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)
‘I went on cutting. We seemed to have been going for a very long time and my confidence was fast evaporating. Bump followed bump with maddening regularity. A patch of shingle barred our way, and I climbed dully up it and started cutting steps around another bump. And then I realised that this was the last bump, for ahead of me the ridge dropped steeply away in a great corniced curve, and out in the distance I could see teh pastel shades and fleecy clouds of the highlands of Tibet.’
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. Hillary’s own account of the historic climb is a classic adventurer’s memoir, originally published in 1955. It is illustrated with sketches by George Djurkovic, maps by A. Spark, and a 16-page plate section of 24 photographs from the Royal Geographical Society.
Click here to read an extract.
Reviews (for the 1955 edition):
‘A gem of a book ... at no point is there any deviation from the same honesty of purpose and simple love of mountaineering which brought him, with those famous 'few more whacks', to the top’ —
Times Literary Supplement‘Unquestionably the best account of the lot ... I believe this to be one of the small number of mountaineering books certain to survive’ —
Observer ‘By far the best account ... Hillary has the hapy knack of helping you live his book vividly’ —
Daily Mail
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