Editorial: Simple joy, struggle and teamwork behind famous feat

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on Mt Everest. Photo / Himalayan Trust New Zealand, Supplied

Seventy years ago today, a New Zealander wrote himself into the history books with a breathtaking feat.

Sir Edmund Hillary’s ascent to the top of the 8849-metre Mount Everest with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay on May 29, 1953, remains inspiring, despite concerns these days around the climbing of the world’s highest mountain.

Getting there in 1953 was a result of struggle and teamwork with the two tethered to the same rope. Both wrote afterwards that they took turns in leading on the way up.

Hillary had to thaw out frozen-solid boots over the camp stove at 8500m for the final push to the top. The pair were close together at the end with Hillary slightly ahead.

Despite the inevitable glory attached to being ‘first’, both were keen to stress the collaborative nature of the expedition, and their names are immortalised together.

Sir Edmund’s son Peter Hillary told the Times: “They did it together. That had been their agreement. They were an outstanding team to [reach] the top of the world.“

It’s a humble attitude from today’s viewpoint when cults of personality and commercial branding hang around billionaire tech tycoon explorers.

Most major achievements then and now involve teamwork even if one or some people are out front for the project. Behind the captain of a ship are more officers and others who contribute to decision-making. The idea that the whims of one person should always hold sway, is more likely to mean failure.

There were nine climbers in the main Everest expedition group and dozens of other people, backed by hundreds of porters. A Times reporter there wrote of the reaction when Hillary and Tenzing returned to camp: “It was a moment so thrilling, so vibrant, that the hot tears sprang to the eyes of most of us”.

Hillary’s classic line that “we knocked the bastard off” still reads like a breath of fresh mountain air that fits with those iconic old pictures of the young, lanky mountaineer beekeeper. Apart from the circumstances, it’s the simplicity and spontaneity that makes the quote land.

“When you go to the mountains you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them,” he said 20 years ago.

Such statements are matter-of-fact and shorn of the self-importance, self-promotion and over-sharing that’s everywhere in life today.

Thousands of climbers have since scaled Everest in the years since and clean-ups are organised to remove the rubbish from the great mountain.

That’s not all that’s evolved over the 70 years.

Climate change now brings concern over rising temperatures, glaciers shrinking and snow melting, and weather becoming more unpredictable there.

Sherpa Ang Tshering told AP: “The rising temperature of the Himalayan area is more than the global average, so the snow and ice is melting fast and the mountain is turning black, the glaciers are melting and lakes are drying up”.

Research has shown the mountain’s glaciers have lost 2000 years of ice in the past 30 years. Duncan Quincey, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds, said the glaciers are losing ice at rates that likely have no historic precedent.

The simple joy of an achievement 70 years ago on Everest, has become a far more complex story.