Remembering Sir Edmund Hillary

SI Staff | Jan 15, 2008

Remembering Sir Edmund Hillary

AP

Sir Edmund Hillary (right), son of a commercial beekeeper in Taukau, New Zealand and one of the 20th century's greatest adventurers, died Friday at 88.

AP

Hillary, with his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay, won worldwide acclaim in 1953 by becoming the first to scale the 29,035-foot summit of Mount Everest, the world's tallest peak.

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Hillary and Norgay were heroes overnight, but a controversy began about who had been first to stand on Everest's summit. It was quickly declared that they had reached it together as a team. Later, in Hillary's book View from the Summit, he broke his silence on the subject and wrote that it was he, not Norgay.

AP

Sir Hillary's recollection of standing on the pinnacle: "The whole world around us lay spread out like a giant relief map. I am a lucky man. I have had a dream and it has come true, and that is not a thing that happens often to men." (Note: photo shows Norgay - Hillary took the photo.)

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Four months after Everest, Sir Edmund married Louise Mary Rose, the daughter of a mountain climber. They had three children. One of their sons, Peter, followed in his father's footsteps and reached the summit of Everest with Norgay's son, Jamling.

AP

Close to 10 years after Everest (roughly when this photo was taken), Sir Edmund led a highly publicized but unsuccessful search for the Abominable Snowman. In 1986, accompanied by former astronaut Neil Armstrong, he also flew a twin-engine ski plane over the Arctic and landed at the North Pole, thus becoming the first to stand at both poles and on the summit of Everest.