Edmund Hillary--A Biography

by Michael Gill

  For a moment Hunt became less than his usual impeccably supportive self. Mike Ward recorded in his diary on 20 May: ‘John EXCESSIVELY RUDE to George who had been up about ten days and working damned well. Quite ashamed to have him in the party which has been very friendly so far.’11 In his autobiography, Ward added to this a cryptic quotation from Virgil: ‘Flectere, si nequeo superos, Acheronta movebo – If I cannot bend the gods, I will let hell loose.’12

  But George had in fact done enough for the big carry to the South Col to proceed. The next day, 35-year-old Wilf Noyce and the Sherpa Annullu donned open-circuit oxygen, and set off intent on making the route all the way to the Col. Wilf had acclimatised well and was top of the list for a third assault should the first two fail. Like all the climbers, he marvelled at the difference oxygen made. He described the sensation of opening the valve on the oxygen set: ‘When, after all the struggles, the switch was at last turned on, a taste or breath of metallic new life seemed to slip through the mouth to lungs, mocking every disadvantage and making life seem good once again.’13

  It was 21 May, and in one of the turning-points of the expedition, they left the Lhotse Face below them and stood on the crest of the Geneva Spur, looking down on the South Col. Noyce recalled:

  … the eye wandered hungry and fascinated over the plateau … a space of boulders and bare ice perhaps four hundred yards square, absurdly solid and comfortable at first glance in contrast with the sweeping ridges around … in among the glinting ice and dirty grey boulders there lay some yellow tatters – all that remained of the Swiss expeditions of last year … We crunched down to the last of the wind-crust, myself still unwinding the rope. Then the flat. The yellow rags lay in dead little heaps, or fluttered forlornly from metal uprights that still stood. Round about was spread a chaos of food, kitbags, sleeping-bags, felt boots. Whenever people talk of the ‘conquest’ of Everest, I close my eyes and see that ghostridden scene.14

  Reaching the South Col was a start, but there were no loads there yet, no Camp 8 as the springboard for the attempts on the summit. At Camp 7 there were now 14 Sherpas crammed into too small a space. Many of them were nervous about the huge physical effort required of them as they carried 30lb loads from 24,000ft to 26,000ft without oxygen. Recognising how critical was this last carry, Hunt agreed with Tenzing and Hillary that the two of them, on oxygen, should climb to Camp 7 where Tenzing would urge the Sherpas to expend all their energy on this crucial next stage. Hillary and Tenzing in front would make steps; Charles Wylie would encourage the stragglers in the rear. By the end he was carrying one of their loads. At last, with enormous relief, Hunt saw from Advance Base that 17 figures were crossing the top of the Geneva Spur.

  Now he had a well-equipped Camp 8 from which the summit attempts could be launched.

  Bourdillon and Evans

  On the morning of 26 May, Bourdillon and Evans emerged from their tent on the South Col. Evans swung his 50lb closed-circuit set on to his back, strapped the face mask in place and immediately knew that something was seriously wrong. Bourdillon identified a damaged valve that had to be replaced, a procedure that took over an hour. Once under way, however, the sets worked so well that the pair were climbing at the unprecedented rate of almost 1000 feet per hour. It did not last. At 28,000ft, when they changed soda lime canisters, something went wrong in Evans’s set. Perhaps a valve had iced up during the change. This time the diagnosis eluded Bourdillon. Evans managed to keep going, but his breathing was painfully laboured.

  At 1 p.m. they reached the South Summit, 28,700ft, higher than anyone had climbed before. Seated on the snow dome, they could look closely for the first time at the last 300 vertical feet of Everest. It was not the gentle snow ridge they’d hoped for. They were looking at a thin crest of snow and ice on rock, steep on the left, overhanging as a cornice on the right. Two-thirds of the way up, the snow was interrupted by a 40ft rock step which looked formidable indeed at such an altitude.

  It was 1.20 p.m. They had two-and-a-half hours of oxygen left. Evans estimated that the step-cutting on the ridge and the attempt on the rock step would take three hours. Evans’s oxygen set was malfunctioning. Descent from the summit would take more than three hours. If they went on they might reach the summit, but with no oxygen left the return would be dangerous in the extreme. Evans had no ambition to become another Mallory or Irvine, but Bourdillon was wracked by his awareness that this might be his, and the expedition’s, last chance. He had worked for more than a year on the design of the oxygen sets for just this moment; there was only 300 feet of height to climb on a ridge that was difficult but not impossible. But Evans was sure they were making the right decision, and as they turned and began their descent a great weariness came over them. The last thousand feet to the Col began with a couloir of steep snow. They slithered from belay to belay. ‘We yo-yoed down’, they said.15 Exhausted beyond belief, they staggered into camp on the South Col in the late afternoon.

  Hillary and Tenzing

  On this same day, 26 May, Hillary and Tenzing arrived on the South Col, accompanied by Alf Gregory and 11 Sherpas with more oxygen, food and fuel. Also with them was George Lowe who, far from exhausting himself on the Lhotse Face, had acclimatised and gained strength. Mike Ward had commented that Ed and George were ‘going like greyhounds’16 and now the two greyhounds were back together again.

  Five of the strongest Sherpas had been selected to carry the loads for Camp 9, two of them with John Hunt on the 26th and three with Alf Gregory two days later. When the time came, only two of the five were willing or able to continue. None of the Sherpas apart from Tenzing and Annullu had used oxygen up to the South Col, and they were suffering from exhaustion, insomnia, apprehension and the other ills of extreme altitude. When Hunt set out on the first carry to Camp 9, he had only Da Namgyal and himself to carry three loads. At 27,300ft Da Namgyal could go no further. Hunt was in no better shape, but it was Da Namgyal who called the halt, and they dumped their loads of a tent, food, fuel and oxygen, including the bottles they had been using for their ascent. The descent to the Col without oxygen was a remarkable effort from Da Namgyal and a quite extraordinary performance from the 42-year-old leader.

  The high winds that arose on the night of the 26th gave Ed one of the worst nights he had ever experienced, and prevented the second assault team starting on the 27th. But on the 28th the weather was fine though windy as Hillary and Tenzing, Gregory and Lowe, and George’s Lhotse Face Sherpa Ang Nima prepared loads for the carry to Camp 9. At 27,300ft they added the Hunt–Da Namgyal loads to their own. Five hundred feet higher they’d had enough, and settled on a flattish spot beneath a rock bluff for their camp.

  It took Hillary and Tenzing three hours, not using oxygen, to chip out enough ice and rock to convert their site into two ledges, an upper one for Hillary and the lower for Tenzing. While Tenzing melted snow and ice for the first of many brews of soup, lemon drink and coffee, Ed reviewed the oxygen situation. There was an immediate problem when they found that there was no adaptor for the 1400-litre cylinder of sleeping oxygen which would have given them 12 hours of sleep. And some of their four bottles of summit oxygen had been used on the day’s carry. On the plus side, there were the two quarter-full bottles left behind by Hunt and Da Namgyal, and the two left by Bourdillon and Evans. These would cover their descent from Camp 9 down to the South Col.

  They took their sleep in two lots of two hours, with hot drinks between times. There was ample fuel for their gas cooker whose sound and warmth helped them through the night. The wind came at them spasmodically in big gusts, but in the early hours of the morning it ceased. When Ed looked out through the sleeve of the tent at 4 a.m. the black sky was brilliant with stars and there was no wind. If conditions held, they would have the miracle of a fine, still day. At 6.30 a.m. they were on their way, the ridge in shadow but the mountain above glowing in the early morning sun. With their oxygen sets on 4 L/min., Tenzing took the lead, kicking steps in soft snow or climbing on the protruding stra
ta of the rock. The steep face of soft snow below the South Summit felt dangerously unstable, but like Bourdillon and Evans they accepted the risk.

  At 9 a.m. the slope eased off to the comfortable snow mound of the South Summit. Ahead of them they saw the bewitching, final snow crest of the summit ridge of Everest. Ed was aware of a feeling of astonishment that he should be here, so early in the morning, on a fine windless day, with four-and-a-half hours of oxygen on his back, and a companion as strong and committed as he was. No one had ever been so well placed to stand on top of the world. The snow was steep but looked no harder than on the best of the climbs he’d done in New Zealand. If the snow was too soft, that might be a problem, and if it was ice, that would be slow. And the rock step halfway up might be impossibly difficult. But there was no question of stopping now. After dropping off one empty oxygen bottle each and reducing the flow rate to 3 L/min. on the remaining bottles, they moved together to where the ridge steepened. A blow of the axe and Ed had the answer to his question about the texture of the snow. It was crisp, indeed perfect. Two easy scraping blows of the axe and he had a safe and comfortable step. From here they moved singly, Ed always in front, cutting step after step, Tenzing protecting him with a solid shaft belay.

  After an hour of steady progress they came to the foot of the rock step. Vertical it had looked from a distance, though maybe closer to 70 degrees in reality. Whatever the angle, there was no doubt that it might prove impossible. There was no way of sidling around it on the left, where it was all seriously difficult rock. Nor could they climb on to the equally steep ice-sheathed Kangshung Face on the right. In between the rock and the ice, however, was a more promising lead: a chimney of the right width where one’s back and a cramponed foot could be getting a grip on the ice while the other foot and one’s hands found holds on the rock. It was similar to ice chimneys they’d climbed in the icefall. Soon, with the flow rate turned up for this gruntingly hard pitch of climbing, Ed was into it, searching for holds, legs pressing up, oxygen set scraping on the ice. A lot of panting and he was up. Then up came Tenzing.

  Nothing could stop them now. At 11.30 a.m. there was no more ridge to climb. As Ed would say thousands of times over the next 50 years, ‘A few more whacks of the ice-axe, a few very weary steps, and we were on the summit of Everest.’ In his 1955 autobiography he wrote:

  My first sensation was one of relief … but mixed with the relief was a vague sense of astonishment that I should have been the lucky one to attain the ambition of so many brave and determined climbers. It seemed difficult at first to grasp that we’d got there … I turned and looked at Tenzing. Even beneath his oxygen mask and the icicles hanging from his hair, I could see his infectious grin of sheer delight. I held out my hand, and in silence we shook in good Anglo-Saxon fashion. But this was not enough for Tenzing, and impulsively he threw his arm around my shoulders and we thumped each other on the back in mutual congratulations.17

  Ed removed his oxygen without ill-effect, and took the famous photo of Tenzing with ice-axe aloft and the British, Nepali, Indian and United Nations flags flying in the breeze. In the summit snow Tenzing buried some food offerings for the gods who live there. Ed added a white cross given to John Hunt by a Benedictine monk. He went down to the nearest rock and collected nine stones as souvenirs, then, after reconnecting his oxygen, they began their descent.

  There were no crises on the way down and none of the near-death exhaustion that had been the lot of most climbers who had been close to the top of Everest. Oxygen was working its magic through to the end. As they approached the Col, George Lowe came to meet them with a thermos flask of soup. Ed had not rehearsed what he would say, but as he felt an upwelling of affection for his friend and for this extraordinary mountain, the right words came: ‘Well, George, we knocked the bastard off.’

  Wilf Noyce and Pasang Phutar were there too, and they prepared hot drinks for unappeasable thirsts. The wind had got up again. It was a long cold night without oxygen, and next morning the five of them left the South Col without regret. Charles Wylie and some Sherpas were at Camp 7 but still the news had not reached Advance Base where John Hunt and the others were waiting in an agony of suspense. Failure would mean a desperate third attempt by a small weakened group, whereas success would mean, well, success! They could leave this hard mountain behind.

  A few hundred feet above Advance Base, Hillary, Tenzing, Lowe and Noyce were met by a panting Tom Stobart carrying his camera. Tom knew that giving the news to Hunt could be a special moment in his film, the one his audience might remember when all else had been forgotten. He gave them his instructions: no indication of success until they were close enough together for Tom to catch the emotion of the moment. ‘Please. Nobody give any signal until we are close enough for a picture. Not until I give the word.’18

  As they came in sight of the camp, people began to come slowly to meet them. Mike Westmacott was in front, John Hunt a little behind him, eager at first but slowing as he looked at the expressionless faces of the returning party. They had failed, surely. Suddenly he looked and felt extremely tired. Quietly Tom was saying, ‘Not yet! Wait a bit, get closer.’ He recalled:

  Then I let go the rope, brought up the camera. ‘Right, George, let it go.’ As George gave the thumbs-up everyone stopped for a second, not taking it in, not daring to believe their eyes. Then they began to stumble forward. Flinging arms round the victors’ necks, clapping them on the back, everyone talking at once.19

  How the good news reached London

  There was one expedition member whose work was unfinished, and that was James Morris. Everest had become world news, and journalists had converged on Nepal, making stories from what they could glean around hotel bars in Kathmandu. A couple of the braver sort had trekked into Khumbu and even reached Base Camp.

  Morris had to get his news to London without interception. He had had a stroke of luck six weeks earlier when he found a radio transmitter in Namche controlled by an Indian called Mr Tiwari – who agreed to transmit the occasional message to the British Embassy. It would be in code, a code with two meanings: the first for the multitude who would intercept it, and the second for Ambassador Summerhayes who would forward the decoded version to The Times.

  At 2.30 p.m. on 30 May in the Western Cwm, Morris had his scoop of the decade, and he wanted it to reach London as a headline in The Times for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth on 2 June. He strapped on the crampons he had worn for the first time less than a month earlier and set off in the direction of the icefall and Base Camp.

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ said Mike Westmacott. Stumbling down the disintegrating chaos of ice, they reached Base Camp after dark. Morris wrote:

  Before I could sleep, though, I had a job to do. Leaning over in my sleeping-bag with infinite discomfort, for my legs were as stiff as ramrods and patches of sunburn on various parts of my body made movements very painful, I extracted my typewriter from a pile of clothing and propped it on my knees to write a message. This was that brief dispatch of victory I had dreamed about through the months. Oh Mr. Tiwari at Namche and Mr. Summerhayes at Katmandu! Oh you watchful radio men in Whitehall! Oh telephone operators, typists and sub-editors, readers, listeners, statesmen, generals, Presidents, Kings, Queens and Archbishops! I have a message for you!

  Now then, let me see. Pull out the crumpled paper code; turn up the flickering hurricane lamp, it’s getting dark in here; paper in the typewriter, don’t bother with a carbon; prop up your legs with an old kit-bag stuffed with sweaters and socks; choose your words with a dirty broken-nailed finger; and here goes!

  Snow conditions bad stop advanced base abandoned yesterday stop awaiting improvement

  Which being interpreted would mean:

  Summit of Everest reached on May 29 by Hillary and Tenzing.

  I checked it for accuracy. Everything was right. I checked it again. Everything was still right. I took it out of the typewriter and began to fold it up to place it in its envelope: but as I did so, I though
t the words over, and recalled the wonder and delight of the occasion, and remembered that dear old Sherpa who had greeted us with his lantern, an hour or two before, when we had fallen out of the icefall.

  All well! I added to the bottom of my message.20

  The message was carried by runner to Mr Tiwari at Namche on the morning of 1 June. Through the airwaves it went to the British Embassy, then by cable to London. And that is how the message reached the young Queen on the day of her coronation and gave immeasurable delight to the vast crowd gathered to see her.

  Who got there first?

  There are always revisionists. For Everest 1953, the first came in less than a month. When expedition members entered Kathmandu they were met by a huge crowd shouting, ‘Tenzing! Zindabad!’ as they held aloft banners on which were painted Tenzing standing on top of Everest while hauling up a supine Ed Hillary from below. Tenzing could sign his name but had never learnt to read or write, and when a chanting crowd surrounded him, and their leaders insisted he sign the document they held, he did so. It said that he, Tenzing, was the first to step on to the summit.

  Only three years earlier, a Nepali uprising had overthrown the Rana family which had held the country in feudal subjection for a hundred years, and revolution was still in the air. Much of the impetus had come from the anti-British, anti-imperialist movement in India. Now here they were, the British, at it again, stealing from the indigenous people another of their treasures, the first ascent of their highest mountain. A Nepali had been there too, and surely he, rather than an effete Britisher, must have carved the trail to the summit. Or was he Nepali? He had no passport. He was called Tenzing Bhotia, Tenzing the Tibetan. He’d lived in Darjeeling for the past 12 years and now India was claiming him as one of theirs. Tenzing himself was out of his depth. He could not read a newspaper, or a letter, or even a street sign. He could speak four languages but his English was minimal. In this maelstrom of publicity and conflicting demands, he had no agent to guide him.