Sir Edmund Hillary: A tribute
When Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first scaled Mt Everest, they carved a new path on a pristine peak. Now, 50 years on, spent oxygen canisters and tin cans litter the trail to the summit, and climbers can send emails from an Internet café at base camp.
Some 22 expedition teams,
each with around 12 members, were given permission to climb Everest
this season. And there have been a host of new "summit records"
achieved in the past week: the oldest man (70-year-old Yuichiro
Miura from Japan); the first black African (South African game
ranger Subusiso Vilane); and the speed record, which was broken not
once, but twice (first by Sherpa Pemba Dorjie, and then three days
later by Sherpa Lhakpa Gelu).
While climbing the world's highest mountain is still an undeniably impressive thing to do, today it's hard to recapture the excitement and sense of human achievement represented by Hillary and Tenzing's 1953 ascent.
The duo literally walked where no man had been before, carrying enormously heavy breathing equipment, and using gear that can only be described as primitive by today's standards. At that time, scientists weren't even sure if the human body could survive at such altitudes.
Where Hillary, Tenzing and
their expedition team had to carve each step on the way to the
summit, today there are several well-worn routes up the mountain
with permanent ladders and fixed ropes to assist climbers over
crevasses and up icy walls.
The commercialisation of summiting Everest has also changed the experience forever. No longer do climbers have to be experienced mountaineers. They can be led up the mountain for a fee, without ever cutting their teeth on lower, less challenging peaks.
But Everest remains unpredictable, and those without the necessary mountaineering skills can be caught out by freak storms, as Rob Hall's ill-fated 1996 expedition so fatally showed. Altogether 175 people have lost their lives on Everest's unforgiving slopes.
For the Everest pioneers
and more recent mountaineers, respect is given to those who have
forged new routes up the mountain, or people like Reinhold Messner
who was the first man to reach the summit without oxygen and, two
years later, the first to complete a solo climb.
There are more difficult and technical climbs, but only the peak of Everest is the highest point in the world. That's why it has always been irresistible to adventurers.
It's also hard for us to understand just how isolated Mt Everest was in the first half of the 20th century. The peak was often referred to as the "Third Pole", and both the North and South Pole had been reached before Everest was climbed.
When Hillary and Tenzing finally reached the summit in 1953, the event coincided with the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The British Empire was in decline, but a young, new Queen and the conquering of the world's highest mountain - by a British expedition - gave the Empire one more glorious day in the sun.
By the time Hillary arrived back in Kathmandu his knighthood had been announced and he was a household name. Since then his mythical status has only continued to grow.
As the 50th anniversary
celebrations approach, New Zealand is basking in the reflected glow
of its greatest living son. Hillary, of course, is the very model
of a traditional Kiwi hero. Physically strong and capable,
courageous, rough-and-ready and modest, he has always been a man
more of action than words.
His other achievement is that he's never given the New Zealand public any reason not to respect him. It's been 50 years since he made history and, in all that time, there have been no major scandals, personal or professional.
George Mallory,one of the first Everest pioneers, had a very Western attitude to conquering the mountain When asked about Everest's magnetism, he said he wanted to climb it simply "because it's there". Mallory died trying, succumbing on the mountain's north-east ridge in 1924.
Some of the same attitude can be seen in Hillary's now famous words to fellow New Zealander George Lowe. "Well, George, we knocked the bastard off," he said as he and Tenzing stumbled back into the expedition team's final camp.
If that off-hand comment
lacked the respect due to this most sacred of mountains, Hillary's
actions ever since have shown a deep and lasting concern for the
region and its people. With his place in history assured and his
mountaineering dreams realised, he has more than repaid the Sherpa
people for opening Everest up to him and the rest of the world.
Through the Himalayan Trust he established, Hillary has provided Sherpa villages with hospitals and schools and given the people a better chance of succeeding in the modern world. In this respect Hillary is the perfect traveller and mountaineer - someone who realises how privileged he is to visit and experience a foreign place, and is then willing to repay the local people for providing that experience.
It's something that all the travellers attracted to the majesty of the Himalayas could do well to follow. And it's the reason that we, as New Zealanders, can rightfully be proud that Sir Edmund Hillary is one of ours. Climbing Mt Everest was a great physical feat, but five decades of work to improve the lives of others is what makes him a legend.
Sidah Russell
