Hillary honoured in Nepal on Everest anniversary

6.50pm

KATHMANDU - Half a century after he became the first person to set foot on the top of Mt Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary will become a Nepali citizen today in the climax of official celebrations marking the anniversary.

Events in the Nepali capital, Kathmandu, were relatively muted after almost a week of street parades and celebrations.

But a tourism ministry official said two United States teams were expected to try for the 8850m summit on Thursday on the 50th anniversary of the first ascent.

Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand was to make Sir Edmund an honorary citizen before a royal dinner hosted by the monarch of the world's only Hindu kingdom, King Gyanendra.

Since scaling Mt Everest with Nepali Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, Sir Edmund has spent millions of dollars and thousands of hours building schools, hospitals and clinics for the local Sherpa people .

About 450 summiteers, many of them Nepali Sherpas essential to Everest expeditions, are taking part in the celebrations, which Nepal hopes will help revive a tourism industry shattered by a bloody Maoist revolt.

Since Sir Edmund, 83, and Tenzing "knocked the bastard off" as he said at 11.30am on the morning of May 29, 1953, more than 1200 people have followed them to the summit.

But where Sir Edmund and Tenzing cut their own way, most climbers today pay guides up to US$65,000 ($114,000) to lay ladders across the gaping crevasses of the Khumbu icefall and rig ropes along the heights and the Hillary Step just below the summit to give them a shot at the top.

Sir Edmund and other pioneering climbers, such as Japan's Junko Tabei, who in 1975 became the first woman to reach the summit, are critical of the commercialism that has taken over the mountain.

"There's even a booze tent at base camp," Sir Edmund said this week.

"If I were 33 again, young, fit and a bit of a dynamo as I think I was in those days, I simply wouldn't want to join the queue that is scrambling to get up the mountainside."

Tabei, now 63 but still a passionate climber, told Reuters: "When we climbed, everything had to be done by our own team".

But while it is easier than in Sir Edmund's day, climbing the world's highest mountain remains a dangerous challenge.

Over the years, 175 people have died trying and many of their bodies remain frozen on the mountain.

Yesterday, two people died when a helicopter crashed as it came into base camp at 5350m to pick up climbers in air so thin it makes flying dangerous.

And in May, 1996, nine climbers died in one day when a ferocious blizzard hit the summit.

- REUTERS