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Half a century after he became the first person to set foot on the top of Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary is to become a Nepali citizen in the climax of official celebrations marking the anniversary.
Hillary, now a robust 83, and Nepali sherpa Tenzing Norgay "knocked the bastard off" at 11:30 a.m. on the morning of May 29, 1953.
Fifty years later, Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand is to make Hillary an honorary citizen before a royal dinner hosted by the monarch of the world's only Hindu kingdom, King Gyanendra.
Despite being mobbed nearly everywhere he has gone in Kathmandu during a week of street parades and celebrations, Sir Edmund Hillary remains unaffected by the worldwide fame the event has brought him, claiming he isn't overly excited.
"This has been part of life for me really, I'm just pleased everone else is excited."
He says it was pressure of a different kind 50 years ago.
"We also had the feeling of a psychological barrier. We didn't know if we reached the summit, even using our oxygen, that we might not just collapse and fall down dead. So we did have our little concerns, but pushed along and duly got there."
A variety of celebrations have also taken place around New Zealand to honour the 50th anniversary - including some taking part in a two hour hike up Mt Tihia in the Tongariro National Park, school children re-enacting the historic climb and a new portrait of Sir Edmund unveiled at Auckland War Memorial Museum.
However there has been no news on the progress of a climbing party which is marking the anniversary by attempting to climb Aoraki Mt Cook.
Bad weather has set in and there has been no contact since the group set out on Wednesday.
Sir Edmund Hillary has seized on all the world attention to make a plea for the peak he and others treasure so much.
He is concerned about its future and is calling on the Nepalese government to restrict the number allowed to climb Mt Everest, saying the magic of the mountain is being lost to commercialism and beer drinking crowds.
"Sitting around in a big base camp and knocking back cans of beer - I don't particularly regard that as mountaineering.
"If I were 33 again, young, fit and a bit of a dynamo as I think I was in those days, I simply wouldn't want to join the queue that is scrambling to get up the mountainside."
Since Sir Edmund Hillary's climb, more than 1300 climbers have made it to the summit and there are currently more than twenty guided teams waiting at base camp.
Since scaling Everest with Tenzing Norgay, Hillary has spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours building schools, hospitals and clinics for the Sherpa people around Everest.
The New Zealand Governmenr also announced on Thursday night that it would boost its contribution to Hillary's Himalayan Trust from $40,000 to $290,000 a year. The new funding with go towards health and education in Nepal.
About 450 summiteers, many of them Nepali Sherpas essential to Everest expeditions, are taking part in the celebrations, which Nepal hopes will help revive a tourism industry shattered by a bloody Maoist revolt.
But where Hillary and Tenzing cut their own way, most climbers today pay guides up to $120,000 to lay ladders across the gaping crevasses of the Khumbu icefall and rig ropes along the heights and the Hillary Step just below the summit to give them a shot at the top.
However, celebrations at the camp have been marred by a freak accident.
A helicopter with eight people on board was coming in to land when it crashed about 100 metres from where several hundred climbers are staying.
The impact sent fragments of rotor blade flying and the chopper came to rest in an icy stream while climbers frantically tried to free those trapped inside.
Two Nepalese were killed and six others injured, including a trekker on the ground.
The helicopter was about to pick up a group of climbers.. including lhakba gelu sherpa, who has just set a record for the fastest climb.
Over the years, 175 people have died trying to climb Mt Everest and many of their bodies remain frozen on the mountain.
In May 1996, nine climbers died in one day when a ferocious blizzard hit the summit.
