Everest First Climbed
On 29 May 1953, the New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa climber Tenzing Norgay became the first people confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest, the highest mountain on Earth at roughly 8,850 meters. Their ascent ended decades of attempts on a peak that had come to symbolize the limits of human endurance, and it made both men international celebrities.
Everest straddles the border between Nepal and Tibet, and for much of the early twentieth century it was closed to most outsiders. British expeditions in the 1920s and 1930s approached from the Tibetan north side, but none reached the top. In 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared high on the mountain, and whether they reached the summit before dying remains debated, since no conclusive evidence has been found. After China's takeover of Tibet and the opening of Nepal to foreigners around 1950, climbers turned to a southern route through Nepal's Khumbu region, which a Swiss expedition tested in 1952, coming close to the summit.
The 1953 British expedition was led by John Hunt and was large and carefully organized, relying on many porters, supplementary oxygen, and a staged series of camps. Two climbers, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, made the first summit attempt on 26 May and turned back just short of the top. Hillary and Tenzing then set out from a high camp on the southeast ridge. Near the top they had to overcome a steep rock face, now known as the Hillary Step, by working their way up a crack between rock and ice. They reached the summit in the late morning, stayed only briefly, took photographs, and descended.
News reached London just before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in early June, and the success was celebrated as a national triumph. Hunt was knighted, as was Hillary. Tenzing received the George Medal. Questions about who stepped on the summit first were pressed by journalists. Both men initially said little, and Tenzing later wrote that Hillary went first, a point that both accepted as unimportant compared with the teamwork involved.
Everest's legacy has been mixed. The climb inspired a wave of Himalayan mountaineering and raised the profile of Sherpa climbers, who remain essential to expeditions. Hillary devoted much of his later life to aid projects for Sherpa communities in Nepal, including schools and hospitals. In recent decades, however, the mountain has become a commercial destination, with crowding, accidents, and waste prompting debate over how it should be managed.