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Celebrating 50 years of the Everest conquest
May 29 is the date when two courageous men stood on the top of this world, both literally and symbolically. Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa reached the summit of Mount Everest on this historical date in 1953. Today after 50 glorious years, world stands together to thank the duo and laud their great achievement.
The roof of the world, the Himalayas, awe inspiring, compelling -the land of the Gods, will take your breath away with its majesty and beauty. No picture can ever do these mountains justice, no words can describe their power and grandeur. The 50th anniversary of such an epic feat deserves the best party in the world. A wide range of inspirational events have been organised-exhilarating events, which will encapsulate this spirit of adventure. The History of Everest
The discovery of Everest, the highest mountain in the world, was the crowning achievement of labors by geographers, surveyors, and explorers. It was as demanding and complicated an achievement as the mountaineering and logistical skills of those who eventually climbed it. Both endeavors faced formidable obstacles – physical, psychological, political, and technical – that often appeared insurmountable. The early exploration of Everest involved the development of measuring, mapping, and surveying techniques, which were employed by many of the great 19th-century explorers to map the earth`s lesser-known regions, the terrae incognitae. The culmination of these skills occurred in William Lambton`s Great Trigonometrical Survey of the Indian sub-continent. In the 1830s, this was under the control of the Surveyor-General of India, Sir George Everest, after whom the mountain was named. This scientific endeavor provided an accurate geographical framework for a map of India, which in turn unraveled the mysteries of the Himalayas and established Mount Everest as the highest mountain in the world.
How Hillary and Norgay conquered the unconquerable….
Along with Edmund Hillary and other climbers, Eric Shipton saw the Western Cwm and the south side of Everest for the first time on the 1951 Mount Everest Reconnaissance Expedition. At last, here was a route to the summit of Everest. However, the British no longer had a monopoly on the mountain, and in 1952 the Nepali authorities gave the Swiss permission to climb Everest. Raymond Lambert made two attempts in both the spring and the autumn and, with Tenzing Norgay at his side, reached the highest point on the mountain to date. The summit, however, remained elusive.
In 1953, under the leadership of John Hunt, the British were given permission to climb 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 tonnes 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.
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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.
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.
Tenzing Norgay
The world would have given its acclaim to any climber who was first on the summit of the world`s highest mountain, but for Tenzing Norgay there was a special glory in this achievement.
Over a period of nearly twenty years, he had made himself a part of every expedition that set out to put a man on the top of Mt. Everest. He had climbed as a lowly porter and as a respected member of the climbing team. He had accompanied large, confident armies (such as the 1936 and 1953 British Everest Expeditions) on their way to the summit, but he had also gone to the mountain with a solitary climber, Earl Denman, in 1947, on the chance that even this might give him an opportunity to get to the top. By 1953, he had probably spent more time on Mt. Everest than any other human being - and had come closer to its summit. Only months before his successful climb with Edmund Hillary, he and Raymond Lambert of the 1952 Swiss expedition, had come within 1,000 feet of the summit -- the highest point that anyone had reached until then. Unlike most of his fellow Sherpas of the time for whom, by and large, climbing was just a challenging way of making a living, Tenzing desperately wanted to get to the summit of Mt. Everest and devoted most of his life to this goal. "For in my heart," he once said, "I needed to go . . . the pull of Everest was stronger for me than any force on earth." If there was ever anyone who deserved to get there first, it was Tenzing.
But there are other reasons why it was appropriate that he have that honor, with Sir Edmund Hillary. Until World War II, most of Asia had been under the domination of the West. By the early 1950s, its people were beginning at last to feel their own strength and identity, and Tenzing, by achieving a goal that the whole world recognized as one of its highest, provided a focus for a new kind of pride and a new view of the future. "For millions in the world today," wrote James Ramsay Ullman not long after the climb, "Tenzing is a manifestation of godhead: an avatar of the Lord Siva, a reincarnation of the Buddha. For still other millions, too sophisticated to confuse man with deity, he is a mortal figure of supreme significance. Symbolically as well as literally, Tenzing on Everest was a man against the sky, virtually the first humbly born Asian in all history to attain world stature and world renown. And for other Asians his feat was not the mere climbing of a mountain, but a bright portent for themselves and for the future of their world."
Tenzing`s birth may have been humble, as Ullman says, but it also had lucky portents. His parents lived in the high mountain village of Thame in Nepal, but at the time of his birth, his mother was on pilgrimage to a holy place called Ghang Lha in eastern Nepal.
Tenzing, whose name was changed by a high lama from Namgyal Wangdi to the name we know him by today ("Norgay" means "fortunate"), always believed himself to have a special luck and favor. He knew early in his life that his destiny lay beyond tending yaks in the high mountains, and by the time he was 13, had already made a secret trip to Kathmandu, Nepal`s big city. Five years later, he moved (again without the permission of his parents) to Darjeeling in India, where he hoped to be able to join one of the British expeditions to Mt. Everest that were being organized there. Nepal at that time was closed to foreigners, which meant that all attempts on the mountain were from the north side. Starting with their first expedition in 1921, the British had drawn on Darjeeling`s large Sherpa population for help in getting to Everest as well as climbing it.
By something of a fluke, Tenzing got himself onto Eric Shipton`s 1935 Everest Expedition. He was 19 at the time and newly married -- to Dawa Phuti, a Sherpa girl living in Darjeeling. His performance on this climb was such that he had no trouble in being hired on later British Everest expeditions in 1936 and 1938. When World War II put an end to large, official Everest expeditions, he allowed himself to be persuaded to join Earl Denman in sneaking secretly through Tibet to make what he knew was a wild and unlikely effort to reach the summit.
Dawa Phuti had died in 1944; he remarried a year later, to Ang Lahmu, another Sherpa. Big-time Everest climbing had been put on hold during World War II, but Tenzing did not stop climbing. Although his name is indelibly associated with Everest, he also participated in expeditions to India`s Nanda Devi, Pakistan`s Tirich Mir and Nanga Parbat, as well as Nepal`s Langtang area and India`s Garwhal, where he and fellow climbers made first ascents. In 1948, he accompanied the famous Tibetologist Guiseppe Tucci on archaeological investigations in Tibet, and, by all accounts, was one of the few people who could get along with the eccentric and irascible scholar.
Yet it was Everest in which he was chiefly interested. In a changed world at the end of the war, Nepal had opened its borders to foreigners at the same time that the Chinese invasion of Tibet closed the northern route. The British no longer had a monopoly on Everest attempts, and in 1952 Tenzing was invited to join the Swiss, not just as a Sherpa crew member but as a fellow climber, on their two attempts to be first on the summit. It was on the first of these that Tenzing reached 28,250 feet (only 778 feet short of the summit) with Lambert. The second, winter, attempt failed because of bad weather.
The British sensed that 1953 was their
last chance to be first on Everest`s summit and laid their plans accordingly, leaving as little to chance as possible. Luck was obviously a factor, but it was perhaps more likely a determination to give themselves the best opportunity for success that caused them place Tenzing on the summit team with Hillary. At it turned out, it was as much a triumph for Tenzing (and for Asia) as for the British that he won this honor with his New Zealand companion.
After Everest, what? It is hard to think of going on to any greater glory, whether it be in the mountaineering field or any other. And after you have conquered the world`s highest mountain, what objective is there left to dream about?
Whether he chose it or not, Tenzing was now a world celebrity. He received many honors and was feted, among others, by world leaders and heads of state. (The Nehru family came to visit him in Darjeeling, and there is a picture of them in his home -- three generations that include one sitting prime minister and three future prime ministers.)
He was invited everywhere and did much travelling. He became the first Field Director of the newly-established Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, a post that he held for 22 years. He named the large house in Darjeeling that was provided for him by public subscription "Ghang Lha," a family name with particular significance because of its association with his birth.
He adjusted to his new life with grace, yet it was not always easy for him. He had become a political symbol, which involved him unwittingly in controversies he did not understand nor care about. He was a simple man who liked and understood life on a simple, straightforward level. He never felt at home in a world where people are accustomed to use each other for their own ends.
After Ang Lhamu died in 1964, he married Daku, a Darjeeling girl whose family came from his home village in Nepal. One of their three sons, Jamling, was to follow his father`s footsteps to the top of Mt. Everest in 1996.
Tenzing died in 1986. The procession that followed his funeral bier was more than a kilometer long.