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Letter to the editor

He took Everest in his stride

Setting up hospitals and schools in Nepal brought greater joy.

WELLINGTON, New Zealand - Sir Edmund Hillary, the unassuming beekeeper who conquered Mount Everest to win renown as one of the 20th century's greatest adventurers, died today (Jan. 11, 2008), New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark announced. He was 88.

The gangling New Zealander devoted much of his life to aiding the mountain people of Nepal and took his fame in stride, preferring to be called "Ed" and considering himself an ordinary beekeeper.

"Sir Ed described himself as an average New Zealander with modest abilities. In reality, he was a colossus. He was an heroic figure who not only 'knocked off' Everest but lived a life of determination, humility and generosity," Clark said in a statement.

Sir Edmund Hillary died at Auckland Hospital from a heart attack, said a statement from the Auckland District Health Board.

Sir Edmund's life was marked by adventure and excitement - and by his personal humility. Humble to the point that he only admitted being the first man atop Everest long after the death of climbing companion Tenzing Norgay in 1986.

He had pride in his feat, yet he irreverently referred to it as he returned to base camp as the man who took the first step onto the top of the world's highest peak: "We knocked the bastard off."

The accomplishment as part of a British climbing expedition even added luster to the coronation of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II four days later, and she knighted him as one of her first acts.

But he was more proud of his long campaign to set up schools and health clinics in Nepal, the homeland of Norgay, the mountain guide with whom he stood arm in arm on the summit of Everest on May 29, 1953.

He wrote of the pair's final steps to the top of the world: "Another few weary steps and there was nothing above us but the sky. There was no false cornice, no final pinnacle. We were standing together on the summit. There was enough space for about six people. We had conquered Everest.

"... But my dominant reactions were relief and surprise. Relief because the long grind was over and the unattainable had been attained. And surprise, because it had happened to me, old Ed Hillary, the beekeeper, once the star pupil of the Tuakau District School, but no great shakes at Auckland Grammar (high school) and a no-hoper at university, first to the top of Everest. I just didn't believe it."

His philosophy of life was simple: "Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself," he said in a 1975 interview after writing his autobiography, Nothing Venture, Nothing Win.

Sir Edmund summarized it for Nepali schoolchildren in 1998, when he said one didn't have to be a genius to do well in life.

"I think it all comes down to motivation. If you really want to do something, you will work hard for it," he said.

A strong conservationist, he demanded that international mountaineers clean up thousands of tons of discarded oxygen bottles, food containers and other climbing debris that litter the lower slopes of Everest.

It was on a visit to Nepal that his first wife, Louise, 43, and 16-year-old daughter Belinda died in a light plane crash March 31, 1975.

Sir Edmund remarried in 1990, to June Mulgrew, former wife of adventurer, colleague and close friend Peter Mulgrew, who died in a passenger plane crash in the Antarctic. He is survived by his wife and children Peter and Sarah.

He was at times controversial. He got into hot water over what became known as his "dash to the Pole" in the 1957-58 Antarctic summer season aboard modified farm tractors while part of a joint British-New Zealand expedition.

Sir Edmund disregarded instructions from the Briton leading the expedition and guided his tractor team up the then-untraversed Shelton Glacier, pioneering a new route to the polar plateau and the South Pole.

In 2006 he got into a row over the death of Everest climber David Sharp, stating it was "horrifying" that climbers could leave the Briton to die high on the upper slopes.

"It was wrong if there was a man suffering altitude problems and was huddled under a rock, just to lift your hat, say 'good morning' and pass on by," he said. "Human life is far more important than just getting to the top of a mountain."

Named New Zealand's ambassador to India in the mid 1980s, Sir Edmund was the celebrity of the New Delhi cocktail circuit. He later said he found the job confining.

He was the first living New Zealander to be featured on a banknote, was honored by the United Nations as one of its Global 500 conservationists in 1987 and was also awarded numerous honorary doctorates by universities around the world.

In 1988 he was awarded the Smithsonian Institution's James Smithson Bicentennial Medal for his "monumental explorations and humanitarian achievements."

IN HIS WORDS

Climber's view

Sir Edmund Hillary had no special insight into that old question: Why climb?

"I can't give you any fresh answers to why a man climbs mountains. The majority still go just to climb them."

[Last modified January 11, 2008, 01:12:59]