Overview

Everest: forbidding, exhilarating, unconquerable. All courageous attempts by man to reach its summit by heading up the northern side from Tibet had failed. The southern approach through Nepal had never before been climbed, due to its impossibly steep ice-covered slopes and the country's policies. But in 1951 Edmund Hillary joined an expedition to find a new route up Everest from the south, which led to a new chapter in mountaineering history. The climbers' determination, endurance and battle against the elements culminated with their famous climb in 1953 as they finally reached the summit of this formidable mountain. This is Hillary's own account of the treacherous and breathtaking journeys. It is a classic adventurer's memoir, originally published in 1955, and is illustrated with drawings, maps and photographs which capture this awesome experience.

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9780747566960

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The first man to conquer Everest puts his triumph down not to heroics or expertise, but to a swarm of bees. Without those bees on his father's honey farm in New Zealand, the self-confessed lazy Edmund would never have learned the meaning of challenge or built the resilience to overcome nature's best efforts to thwart him. The bees turned him into 'an incurable optimist, self-reliant', and whetted his appetite for challenge. This classic book was first published in 1955, two years after the epic achievement of climbing Everest, and has been reissued to mark the 50th anniversary. Sir Edmund has added a new introduction which shows that the man's modesty has wavered not one iota - he remains as keen now to share the credit with other people as he was in 1953. As a boy, Edmund had no great academic skill and was not especially athletic. He had never seen snow, had no interest in mountains and knew nothing of the world outside the corner of New Zealand in which he lived. The story of what turned him into the most famous adventurer of his day, and in only a handful of years, is an absorbing one. The book is not an autobiography as such, as it concentrates mainly on the conquest of Everest and the events that led directly to it. But Sir Edmund tells his story in a charming, self-effacing way while bringing life to the conditions he and other mountaineers faced in the days before hi-tech gadgetry removed much danger and loneliness. These were mountains where avalanches forced long detours, razor-sharp ridges were lashed by blinding blizzards, and where the only contact climbers had with each other was through hand signals. One question Sir Edmund does not answer, however, is who reached the summit of Everest first - himself or his companion Tenzing Norgay. He has remained silent on that one for 50 years, insisting that it was a team effort and therefore an irrelevance who stood on top of the world first. Only those among the Himalayan mountaineering fraternity know the answer, confided by Norgay just before his death. Hillary made it first, but with typical modesty he will never say so. (Kirkus UK)

Author Information

Born 1919 in Tuakau, Auckland, New Zealand, Sir Edmund Hillary climbed into immortality on May 29, 1953 together with his Sherpa companion Tenzing Norgay, by becoming the first to reach the highest point on earth, Mount Everest - 8,850 meters above sea level. Hillary has conquered 11 summits in the Himalaya, all above 6,000 metres. Among other adventures and expeditions, in the late fifties Hillary was invited to partipate in the first mechanized expedition to the South Pole, and in 1975, he travelled by jet boat from the mouth of the Ganges to the head waters of the river high in the Himalayas. During the recent years, he has continued his global fund-raising work for organisations such as UNICEF and the World Wildlife Fund.

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