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The South
Asian Life & Times - SALT |
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Contents Adventure & Sport Five
Ultimate Everest Apa
Sherpa-21 Times
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Hillary
first visited the Himalaya in 1951 as a member of an expedition led by Eric
Shipton. Together, they showed that it would be possible to climb Everest
from the southwest up the Khumbu icefall and into the Western Cwm. The
earlier attempts were all from the north side through Tibet. The following
year, in 1952, Raymond Lambert and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, as part of a Swiss
expedition, pioneered a route up the steep Lhotse face, reaching the South
Col at 28,000 feet. This was Tenzing’s sixth time on Everest. The
familiarity with the mountain no doubt helped Tenzing immensely the
following year when he, together with Hillary, stood on top of the highest
mountain in the world. The 1953 British expedition led by Col John Hunt was a massive teamwork of over 400 individuals. In their gradual but steady approach towards the summit, they set up nine camps – compared to the four that are required today. Hillary had a narrow escape while moving loads up to camp III, when he plunged into a crevasse, and was saved by Tenzing. The first pair of climbers sent to the summit during the 1953 expedition “turned back 330 feet short of the top, low on oxygen.” John Hunt then sent Hillary and Tenzing. They spent the night of May 28/29 at Camp IX - 1,000 feet from the summit and 2,000 feet higher than today's highest camp on the same route. They left at four o'clock in the morning, making their way cautiously to the South summit.
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