1: Never the Same Again
Twenty years and more have passed since the summit of Mount Everest was first reached by man and I stood with Edmund Hillary at the highest point on earth late in the morning of 29 May 1953. Twenty years is a long time in a man’s life, and a long time too in a quick-changing world. Many years and a lot of effort had brought me a little unexpectedly to that high and lonely place in the thin air, under an incredibly blue sky, with a whole world of mountains spread out around and below us. I was nearly forty years of age. It was my seventh expedition to the mountain and the fulfilment of a dream. It was also the fulfilment of the efforts of a whole generation and more of climbing men, who in their own ways had had the same dream as mine, so if the achievement created a sensation it is not surprising. It was celebrated throughout the world, though differently with each people.
It was in fact a most important moment. The news of our success was intentionally delayed and was only broadcast in Britain some days later, on Coronation Day, 2 June. But we had a long march back and everyone knew about the ascent of Everest long before we returned to civilisation. Then in Nepal and in India people went crazy. Politically-minded men rushed in to gain some benefit from my own part in the climb, invented stories about it and twisted the truth, proclaiming me the hero of Nepal, of India, or of the East, and so on, simply because I had been lucky enough and persistent enough to reach the top of the world and the headlines of the newspapers too.
This was a difficult time for everybody in the expedition. I could not help being pleased at this personal reception; anyone would be. But the attempt to split me from Edmund Hillary and the rest of the expedition and to create trouble amongst us was really frightening and it has left a dark mark on my memory of our victory. Also the frenzy of the crowds was almost terrifying, even before we got to Kathmandu, though worse afterwards, and so were the mobs of excited pressmen who never left us for a moment.
Now it seems hard to believe the excitement; it is such a very long time ago, and so much has happened since then that the significance of the event no longer seems as great, no longer seems real, even to me, but especially to a generation that has been born or has grown up in the interval. They cannot remember it anyway.
Even then, in 1953, I had the feeling that nothing would ever be the same again—for me, for the Sherpas, for Solu Khumbu, for mountaineering as a sport. And nothing was. It was not that by climbing Everest nothing was left for the mountaineers to do. Not at all. Rather the reverse. Now there was everything to do; nothing was beyond man’s ambition and there was plenty of that everywhere. The sport grew as never befo
