Climber September/October 2017

Tenzing Norgay proved to be a talented climbing
Sherpa who went on to reach a high point of
around 8,000m with the 1952 Swiss Everest
expedition the following year. Whimsical or not,
Shipton’s judgement resulted in Hillary and
Tenzing being given the opportunity to gain
experience of the approach, which must have
made their selection for John Hunt’s ultimately
successful 1953 expedition largely a foregone
conclusion.
It all ended at 11.30am on the 29th May 1953,
when Tenzing and Hillary made it to the summit.
It would be The Times, who part sponsored the
expedition and who had put in place a bizarre
coded message system to keep the news to
themselves as it travelled back to the UK over
land and wireless. The news arrived back in
London on the morning of 2nd June, hours before
Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation, quite literally
helping to crown her glory and that of the
Commonwealth. Hunt and Hillary returning to
Kathmandu found that they had been knighted.
It would take another three years for the
second ascent and then as time passed the
ascents got closer and closer together. In part
because the ‘impossible’ factor had been
removed but the other side of this coin was the
greater understanding and appreciation of
altitude. New and harder routes were climbed but
possibly the last great first on Everest would have
to wait until 8th May 1978 when Reinhold
Messner and Peter Habeler stood on the summit
of Everest having used no aids to combat
altitude, in particular without supplemental
oxygen, a feat that has seen few people repeat.
Technology and our understanding of altitude
have developed so much in the last 20 years that
now virtually anyone with a good fitness and
a large enough cheque book can stand on the
roof of the world. Often fuelled by Diamox,
various steroidal treatments against high altitude
pulmonary and cerebral odema and, of course,
as much oxygen as they can suck. Add in a
guide pushing and a Sherpa pulling and what
was once a coveted first ascent that defined a
generation of mountaineers is now little more
than an guided ascent. Whilst on the one hand
this may seem tragic that the mountain has
been lost to commercialism, it is also amazing
that we have managed to almost tame Everest.
The success of the 1953 Everest Expedition
raised the profile of mountaineering worldwide.
It was one of the major events of the decade.
Snowdonia had also recently been declared a
National Park for all to enjoy. Greater numbers
of people than ever before responded by showing
an interest in the outdoors, sparked at least in
part by a ‘Victory’ tour of the UK which included
Tenzing Norgay who, on visiting the Pen y Gwryd
Hotel close to Snowdon, to see where the British
members of the team had trained he gazed up
at the mountain for a while. His companions
thought he was comparing its size to that of
Everest and trying to frame a tactful comment.
But, accustomed only to the scale of peaks at
home, Tenzing asked how many days the climb
would take.
The increase in the number of people
participating in mountaineering and rockclimbing
was boosted by the popularity of
the firmly established Outward Bound movement
and the growing number of outdoor
centres filled with climbers finding employment
as instructors. n
8 The Western Cwm above the Khumbu Icefall. On the first ascent
in 1953 the Lhotse Face (on the right) was climbed trending left to
the South Col (in the centre) and then via the south-east ridge leading
to Mount Everest’s summit. Photo: Moving Mountains Trust/commons.
wikimedia.org
2 Tenzing Norgay in 1967
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