Sir Edmund Hillary, a man of lofty ideals
Seventy years ago today -- on May 29, 1953 -- the great mountain climber conquered Mt. Everest (with lots of help). In 1998, when he came to Pittsburgh to give a talk, I rang him up in New Zealand.
From History.com:
At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, become the first explorers to reach the summit of Mount Everest, which at 29,035 feet above sea level is the highest point on earth.
Lofty Ideals
Edmund Hillary, the world's most famous New Zealander, doesn't have his own Web site yet. But he does have his own entry in the encyclopedias.
That's the kind of permanent record of your life you get when you're considered one of the greatest explorers of the century.
Anyone over 40 knows that back in 1953, long before Gore-Tex and other high-tech bad-weather garb and climbing gear made mountaineering a sport for the masses, Hillary and his Sherpa companion Tenzing Norgay were the first two humans to conquer all 29,028 feet of Mount Everest.
Though seven expeditions before them had failed, they reached the top of the world at 11:30 on the morning of May 29, 1953. They planted some flags, snapped some photos and immediately started worrying about getting down safely so they could live to tell everybody about it.
Hillary, an Auckland beekeeper before becoming world famous, went on many other exciting adventures, including leading the first mechanized motorcade to the South Pole in 1958.
He also has explored unmapped regions of Nepal, set up hygienic water systems in remote villages and built schools, hospitals and bridges throughout Nepal and the Himalayas. In 1974 the Canadian Sir Edmund Hillary Foundation was established to help fund a variety of international aid projects that " he remains active with today.
Tomorrow night at 6:30, as part of his humanitarian efforts in Nepal, Hillary, now 79, will put on a lecture/slide show at the Byham Theater. Call the Carnegie Science Center at 412-237-3400 for information on tickets, which range from $25 to $100 and can only be bought in advance.
Sir Edmund Hillary
Q: Are you happy with your entry in the encyclopedia?
A: I've looked at the odd encyclopedia and I've read the odd entry. And none of them are necessarily what I would regard as completely summing up what I am. But most of them are fairly close. I'm not really very concerned as to how I'm presented in an encyclopedia.
Q: You have been called the last of the great 20th-century explorers. Do you think that's a lot of hype or is it accurate?
A: Oh, I think it's a lot of hype. There are lots of good explorers, certainly before me and after me. I think that Tenzing and I managed to climb Everest for the first time and we got a lot of publicity as a consequence.
Q: I know your famous answer when you were asked why you climbed Everest was "Because it was there" ....
A: That really wasn't me that said that, of course. That was said by very much a predecessor of mine, George Leigh-Mallory. He pioneered the approach to the mountain in 1923. He died on the mountain in 1924.
Q: Oh, OK. So why did you climb it?
A: What I generally say is that it's the sense of challenge, the attempt to stretch yourself to the utmost and overcome considerable difficulties. If you can do that, you get a great sense of satisfaction.
Q: I have another quote from you. Let's see if you said this: "It is not the mountains we conquer but ourselves." Did you say that?
A: I think I did say that over the years, and I believe it, too.
Q: You had a lot of competition in those days. How did you get to the top first?
A: It was a combination of factors, really. I was certainly very fit. But we had a very excellent team. Our team had a very strong team spirit. The team in general was very hopeful that we might be successful in getting someone to the summit. And because Tenzing and I were probably the fittest couple at the time, we were the ones who were given the final job, and we were able to complete it. And on the last day, we had a little bit of luck that you always need, in that the weather was pretty reasonable.
Q: Did you have oxygen?
A: Yeah, we used oxygen on the mountain. In those days we didn't know whether it was humanly possible to reach the summit without using oxygen. Frankly, we didn't know if it was possible to reach the summit even using oxygen. So we had that sort of psychological barrier to overcome, which is something, of course, no other expedition has had to worry about.
Q: When you were at the very top, what were you thinking when you stood there?
A: I didn't have a feeling of this sort of tremendous excitement within me. I was still very much aware of the fact that we have to get safely down the mountain again. I did have a feeling of very considerable satisfaction. So many expeditions had tried the mountain, and they were pretty good expeditions, too. But finally Tenzing and I had got to the summit.
Q: You are in the encyclopedias because of your climb on Mount Everest, but you also drove across Antarctica for the first time. Which of those two or any other adventure you've gone on was the hardest?
A: Well, the one, of course, that got the greatest publicity was the climb of Mount Everest. But I have been involved in other expeditions — driving to the South Pole and driving jet boats up the Ganges River in the Himalayas and things of that nature — that to me have been just as challenging as the climb of Everest.
I tend to take every adventure as it comes. They all have their problems and they all have their periods of danger, and so on, but this is all part of the challenge. I really don't decide that this one particular expedition was any better than any other.
Q: If you were a young man now, what adventure would there be out there that you would be after? Some people say all the great adventures are all gone.
A: I guess in a way, many of the great adventures, the massive ones, have gone. The mountains have been climbed. The poles have been reached. People have gone to the bottom of the ocean and all the rest. But there are still very large numbers of very demanding things still to be done.
The modern adventurer, say a mountaineer, he can choose to try and climb a mountain by a very difficult route that may have not been done before. By so doing, because of his greater skill and greater technical equipment, he is able to do the same sort of thing we did 45 years ago. The challenge remains just the same because he has greater skill but he's doing harder things.
Q: Are you happy with the popularization of mountain climbing?
A: I think mountaineering is a great sport as long as it's handled sensibly. However, I'm not an enthusiast for the commercial side of trying to climb Mount Everest, having someone conduct you to the summit if you pay $65,000. But if someone is skilled and experienced and wants to put a little expedition together and go to the top, I wish them the best of luck.
Q: What do you do for excitement now?
A: Well, now that I'm much older, of course, I get more of my excitement out of working on projects with the people of the Himalayas. We have established lots of schools for them and hospitals and medical clinics. I find this in many ways just as satisfying as a big physical challenge.
Q: Your appearance in Pittsburgh is part of your fund-raising efforts around the world?
A: Yes, it is. I travel around the world a good deal each year, doing talks and raising funds for the projects in the Himalayas. I have a great affection for these people, particularly the Sherpa people, so I feel almost a sense of duty to carry on and do these things.
Q: What are you most proud of?
A: Unquestionably, it's not really the great adventures. But more the fact that as a result of our efforts many children in the Himalayas have been able to go to school and get an education and many young people have been able to get medical treatment. I think these are the things that are really most important.
The New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist was born in 1919 and died in 2008.