When was everest climbed

Their fame was spreading even as Hillary and Tenzing left the mountain. We felt quite uncomfortable with this at the time. John Hunt, Tenzing, and I had a little meeting. We agreed not to tell who stepped on the summit first. Often the one who puts more into the climb steps back and lets his partner stand on top first. Neither man anticipated how much, in the wake of their success, the appeal of that patch of snow more than five miles in the sky would grow.

All rights reserved. Excerpted From "50 Years on Everest," by Contributing Editor David Roberts, National Geographic Adventure, April By today's standards, the British expedition, under the military-style leadership of Sir John Hunt, was massive in the extreme, but in an oddly bottom-heavy way: porters, 20 Sherpas, and tons of supplies to support a vanguard of only ten climbers. Share Tweet Email. Why it's so hard to treat pain in infants.

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Being hardy rather than urbane, the Sherpas, both men and women, drew outdoor jobs. Sherpa women porters are seen on the streets today, carrying baskets shaped like big inverted cones or pyramids on their backs, and until Tenzing became famous, his wife, a short, strong woman who was born in Darjeeling of Sherpa parents, was often one of them.

But now things are different. The Bengal government, which, of course, is Indian, does not move up for the summer. Some of the hotels and many of the villas are closed. Such tourists as Darjeeling draws are apt to be Indians, who keep few servants and do little hiking, or Americans, most of whom stop by for a day or two, often on their way around the world, to look at the peaks and to photograph Tenzing.

There are still quite a few British people in Darjeeling, including a number of tea planters, but their life is not what it used to be, either. They are beset by inflation—prices are roughly three times what they were in the thirties—and by labor troubles. I have been told that workers in the tea gardens have beaten up several planters, with little or no punishment from the police. To Westerners, Darjeeling is a simple place, but to the Sherpas it is a great city.

Sherpa boys run off to it as other boys run off to sea; Tenzing did this himself. The southern edge of the Tibetan plateau is fenced by peaks, including Everest, and then the ground falls sharply toward the plains of eastern India; most of Nepal lies on the higher reaches of this slope.

The Sherpa country is sparsely settled, and the largest village, called Namche Bazar, which apparently means Big Sky Market, consists of a few rows of small stone houses. The Sherpas get along by raising yaks, which thrive on their blizzardy pastures and the thin air, and by growing potatoes; in one spot, they know it is time to begin planting when a frozen waterfall thaws.

Another resident of the Sherpa country is the Abominable Snowman, or yeti —a creature who is said to walk like a man and to leave huge tracks. Many Sherpas believe that the Snowman is supernatural and that the sight of him will kill a man, but others claim to have caught a glimpse of him with no ill effects.

Tenzing has not come across the Snowman. A British expedition, backed by the London Daily Mail , is now in the Sherpa country trying to solve the mystery. There is a strong tendency among Sherpas to leave their difficult homeland. When the men arrive, they are apt to be got up in the Tibetan way, with long, braided hair and huge earrings, but they soon dispose of these. The women, however, usually cling to the Tibetan style—coiled braids, plain, dark dresses, and woollen aprons with narrow stripes in many colors.

The clothes vary in detail, depending on the latest fashion in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, but to the untrained eye they are all alike. Most of the Sherpas in Darjeeling—there are about a hundred families—live in a poor neighborhood called Tung Soong Bustee, a short walk from the center of town. One sunny morning recently, when the rest of the town was still buttoned up, I went over to have a look. This is the way Tenzing earned his living when he came here.

From the square, I made a hairpin turn over to what once was Calcutta Road but now is Tenzing Norkay Road, a dry, hard dirt road with paths running off to houses scattered in the brush below.

Soon I was looking down on the tin roofs of the cluster of buildings where Tenzing used to live. A dozen prayer flags, flying from bamboo poles, rose above them; they had been white originally, but were gray with the columns of prayers, thousands and thousands of words, stamped on them.

Flapping in the breeze, they set up spiritual vibrations that, according to Sherpa belief, which is Tibetan Buddhist, would spread far and wide. A few women with the braids, high cheekbones, and small, square build of the Sherpas were filling pails and old kerosene tins with water from a public tap on the road. I heard hoofbeats and a voice, and when I turned, there was Tenzing. He was riding a brown pony, wearing English-style boots over khaki trousers, and using an English saddle with a bright Tibetan rug under it.

The pony was just under thirteen hands, fit, and well groomed; stopping to chat for a moment, Tenzing said it came from Tibet, and showed me a brand on its hind quarters that looked like a Chinese character.

Mount Everest has been a British institution—or at least climbing it has—since a year or two after the First World War. This came as something of a surprise, for Everest does not appear to stand above the peaks around it. Since then, there have been threats from flash contenders, like Amne Machin, in northwest China, but Everest is still rated highest, even though there have been arguments over exactly how high it is. In , the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India, a British project, called it 29, feet—admittedly an approximation.

Some authorities say it is 29,—the result of later sightings—but 29, has prevailed, on the ground that no sighting can be reliable and it is better to choose one and stay with it.

A custom developed early in the history of Himalayan climbing whereby, to avoid confusion, different nations in general took on different peaks. In the division, the British got Everest, and except for two Swiss parties, which tried the climb in , with Tenzing along both times, they have had it pretty much to themselves.

Between the two World Wars, the only way to approach Everest was from Tibet, because Nepal did not admit climbing parties, and Britain was the only Western country on speaking terms with Tibet. In , Nepal opened up, and in , with the arrival of the Communists, Tibet closed down.

In the days when the road lay only through Tibet, Darjeeling, which is near the caravan track from India to Lhasa, made a natural jumping-off place, where climbers could assemble, start breathing mountain air, check their equipment, learn something about the Himalayas, and, if they liked, be blessed before setting out by lamas from the nearby monastery of Ghoom.

In Darjeeling, too, the expeditions could recruit Sherpas, whose worth as high-altitude porters was discovered at the start of this century and who have helped in all the major attacks on Everest and the other high peaks in this stretch of the Himalayas. Last year, however, a German-Austrian party climbing Nanga Parbat, near the northwestern end of the range, had to do without them, for Nanga Parbat is in the part of Kashmir now held by Pakistani troops, and Pakistan is not hospitable toward Indians.

Being stopped by a frontier was a new experience for the Sherpas, who, all this century, have drifted innocently and unhindered across the otherwise stern border of Tibet and Nepal.

If peaks were forbidden, it was not to Sherpas but to their Western employers—though this amounted to the same thing, since most Sherpas are not interested in climbing mountains by themselves. For them, it is a livelihood, made possible by Western whim. Katmandu, the capital of Nepal, has become the usual jumping-off place for climbers, but Darjeeling remains the recruiting ground for Sherpas.

They are generally hired through an organization called the Himalayan Club, which provides expeditions with advice and services, and which keeps dossiers on more than a hundred Sherpas, listing their vital statistics, their working records, and their good and bad qualities. The Sherpas report early in the year, often walking from Namche Bazar for the purpose, so that they can have jobs by March, when the climbing season begins, and the Club assigns them tasks from sirdar, or foreman, down to common porter.

Tenzing was born in a village called Thami, near Everest and at an altitude of fourteen thousand feet. His father owned yaks, and as a boy Tenzing herded them, often in pastures thousands of feet above Thami. He also went on caravan trips over the Nanpa La, a nineteen-thousand-foot pass near the western shoulder of Everest. From the start, he lived as close to Everest as a human being could. Two legends, both circulated by Tenzing and both perhaps true, have grown up to explain why he wanted to climb it.

As everybody knows, he left an offering—a chocolate bar, biscuits, and candy—on the summit. Recently, however, he has been inclined to explain, making no reference to the Deity, that he had wanted to master Everest since his boyhood, when he caught glimpses of climbing parties and heard stories about them from older Sherpas.

There seems room for both motives, but the difference is there, and it reflects a general de-emphasis of the Buddhist faith in his affairs since last year.

One reason for this, it seems, is that many natives have become touchy about their religion; some Westerners laugh at it, so Asians keep silent. The Moslems broke off into Pakistan, some Sikhs would like to break off into their own Punjab, and the Himalayan Buddhists might get a similar idea. When Tenzing was a boy, his heart was set on going to Darjeeling, but his father insisted that he stay home and herd yaks.

He obeyed until he was nineteen, and then, in , he and a few other young Sherpas fled to Darjeeling. For a couple of years, he made his way by renting out his pony and doing odd jobs, and in he was hired as a porter for a British Everest party.

He went again in and again in , learning the things that Sherpa guides must learn, including how to cook Western meals for sahibs. His cooking is said to be good. The war suspended climbing for a decade, and it was not until that he tried Everest again, with the Swiss.

He has tackled many other peaks as well. He has been through the mill. At times, one hears, he has been very down and very out, but long before his final success he was known as one of the most able Sherpa sirdars of this generation. Another is Ang Tharkay, who went on the Annapurna expedition with the French and is now helping a group of young Californians scale Mount Makalu, a 27,foot peak not far from Everest. Tenzing and Ang Tharkay began climbing at about the same time, and people often compared them.