Everest conqueror dies

Sir Edmund Percival Hillary: 1919-2008

Sir Edmund Hillary's tragedy was that although he had packed more into his lifetime than most mortals can ever hope to, in India he was always known as the first person to ascend Mount Everest.

Since the 29th of May, 1953, Sir Ed (as he was always known in native New Zealand) went on to lead an adrenaline-charged life amidst river rapids and the South Pole, but everytime he visited India, he was asked to recount incidents from his ascent of Everest.

He was too taciturn by far to talk of putting back into the environment what he took out, but Sir Ed's trust for children of the sherpas has gone a long way into giving the community awareness of the world around them.

Trekkers to Nepal's north-eastern region, the Khumbu, have always been struck by the friendliness of the sherpas who have metamorphosed into trekking lodge owners and high-altitude businessmen rather than mere porters.

Read any mountaineering literature about Mount Everest and you'll always read about the sherpas as a central theme.

Contrast this with any book or article about ascents to K2, the second highest mountain, and you'll get an icy wall of silence about the porters there. The reason? They're not sherpas. (The base camp for K2 lies in Pakistan).

The 1953 ascent of Mount Everest is too well documented to be repeated here, but one aspect bears writing about: the highest named feature on the mountain is the Hillary Step.

It still confounds mountaineers today, in spite of the huge strides in mountaineering hardware: crampons, titanium ice-axes, pitons and lightweight oxygen cylinders.

On the 29th of May, Hillary and Tenzing were stymied by the sharp fluted edge of the stony wall, and that too, so high up on the mountain. If they had failed to crack that particular feature, there would have been no famous first ascent of Mount Everest.

It is probably the Hillary Step where Sir Ed's spirit will live on forever, urging future generations of Everesters to a final burst of energy to make it to the top of the world.