'We had to do it all ourselves'

By TIM WATKIN in Nepal

In the garden at the Kathmandu Hyatt Regency, Sir Edmund Hillary finally got what he wanted. He sat with his family and Sherpa friends on Thursday night, talking and laughing, after a week of festivities honouring the 50th anniversary of his ascent of Mt Everest. There was Sherpa dancing - old and new - and music, presents and cake.

This "really big party" was always going to be the highlight of his trip to Nepal, he said as he endured a week of functions, interviews and meetings. It has at times been a careful political waltz, trying to satisfy the demands of numerous interest groups and, on Thursday, even Nepalese royalty.

Sir Edmund didn't care about the anniversary as such. He just wanted to get together with his mates and celebrate "very vigorously indeed".

As an 83-year-old, that vigour is inevitably limited. It was a taxing schedule he set himself, and what remains of the immense physical and mental strength that took him to the top of the world in 1953 appeared stretched at times.

Much of the week was spent recalling the glory days or, rather, the glory day in particular when Everest was largely untouched.

While the Nepalese tried to piggyback on the celebrations to encourage more tourists - many have been put off by international terrorism and the Maoist insurgency - that commercial message jarred some of the great climbers here, notably Sir Edmund, Reinhold Messner, the first man to climb Everest without oxygen and the greatest climber of his generation, and Junko Tabei, the first woman to climb Everest.

They publicly fretted about the future of Everest, urging a rest for the mountain and a restriction of expeditions to just a few a year. This year there have been 25 from the Nepalese side and 40 from Tibet. A guided trip to the summit these days is yours for just US$65,000 ($112,400).

Tonnes of litter defile the mountainside. To Hillary's horror, there were 1000 people at base camp this week, even "a booze place".

"Just sitting around at a big base camp knocking back cans of beer, I don't regard as mountaineering," he said.

Messner said the Government should introduce a "one team, one route and one season" rule. "Chains and ropes do not make a mountain strong," he added.

Sir Edmund even said that if he was 33 today, as he was in 1953, he wouldn't want to "join the queues" to climb Everest.

"There's so many what New Zealanders would call gimmicky things going on nowadays. People run here and walk backwards there and fly in the air. All those those things are exciting and dramatic, but none of them has anything to do with mountaineering.

"We were mountaineers. Our challenge was between ourselves and the difficulties of the mountain. We didn't have 60 aluminium ladders on the icefall, we didn't have thousands of metres of fixed rope on the Lhotse Face. We had to do it all ourselves, and that's what I call mountaineering."

The irony is that Hillary's achievement 50 years ago was the beginning of the end of the pre-eminence of mountaineering in the Himalayas. The greatest challenge was gone, the impossible made possible. Soon after, along came the tourists to see what all the fuss was about.

Hillary aided that as well, by building Lukla airport to help to ferry supplies in to his development projects. To the good, income generated from tourism has improved the standard of living for the Sherpas; the bad is the damage thousands of trampling feet always do.

There's no blame in that, just consequence. For every impact there is a side-effect, and that's something Hillary has pondered over the years.

"For a while I wondered whether I'd done a bad thing and maybe I'd made it just too easy to come up into the region. But as time passed and as many of these people came in and as the standard of living of the Sherpas improved, I realised much good had been done. Because the mountain people have strong cultural ties, their culture was not too affected by the sometimes rather unfortunate cultures of Western society."

Still, as Hillary and Messner suggest, one culture on the mountain has changed - the mountaineering culture. This week there was record madness - the oldest person to climb, the youngest, the most, the first family, the fastest (twice).

Tashi Tenzing, Tenzing Norgay's grandson, spoke for many when he sighed and said that when his grandfather and Sir Edmund climbed, it was about teamwork.

"Today's climbing is very different. You get people with different angles, trying to set records, and it's all a personal thing."

Some don't buy into that nostalgic view.

Steve Bell, of Jagged Globe Agency, which takes expeditions up Everest, told the BBC that expeditions had always cost lots of money and the people making the summit now, while they couldn't face the challenge of being the first, still gained enormous personal satisfaction from reaching the peak, just as Sir Edmund did. And, he added, the local people welcome the injection of foreign currency.

So does the Nepalese Government. While ministers have hinted at some restrictions, Ang Tsering, president of the influential Nepal Mountaineering Association, said: "If Mt Blanc can have up to 1600 tourists a day, then why not Everest, which is five times larger?"

Ideally, they would spread the load and the income - over other peaks and other regions of the raw and beautiful country. But tourists are drawn to that mountain and the Solu-Khumbu region for the same reason as Hillary. Everest is the biggest. The headline act.

Outside that debate, the week has been one of endless praise and thanks for Sir Edmund. The Nepalese are exceedingly fond of the word "felicitation", and Sir Edmund has been felicitated at every stop by the country, the city, the tourism industry, the Sherpas and so on.

The public highlight was a carriage ride through Kathmandu, summiters in his wake, locals cheering from the pavement, crowds lining the entire route. There's no doubt Sir Edmund is known and admired here, but it's equally true that most in Kathmandu are struggling for a meagre living and aren't going to go out of their way for a parade.

The exception is the Sherpa people, who form a large extended family and simply adore him. Hundreds made their way from the mountains just to be with him on the anniversary.

"Sir Edmund is like a caring parent for the Sherpa community," Tashi Zangbu Sherpa said.

For family and friends, the public activities were marred by an often over-enthusiastic gaggle of media, some of whom were downright rude.

Despite the well-rehearsed rhetoric of Sir Edmund as a hero who belongs to the world, organisers did not anticipate the huge public interest in the anniversary and were caught unprepared.

An undercurrent to the week's activities was the future of the Himalayan Trust. Sir Edmund, strong as he is, will not live forever and he is eager to embed the trust's structure while he still can. For that reason, the money announced by the Government on Thursday - its constancy more than its amount - was warmly received.

Sir Edmund also made a point of celebrating the Sherpa advisory committee that took over the reins last year. The very Sherpas who have so benefited from education gained in the schools he built will now guide the trust's future.

But the fact remains that much of the trust's fundraising centres on speeches and public appearances by the man himself. His status is a money magnet. After he is gone, generating finance will be more difficult.

But that's a mountain someone else will have to climb. The past week has been about one man and one mountain.

It's been about one great day 50 years ago when a beekeeper from Tuakau and a guide from Darjeeling rose in the pre-dawn icy silence and began to climb, higher than anyone had climbed before. Within a few hours they had reached the world's highest point, gutsy representatives of humanity who had dared the unknown.

Half a century on, that still means so much to so many.