Hillary and Norgay Conquer Everest: First Summit Reached

Two men stood where no human had ever stood and spent exactly 15 minutes at the top of the world. On May 29, 1953, New Zealand beekeeper Edmund Hillary and Nepali Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Mount Everest at 11:30 AM, completing the first confirmed ascent of the highest point on Earth at 29,032 feet. The mountain had repelled every previous attempt. British expeditions in the 1920s and 1930s had established that reaching the summit was theoretically possible but practically lethal. George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared near the summit in 1924, and whether they reached the top before dying remains one of mountaineering's great mysteries. The 1953 British expedition, led by Colonel John Hunt, was a massive logistical operation involving 362 porters, 20 Sherpa climbers, and tons of supplies staged at progressive camps up the mountain. Hunt's plan called for two summit attempts. The first pair, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, reached the South Summit on May 26 but turned back from exhaustion and oxygen problems. Hillary and Tenzing, the second pair, set out from a high camp at 27,900 feet on the morning of May 29. The final obstacle was a 40-foot rock face near the summit, now called the Hillary Step. Hillary wedged himself into a crack between the rock and an overhanging cornice of snow and hauled himself up. Tenzing followed. They reached the summit shortly after, shook hands, and Tenzing buried chocolate and biscuits in the snow as a Buddhist offering. Hillary took photographs, but no image of Hillary at the summit exists because Tenzing did not know how to operate the camera. News of the ascent reached London on the morning of Elizabeth II's coronation, June 2, 1953, and was received as a gift to the new queen and the nation. Hillary was knighted. Tenzing received the George Medal. Both men maintained throughout their lives that they had reached the summit together, refusing to say who stepped on top first.