KEY POINTS:
It is a long-held mountaineering axiom that when you reach the summit you are only halfway there. Sir Edmund Percival Hillary, KBE, ONZ, KG, climber, humanitarian and national icon, reached the summit of Mt Everest on May 29, 1953, and spent the remainder of a remarkable life completing the climb.
As his biographer, Alexa Johnston, wrote, the 15 minutes that Hillary spent on the roof of the world became the defining moment of his life. He would never escape the effects of that particular dream coming true. Nor would he try to.
Hillary, with the understatement that marked his life and his greatness, would be the first to suggest he owed that moment to being in the right place at the right time.
He was never a technical mountaineer. His forte was formidable strength, energy, stamina and determination. His skills lay in forcing a route through snow and ice, skills forged mainly over a handful of years in the Mt Cook region on holidays snatched between the commitments of harvesting honey and often, of necessity, with a mountain guide as a climbing partner.
Hillary climbed mountains like the fittest of trampers traversed valleys; he strode up them. And over three seasons with legendary guide Harry Ayres he learned the philosophy of safe but forceful mountaineering, speed, skill and decisiveness.
"I learned a lot from Harry," he would write. "How and when to cut a step and a little of that subtle science of snow and ice craft that only experience can teach."
That knowledge was recognised in 1951 on Eric Shipton's British Everest Reconnaissance Expedition and led directly to an invitation to join the 1953 British Mt Everest expedition. His forcefulness and relentless work from the outset quickly destined him for a summit bid with the outstanding Sherpa climber, Tenzing Norgay.
Those who climb Mt Everest today by the southern route - 241 people followed Hillary's footsteps to the summit last year - remain in awe at how the pioneering summiteers forced their way over the final obstacle, now festooned with fixed ropes and known as the Hillary Step. His famous victory line to fellow New Zealander, George Lowe, "Well George, we knocked the bastard off," was pure New Zealand understatement and typical of Hillary.
The climber was almost boyishly overwhelmed by his instant elevation to knighthood and international celebrity but he accepted his fame with an endearing humility that became his hallmark. Sir Edmund Hillary, a member of the Queen's hand-picked Order of the Garter, the face on the New Zealand $5 note, retained a simple listing in the Auckland telephone directory with the address of the modest Remuera home he lived in for more than 50 years. Anyone could, and often did, ring, and likely he would answer.
He signed himself plain "Ed Hillary" and liked to be called Ed. In an interview in 2002 with journalist Margot Butcher he dismissed such labels as "living legend" and one of the top 100 people of the 20th century. "I completely ignore it," he said. "I don't believe those things."
Hillary's genuinely unassuming self brought delight to many in high places. When President Bill Clinton came to Auckland he asked to meet him. He sat between the Queen and the Queen Mother at lunch in London. He rubbed shoulders with Baroness Margaret Thatcher, Neil Armstrong, the Dalai Lama, Sir Roger Bannister, Rajiv Gandhi, Mountbatten and Eisenhower, received eight honorary doctorates, and somehow remained unaffected by it all. He insisted that "in some ways I am a rather mediocre person".
He also learned to cope with deep personal tragedy. After Everest he had found the courage to propose to Auckland musician Louise Rose, daughter of New Zealand Alpine Club stalwart, Jim Rose. The couple had three children, Peter (who would follow his father to the summit of Mt Everest) Sarah and Belinda. In 1975 Lady Louise and Belinda, aged 16, were killed in a light aircraft crash in Nepal.
The couple had been married 22 years and Ed, then 55, was devastated, stricken with grief and guilt that he had persuaded his wife to fly when he knew she hated small planes.
The joy had gone out of his life until, ironically, he was rescued from depression by another tragedy, the death in the Mt Erebus air disaster of his friend and companion in Antarctica and the Himalayas, Peter Mulgrew.
June Mulgrew and Sir Edmund were already good friends and when in 1984 the Lange Labour Government appointed Hillary High Commissioner to India, June accompanied him as his official companion. They were married by Dame Cath Tizard when Sir Edmund was 70. His friends said Lady June had given Hillary back to them.
After his Everest success, Sir Edmund made a living from books, speaking engagements and endorsements and transferred all his restless energy into helping the people of the Khumbu. Hillary clicked with the Sherpa people from his first meeting. They were, he thought, similar to New Zealanders.
His aid began with building a school. The inspiration came during a 1961 scientific expedition studying the effects on the body of sustained periods at high altitude, an attempt on Makalu (8475m) and a search for the fabled yeti. Talking around a campfire one night with expedition sirdar, Urkien, Hillary asked: "If there was one thing we could do for your people, what would it be?"
Urkien replied: "We would like our children to go to school, sahib."
The expedition never found a yeti and its attempt on Makalu ended with Hillary stricken with altitude sickness and Peter Mulgrew hit by a pulmonary embolism just 120m from the summit. Mulgrew lost both legs to frostbite.
But the science programme was a success. It showed that long periods at altitude were as debilitating as rapid ascents. Modern climbers acclimatise by gradual exposure to altitude but with frequent rests at a lower level.
Another success was the expeditionsponsors agreeing to fund a school at Khumjung. Hillary and three expedition members stayed behind to build the school, which opened on June 11, 1961. A photograph of the first 45 pupils, standing with their teacher outside the new school, held pride of place in the Hillary household.
Hillary's aid philosophy was simple - it relied on goodwill. "We should not expect people to be continuously grateful for what is being done for them," he wrote. "Most aid is strongly flavoured with self-interest. Whereas gratitude has something of inequality about it, goodwill is an active and growing idea that a proud man need not feel ashamed to entertain. The basic fact is people create goodwill - money cannot do it on its own."
There have since been many more schools, health clinics and forestry projects funded by the Himalayan Trust, with an indefatigable Hillary soliciting much of the money. There are now trust branches in Britain, Germany, Canada and the United States.
The Sherpas call Hillary "Burra Sahib", which translates as "Big in heart". Every trekker to the Khumbu who flies into the air strip at Lukla, can thank Sir Edmund and his friends for hacking it out of the hillside - although speeding up the school and hospital building programme, not tourism, was the motivation.
It's a humbling experience for a New Zealand trekker to visit a "Hillary" school; there are now more than 30. The reverence accorded "our" icon is palpable. Lady June Hillary and the Hillary children are all involved in the trust but Sir Edmund was the fundraising driving force.
"If you asked me what I would like to see happen, this would certainly be at the top of the list: I would like to think, when I finally depart, that New Zealanders would accept a little bit of responsibility for keeping the project going and financially support it," Sir Edmund told Margot Butcher, of North & South magazine. "Even though we've had help from other countries, it's really been very much a New Zealand project."
Hillary's climbing career reached a pinnacle on Mt Everest and never really went much further, as he became increasingly prone to the effects of cerebral oedema. His last major climb was in 1971 with Harry Ayres - his first traverse of the three summits of Mt Cook.
In 1957 Hillary led the New Zealand part of the Commonwealth Transantarctic Expedition, which included establishing Scott Base. The Hillary party, using converted farm tractors and with typical forcefulness, pressed on to the South Pole, arriving two weeks ahead of expedition leader, Bunny Fuchs, and virtually out of fuel. It was the first overland journey to the Pole since Scott.
On the 50th anniversary of his Mt Everest success, North & South magazine asked the historian, the late Dr Michael King, to encapsulate Sir Edmund's impact on New Zealanders.
"There are a couple of things one would want to note about Hillary," King replied. "One is that he exhibits and promotes the very best of his country's values and virtues - decency, versatility, compassion for the underdog, racial equality, honesty in public life, an absence of vanity or snobbery. And the way he represents these things is notable - bluffly, laconically; he's a no-bullshit man.
"The other thing is that he became famous purely by accident, by happening to be the man picked to make an attempt on Everest's summit on a certain day. But he went on to use that accidental fame to do marvellous, admirable things... He could so easily have used it simply to endorse commercial products and live comfortably for the rest of his life.
"Instead, he chose a challenging path, deciding what issues and values were worth promoting and then actively drawing attention to them. There is no single individual in New Zealand whose appearance, values and behaviour have as much resonance for the New Zealand psyche as Hillary."
Hillary's altruism doubtless sprung from his family background, a combination of rural conservatism and international liberalism, a mix of urban and rural, neither rich nor poor.
His father, Percy Hillary, was a journalist and had begun publishing his own Dargaville newspaper before volunteering with the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in 1914 at the relatively old age of 29. He fought at Gallipoli and was to return home two years later physically and psychologically scarred, a vehement opponent of war and a passionate advocate for social justice.
Hillary has described his father as a "keen thinker" and a "mixture of moral conservatism and fierce independence and pride".
At home he was a strict disciplinarian - Sir Edmund recalled many a beating - a hard worker, rarely given to demonstrative affection or humour, and a lover of sport.
Sir Edmund's teacher mother Gertrude was the loving heart of the family, a poetry lover and a lady.
Both parents shared dreams and high expectations for their family.
Percy used a returned serviceman programme to learn beekeeping, built a home in Tuakau, started a weekly newspaper there and a monthly journal for beekeepers.
Gertrude was a keen gardener and cook, "healthy food and living" promoter and a determined educator.
June, Sir Edmund's sister, won a scholarship to Diocesan School for Girls, Ed was to spend nearly three hours on a train each day commuting to Auckland Grammar, and younger brother Rex went to Kings College.
In Sir Edmund's last year at Grammar the Hillarys bought a substantial home in Remuera Rd, a bach at Orewa and kept more than 1000 beehives on farms around South Auckland. At the same time, they were committed and active humanitarians.
Such a background may be hardly the stuff of movie drama, yet it contained all the characteristics that Sir Edmund would later display. Energy, determination, consideration for others, scholarship, service, discipline, a love of outdoors and hard work.
It was also a similar pattern Hillary would follow with his family. He took his children on many holidays and adventures but was not a demonstrative father; the Hillary children looked to their mother for warmth. When she died, Sir Edmund was unable to help his surviving children, Peter and Sarah, cope with the loss of their mother, an inability which he would later regret and chide himself for. With time, the distance that opened between father and son, would close.
Attending Auckland Grammar had one unexpected outcome for the young Ed Hillary. On a rare break from working the beehives at weekends and school holidays, Hillary went on a school trip to Mt Ruapehu. He was later to write: "I was intoxicated by the whole experience, the hurling of our bodies uncontrollably down an almost vertical slope; skiing through forest and rocks to the Chateau; the magnificent food, even the freedom and the lack of regular tasks. I showed little natural skill at skiing but plenty of strength and energy and I returned home in a glow of fiery enthusiasm for the sun and the cold and the snow - especially the snow!"
He joined the tramping club at university and spent weekends in the Waitakere Ranges before dropping out to join his brother and father in the beekeeping business.
The outbreak of World War II had a disturbing effect on the 20-year-old Hillary. Brought up a pacifist, he was unsure whether it was right or wrong to fight evil. He and his brother were registered as conscientious objectors but while Ed was exempted from conscription because beekeeping was a reserved occupation, Rex spent four years in a detention camp.
Ed took a brief holiday in the South Island where just two days at the Hermitage at Mt Cook village changed his life. Hillary and his friend hired a guide and climbed Mt Olivier, a modest peak of 1933m in the Seally Range beyond Mueller Hut. It was his first real mountain.
"I returned to the Hermitage after the happiest day I had ever spent," he would write.
"And now, after several decades of exploration, I still remember the intense pleasure of that day. Despite all I have seen and experienced, I still get the same simple thrill out of glimpsing a tiny patch of snow in a high mountain gully and feel the same urge to climb towards it."
In Nothing Venture, Nothing Win, (1975) Hillary wrote: "If my life finished tomorrow I would have little cause for complaint - I have gathered a few successes, a handful of honours and more love and laughter than I probably deserve.
"Yet I look at myself and feel a vast dissatisfaction - there was so much more I could have done. And this is what really counts - not just achieving things but the advantage you have taken of your opportunities and the opportunities you created.
"I have had the world lie beneath my clumsy boots and saw the red sun slip over the horizon after the dark Antarctic winter. I have been given more than my share of excitement, beauty, laughter and friendship."
It is alleged there are old mountaineers and bold mountaineers but never old, bold mountaineers. Sir Edmund Hillary was the magnificent and wonderful exception to the rule.
