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Sir Edmund Hillary dies at 88
RIP conqueror of Everest
By Lester Haines

Sir Edmund Hillary, the NZ climber who in 1953 conquered Mount Everest and subsequently did much to improve the lot of Nepal's Sherpa people has died aged 88.

Hillary passed away on Friday morning at Auckland City Hospital as a result of peneumonia, local media reported. NZ prime minister Helen Clark said: "The legendary mountaineer, adventurer, and philanthropist is the best-known New Zealander ever to have lived. But most of all he was a quintessential Kiwi. He was a colossus. He was an heroic figure who not only knocked off Everest but lived a life of determination, humility, and generosity."
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Hillary was born in in Auckland on 20 July 1919, and led an uneventful life as a beekeeper until his historic assault on the world's highest peak. Selected by British expedition leader John Hunt for the final push because of his "experience in the Himalayas and immense energy and strength", as Reuters puts it, he and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay left the mountain's South Col on the cloudless morning of 29 May, 1953.

At 11.30am, having tackled what became the famous "Hillary Step" - a challenging 40-ft rock which the climber defeated by "jamming" his way up a narrow fissure before hauling Tenzing up behind him - the pair set foot on the summit. Following the triumph, neither man would say who'd actually planted the first climbing boot atop Everest, but it was later suggested that the honour was Hillary's.*

Hillary told companions after the climb: "We knocked the bastard off."

The news broke in London on June 2, the eve of Queen Elizabeth's coronation. Hillary was immediately knighted, while Tenzing recieved the George Medal. The latter later became director of the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling, and died in 1986....


Mount Everest victors Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, left, and Edmund Hillary, are shown on July 3, 1953, at London's Heathrow Airport upon their arrival from the expedition.
(AFP)


Hillary and Tenzing appear at the British embassy in Katmandu, Nepal, on June 1953 in the same gear they wore when they reached the summit of Mount Everest a month before.
(Associated Press)