Edmund Hillary - View From the Summit

Sir Edmund Hillary was born in 1919 in Auckland, New Zealand, and served in the New Zealand Air Force during the Second World War. Knighted for his ascent of Everest in 1953, he achieved many more adventuring firsts before establishing the Himalayan Trust, an organisation devoted to improving the lives of people living in the Himalayas. He has two surviving children by his first wife, Louise, who died tragically in a plane crash with their third child, Belinda. He later married June, widow of his Antarctic partner Peter Mulgrew. Sir Edmund Hillary died in 2008.

The first man to set foot on the summit of Everest, the man who led a team of tractors to the South Pole, the man who jetboated up the Ganges from the ocean to the sky has, for the first time, gathered all the remarkable adventures of a long life into one volume. But there is more to Edmund Hillary than this. He is also the man who repaid his debt of fame to the Himalayas by inaugurating a programme of building schools, clinics, airstrips and bridges in Nepal. With his still active support, these have gone from strength to strength in the 50 years since he himself mastered the Hillary Step and led his companion Tenzing Norgay up Everest's final summit ridge.

View From the Summit is a thoughtful and honest reappraisal of a life spent pushing human ability to its limits and relishing the challenges thrown down by the elements. It is also the story of a man whom the world has taken to its heart.

THERE ARE MANY people that I should thank for the important part they have played in my adventures and in my aid projects, too. Their assistance has made everything possible and I deeply appreciate their support. But there are too many of them to thank individually here.

Only a few have played a major role in this book and I must express my thanks to them personally:

George Greenfield, my friend and literary agent for forty years, who once again organised my agreement with our publishers, Transworld; Tom Scott, also a friend of longstanding, whose research has ensured that many anecdotes and stories I might have overlooked or never seen are incorporated in this narrative; Averil Mawhinney whose patient and determined investigations have located many illustrations for the book; my friend of many years, Margaret Body, has played a very important part on the editorial side, as has Joanna Goldsworthy of Transworld.

Perhaps most important of all has been my wife, June, who read every word and made sure that the story was correctly presented, as nobody knows more about my life than she does. She made sure that the pages and paragraphs flowed reasonably smoothly not an easy thing to do.

To them all I express my deepest appreciation.

THIS IS THE story of my life, condensing seventy-nine years of somewhat vigorous activity into a few hundred pages. My views may not always coincide with the stories of my companions, but this is the way I clearly saw things at the time.

I have had much good fortune, a fair amount of success and a share of sorrow, too. Ever since I reached the summit of Mount Everest more than forty-five years ago the media have classified me as a hero, but I have always recognised myself as being a person of modest abilities. My achievements have resulted from a goodly share of imagination and plenty of energy.

As a youngster I was a great dreamer, reading many books of adventure and walking lonely miles with my head in the clouds. I was unaware that many exciting challenges lay ahead of me and that over the years I would receive a host of honours and awards. I have had the good fortune to meet Queens and Princes, Presidents and Prime Ministers, but perhaps more importantly for me I have made close friendships with many people from a variety of cultures.

Achievements are important and I have revelled in a number of good adventures, but far more worthwhile are the tasks I have been able to carry out for my friends in the Himalayas. They too have been great challenges in a different way building mountain airfields and schools, hospitals and clinics, and renewing remote Buddhist monasteries. These are the projects that I will always remember.

TENZING CALLED IT the roar of a thousand tigers. Hour after hour it came whining and screeching in an unrelenting stream from the west with such ferocity it set the canvas of our small Pyramid tent cracking like a rifle range. We were 25,800 feet up on the South Col, a desolate saddle between the upper slopes of Everest and Lhotse. Rather than easing off, the gale grew more violent the longer it went on. I began to fear that our heaving and thrashing shelter must surely be wrenched from its mooring, leaving us exposed and unprotected amongst the ice and boulders. I was braced between Tenzing Norgay and the tent wall with no room to stretch out to my full length. Jammed in tight, just turning over was difficult and resulted in a spasm of panting. The thudding canvas beat constantly against my ribs and whenever my head touched the fabric my brain felt like it had been placed under a pneumatic drill. As a weight-saving device, we had left behind our inner sleeping bags and this was proving to be a considerable mistake. Even wearing all my down clothing I found the icy breath from outside penetrating through to my bones. A terrible sense of fear and loneliness dominated my thoughts. What is the sense in it all? I asked myself. A man was a fool to put up with this! When it came, sleep was a half-world of noise and cold. Then my air mattress deflated, freezing my hip where it rested on the ice. It was the worst night I have ever spent on a mountain.