29. May 1953
73 years ago
At 11:30 a.m., two men stood for the first time on the highest point on Earth — 8,849 metres above sea level.
Mount Everest rises 8,849 metres above sea level — the highest point on Earth, where the air holds barely a third of the oxygen found at sea level. By 1953 the mountain had killed many who tried, and no one had been confirmed to stand on its summit. The British expedition under Colonel John Hunt set up camp and waited for its weather window.
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The first attempt fell to Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans. They fought their way up, but when their oxygen gear failed barely 100 vertical metres from the top, they had to turn back. Everything now rested on the second team: New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.
The last great obstacle was a steep rock face, about 12 metres high, just below the summit. Hillary wedged himself up a crack between rock and ice while Norgay belayed, and step by step they cleared it. The wall bears his name to this day — the "Hillary Step".
At 11:30 a.m. on 29 May 1953, there was no more mountain to climb. Hillary and Norgay stood on top of the world. They stayed only about fifteen minutes: took photographs, buried some chocolate as an offering, and searched in vain for traces of George Mallory, who had vanished near the summit in 1924.
The news reached London on the night of 2 June — the very day of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation — and was hailed as a gift to the new queen. Hillary was knighted and Norgay honoured around the world. Which of them set foot on the summit first, they always refused to say. "We reached the top together," was all Norgay would say.