 a.m., they finally rose and began preparing themselves for the day ahead. Using open-circuit oxygen equipment they departed at 6.30 a.m. Climbing steadily, they reached the south summit at 9 a.m. Onward and upwards into the unknown they persevered.
  • As Hillary stated: “I continued hacking steps along the ridge and then up a few more to the right … to my great delight I realized we were on top of Mount Everest and that the whole world spread out below us”.
  • It was 11.30 a.m. on May 29, 1953. Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary had reached the highest point on the earth. As the two men made their way back down, the first climber they met was teammate George Lowe, also a New Zealander. Hillary's legendary greeting: “Well, George, we knocked the bastard off!”

 

Who, between the two, was the first?
  • For many years, rumours raged that the accolade of being the first man on Everest belonged to Sherpa Tenzing Norgay (born Namgyal Wangdi). In Kathmandu, a large banner was erected in 1953 depicted Tenzing pulling a “semi-conscious” Hillary to the summit.
  • But the speculation was fuelled in part by a simple agreement between the two heroes. This is how the events unfolded a few hours before the two conquered Everest:
  • At just before 6 am, the two were staring at the sun and aware that this was their chance to step into the history books as the first men to conquer the highest mountain in the world. They were not the first choice. A day earlier, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans had been chosen by Colonel John Hunt to claim the summit for the Commonwealth but they had been beaten back with just 300 feet to go by a combination of exhaustion and malfunctioning oxygen cylinders.
  • Of the two men now clinging to the face of the mountain, only one knew how Bourdillon and Hunt must have felt. For the previous year Tenzing Norgay had got within 750 feet of the summit on an expedition led the Swiss mountaineer Raymond Lambert, who had wept on his shoulder at their defeat before taking off his red scarf and wrapping it around his companion’s neck.
  • Norgay was wearing that red scarf on May 29, 1953 as a good-luck charm.
  • After finishing their breakfast, the two men pushed hard for the summit and, four and a half hours later, at 11.30 am they stood together on the peak, and gazed, as the first men in history at the view laid out below.
  • When word finally reached base camp, a reporter with the Times who was with the expedition dispatched a runner with a coded message to conceal the paper’s scoop which read: “Snow conditions bad. Stop. Advanced base abandoned yesterday. Stop. Awaiting improvements. Stop.”
  • Yet who was the first one to set foot on the summit? Back in Britain, it was unthinkable that the news could break on Coronation Day that Hillary had climbed Everest, but had been pipped to the post by a Nepali local.
  • For decades rumours swirled around that it was not Hillary whose boot was the first to crunch down on the summit of Everest but Norgay. Indeed, two of Norgay’s sons have continued to insist that their father confided in them that he had reached the top first, not Hillary.
  • The environment in which such rumours multiplied was created by the two climbers themselves, who insisted that they had reached the summit together and that it was immaterial who had led the way.
  • “When we came out toward Kathmandu, there was a very strong political feeling, particularly among the Indian and Nepalese press, who very much wanted to be assured that Tenzing was first,” Sir Edmund would recall later. “That would indicate that Nepalese and Indian climbers were at least as good as foreign climbers.”
  • According to a memo found in the archives of the Royal Geographical Society, Colonel James Hunt – who led the expedition – and Christopher Summerhayes – the British ambassador to Nepal – doctored the official account in order to conceal who got to the peak first and made the decision to share the credit between both climbers in a bid to defuse the anti-colonial feelings that had built in both India and Nepal since India’s independence, six years earlier.
  • So, in accordance with Hunt’s wishes, the statement released by the expedition in Kathmandu, had ambiguous wording which stated: “A few more whacks of the ice axe in the firm snow and we stood on the summit”.
  • Norgay eventually ended the speculation by revealing that Hillary was first in his 1955 autobiography, Tiger of the Snows. It was ghost-written by American writer James Ramsay Ullman as Norgay could speak several languages but could not read or write. They were roped six feet apart, with most of the 30 foot rope in loops in his hand.
  • The debate was settled by Hillary himself – but not before his friend Tenzing Norgay’s death in 1986. In an interview in 2003 for the 50th anniversary of his ascent, Hillary explained what had happened: “We set off at 6.30am, first light, me in the lead, Tenzing behind on a tight rope.
  • We never discussed who would be first up. It really did not matter to me, as the entire expedition was very much a team affair, but I suspect Tenzing was quite deferential to what he saw as the Sahib. So I got to the top first, with him just 10ft or so behind”.
  • Hillary explained the reason behind the decision not to focus on who reached the summit first: “We had cooked up the story that we got there in unison – after all, there was no-one there to dispute that. I felt it was no big deal, as I was just part of an overall team effort, and one of two, with Tenzing Norgay, to make it to the top. I did not see it as a deception or a distortion of history, and I still view it that way 50 years on. I have not seen myself as much of a hero, but Tenzing undoubtedly was.”
  • The experience of standing on the roof of the world meant that, for both men, the only way was down and both endured their share of hardship and pain. Hillary, who died in 2008, lost his wife and daughter in an air crash and Norgay lost what had become a comfortable life when, in 1964, the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, who had promised to support him, passed away.
  • “To a mountaineer, it's of no great consequence who actually sets foot first. Often the one who puts more into the climb steps back and lets his partner stand on top first,” Hillary once said, indicating very humbly that Norgay was a better climber than him.
How does the Everest still attract climbers?
  • Neither man anticipated how much, in the wake of their success, the appeal of that patch of snow more than five miles in the sky would grow. "Both Tenzing and I thought that once we'd climbed the mountain, it was unlikely anyone would ever make another attempt," Sir Edmund admitted in 2003. “We couldn't have been more wrong."
  • There are various motives people have for doing something like climbing Everest, but one predisposing quality that is required is risk tolerance. The height of Everest carries its own health risks such as oxygen and altitude sickness problems, and exhaustion. But for elite mountaineers, personality makeup is a big factor, with the Type-T thrill-seeking personality a prime candidate.
  • “T-Types are usually motivated by such factors as novelty, variety, challenge. They’re often innovative/inventive, optimistic with high self-confidence, believe they control their fate, and have high energy,” says Frank Farley, Ph.D., professor at Temple University in Philadelphia and former president of the American Psychological Association.
  • According to Farley, summiting Mount Everest is the gold standard for an elite climber and most elite climbers are risk takers. “It is for many the jewel in the crown of climbing. Summiting Everest has got to be in an elite climber’s CV,” he said. “There are a lot of dead bodies on Everest. Despite the known number of deaths, they feel confident they can do it.
  • “And they also feel that summiting Everest is one of the most glorious moments and accomplishments in their life.”

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