Pod Insights Short History Of... The Conquest of Everest About this episode Short History Of... is taking a short break over the Christmas period. New episodes will continue from the 29th of December. Until then, we hope you enjoy this repeat episode! Happy Christmas from the Short History Of... team.
Standing over 29,000ft above sea level, the peak of Everest is the highest
point on the planet. To the sherpa people of the Himalayas it is sacred,
and to foreign adventurers, it is the holy grail of climbing. But what
did it take to reach the summit? Was it expertise and endurance - or
simply better equipment? What was sacrificed to plant a flag on top of
the world?
This is a Short History Of... the Conquest of Everest.
Written by Jo Furniss. With thanks to Mick Conefrey, documentary maker and author of Everest, 1922.
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1:02 Speaker 02 It is May 1952. On a mountain ridge that skirts the border of Nepal and Tibet, two men are locked in a battle with the elements.
1:13 Speaker 02 In the lead is Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa guide who grew up in the shadow of these peaks. He is an experienced climber, but he's never been this high before. Gasping for breath, he squints up the steep ridge that leads to the very top. Snow blows off the summit as though the mountain is smoking. He can hear nothing but the high scream of the wind.
1:38 Speaker 02 Tenzing lifts his foot and stamps his crampons into the ice. He shifts his weight, then he lifts his other foot carefully, knowing that every step could be his last. His companion is down on his hands and knees, inching along with his chin tucked into his armpit to shield his face from the merciless wind.
2:00 Speaker 02 Some say this peak is the roof of the world, but right now it feels more like death's door. The two men proceed in slow motion.
2:12 Speaker 02 After another hour, Tenzing is crawling too. Clouds swirl around a summit that flickers in and out of view like a mirage. Struggling for breath, Tenzing suspects their oxygen supply is faulty. They carry heavy gas bottles and have masks strapped over their faces, but right now, the equipment seems to be all burden and no relief.
2:37 Speaker 02 As his vision blurs, Tenzing's concern escalates. He knows about the effects of high altitude. Mountain madness can cause men to lay down and die. If nothing else, they have to keep moving. If they can't do that, they must turn back.
2:55 Speaker 02 He struggles to his feet. He wants to say that he has stood higher than any other man on Earth. But then, with pain in his lungs and in his heart, he takes one last look at the summit. It is barely 800 feet above them, but right now, it's an impossible distance to cover. They will not conquer Everest today.
3:18 Speaker 02 Tenzing slaps the boot of his companion, a man named Raymond Lombert, to get his attention. The two climbers have a lot in common. While Tenzing has known the Himalayas all his life, Lombert grew up tackling the mountains of his native Switzerland. A year ago, the Swiss man got stranded by a storm on the summit of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the Alps. He lost all his toes that night to frostbite. Now, Tenzing suspects that people will say that if Raymond Lombert can't climb Everest, then no one can. So Tenzing must show them it can be done. He has been told it is his destiny. Although today, he makes the wise decision to turn back, a decision that saves their lives,
4:03 Speaker 02 he vows to return. The summit flashes its face once again before it is veiled in snow. It is though Everest herself is saying she will wait for him.
4:22 Speaker 02 The 1952 expedition set a new altitude record for climbers when Tenzing and Lombeur reached 8,595 metres, or 28,200 feet. And it was the first time that a Sherpa was recognised as a full team member. The Swiss explorers valued Tenzing-Norgay as a climber, not merely a porter.
4:44 Speaker 02 For the Sherpa people, Mount Everest is sacred. But for foreign adventurers, it is the Holy Grail, the highest peak in the world. One that needs to be conquered, for queen and country, for scientific progress, or just because it is there. But what did it take to reach the summit? Was it expertise and endurance, or simply better equipment? What sacrifices were made in order that a human being could stand on top of the world? I'm John Hopkins, and this is A Short History of the Conquest of Everest.
5:27 Speaker 02 The highest peak in the world stands in the Mahalunga section of the Himalayas. The bulk of the mountain lies in Tibet to the north, with the summit rising in Nepal to the south. One hundred years before the Swiss expedition, the mountain is given the uninspiring name of Peak 15. The British colonial administration in India undertakes a geographical survey under the leadership of a man named George Everest.
5:56 Speaker 02 This involves the tricky task of measuring mountains, for which he needs a world-class mathematician. A 19-year-old Bengali man from Calcutta rises to the challenge.
6:10 Speaker 02 Radhanath Sikdar holds the role of chief computer. One day in 1852, he rushes into the office of the Surveyor General and declares, "Sir, I have discovered the highest mountain in the world. Peak 15 reaches 29,000 feet." This comes as a surprise because a mountain called Kangjenjunga elsewhere in the Himalayas was thought to be the tallest.
6:38 Speaker 02 It means they need a more significant title for Peak 15. So the mountain is renamed Everest, after the now-retired Surveyor General. In the decades that follow, many people argue that the mountain should have been named after the man who measured it.
6:54 Speaker 02 Sir George Everest himself objects to the mountain taking any foreign name, having always preferred to label his maps with indigenous titles. In Nepal, the mountain is known as Sagamatta. In the Tibetan language of the Sherpas, it is Khamalangma. Some give it the poetic name of "Mittiguti Chapulonga", which partly translates as "A bird that flies as high as the summit will go blind."
7:21 Speaker 02 Sikdar's mathematical measurement in 1852 proves to be extraordinarily accurate, only around 30 feet off the height measured today using data from satellites.
7:32 Speaker 02 In an age of adventure, Everest becomes the ultimate challenge. Mick Conefrey is a documentary maker and writer of several books about the Himalayas, including Everest 1922.
7:46 Speaker 03 As soon as Everest was measured and as soon as people realized back in the 1850s that it was the highest mountain in the world, almost straight away, there were climbers wanting to have a go at it. Because this was the era of trophy exploration, where people wanted to get to go along the longest rivers, go to the remotest parts, climb the highest mountains. So the urge was just very strong, and then that urge continues today because really it's the only mountain in the world with universal name recognition. For decades, British climbers in particular had been trying to persuade the Tibetan government to allow them in, to have a go at Everest. Before the First World War, they'd been turned down on several occasions.
8:27 Speaker 03 And finally, they managed to secure permission from the Dalai Lama himself to have a go in 1922, with a reconnaissance in 1921.
8:39 Speaker 02 By 1921, the British-led Mount Everest Committee sets out to find a viable route up the mountain. But there are obstacles to overcome before they even set foot there.
8:52 Speaker 02 Nepal is closed to outsiders for political reasons. The foreigners must assemble in the town of Darjeeling, over the border in India, which is still under British colonial rule. From there, they trek north into Tibet and take a sharp left turn to explore the far side of the mountain. A man named George Mallory spends five months exploring the foothills. He writes to his wife that they are walking off the map. By 1924, his team is ready to try for the summit.
9:28 Speaker 03 So back in 1922, no one had any idea whether it would even be possible to get to the top. A lot of scientists doubted that it would be possible to breathe on the summit. The oxygen equipment that was then available was very primitive. The Sherpas, who are such an important part of modern-day mountaineering, really were only just getting into climbing. So whereas a kind of modern climber might go to Everest equipment, very sophisticated equipment, none of that existed at all in the 1920s.
10:01 Speaker 02 When Mallory and his team begin their attempt in 1924, higher winds force them to abandon the first two climbs. After waiting in vain for the weather to settle, Mallory makes a third assault alongside a climber named Andrew Irving.
10:17 Speaker 03 They were full of confidence, but the main issue for them from very early on was that the weather was atrocious. And whereas modern climbing teams have the benefit of up-to-date meteorological information and tell them what is the best moment to climb, in 1924, none of that was available. The best that they could do was Mallory, the sister who lived in Colombo in Sri Lanka, and she was supposed to be sending him postcards telling him what the progress of the monsoon was. Because the theory was that the monsoon came up from the south, passed over Salon, and then eventually got to the Himalayas. But of course, the point was that it took so long for the postcards to get from Colombo to Everest Base Camp that the information was useless. So they had no information about the weather.
11:03 Speaker 03 And it just turned out that that year it was atrocious.
11:06 Speaker 02 Mallory and Irving finally set off to the summit on June the 8th, 1924, and disappear into the mist.
11:18 Speaker 02 Later, a team member in the camp peers through binoculars at the sharp fin of the peak. He spots movement high on the ridge, but the clouds close in and he loses sight of them. It's the last time the men are seen alive.
11:34 Speaker 02 Shortly before he set off, Mallory was interviewed by a reporter. "Why did he want to climb Everest?" He gave a classic reply that has inspired adventurers ever since. "Because it is there," he said.
11:49 Speaker 02 In the 1930s, Andrew Irving's ice pick is found on Everest's north face. Then, near the same spot, in 1999, a body is found. It is half-covered in scree and well-preserved by the cold. It has a rope around its waist.
12:06 Speaker 02 The right leg is broken, and a head wound suggests the man was struck by his own ice pick. In the pockets are an altimeter, a penknife, and a pair of snow goggles. Name tags on the clothing identify the dead climber as G. Mallory.
12:23 Speaker 02 The searchers bury Mallory's body under a can, but Irving is never found. One intriguing mystery remains from the Mallory Irving tragedy. Did the two men fall when they were pushing for the summit? Or did they die on their way back down?
12:42 Speaker 02 For some, the contents of the dead man's pockets offer clues. Mallory always carried a photograph of his wife to leave on the summit. Perhaps the fact that the picture was missing suggests that he reached the top and put it there.
12:57 Speaker 02 Could Mallory and Irving have been the first men to stand on the roof of the world? A feat lost to tragedy?
13:06 Speaker 03 I don't think the answer is any different now than it was in 1924, which is that it is unlikely that they got to the summit, but it is not impossible. It is very unlikely simply because it was so hard, the climbing difficulties were so great. Something went wrong at some point, which tells you something about how difficult it was. You've got to remember that though Mallory was an experienced climber, Irvin was not. He'd done hardly any mountain area. And so the idea that on really his first ever big expedition, he could have got to the top of Everest, it seems very improbable. But, you know, as Norwegian explorer Nansen said, the difficulty is what gets sorted
13:48 Speaker 03 out next week, the impossible is what gets sorted out a month later. You can never say never.
13:57 Speaker 02 After World War Two, Nepal opens up to outsiders. This allows climbers to try new routes onto Everest from the south. In 1951, a man named Eric Shipton explores a high valley known as the South Col between Everest and the peak of its neighbour, Lo Tsie. It makes a perfect high level staging post.
14:20 Speaker 02 On this trip, Shipton also photographs a massive footprint in the snow. At 13 inches, it's longer than the head of his ice pick, and looks like it has been left by a giant paw. The explorer attributes it to a wild ape-like man living in the snowy wastes, the so-called Yeti.
14:40 Speaker 03 On the way out of Everest, the party kind of split up and Eric Shipton went with one of the other members, a guy called Michael Ward. And as they were coming back towards Darjeeling, they found this footprint. Shipton photographed it, and it was sensational. The first reports of the Yeti had come in the 20s, people were already fascinated by it. But this was supposedly the first evidence. The thing is that Eric Shipton was known as a great practical joker, a guy who had a bit of sense of humour. So a lot of his friends said, well, hang on a minute, isn't this Eric Shipton just pulling our leg? Mike Ward always maintained that they had seen this footprint, but the world was hungry for stories about the Yeti. And to finally see a photograph was amazing. But
15:25 Speaker 03 Shipton maintained the whole of his life, though he was bona fide, the notion of not just a Yeti, but the abominable snowman, Bigfoot in America. What do they call cryptozoology? Apocryphal stories is very attractive. And the Himalayas, if you like, were, to an extent, a realm of fantasy, the highest mountains in the world. Very religious place, but very strange, very remote. So it's a great place for all your fantasies to come true.
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17:47 Speaker 02 But British fantasies about conquering Everest are yet to come true. Even while Tenzing and the Swiss climbers are making their attempt in 1952, another mission is being planned in England. A man named Colonel John Hunt is summoned from a military post in Germany to the offices of the Royal Geographical Society in London. Hunt walks along the elegant, wood-paneled corridors in a double-breasted suit, carrying a tan leather document pouch. He could pass for a civil servant, but he is an army officer who was born in India. His heels click on the polished marble floors as he makes his way to meet officials from the Joint Himalayan Committee.
18:29 Speaker 02 His leather folder contains detailed plans for an ambitious assault on the mountain.
18:35 Speaker 02 Some people are surprised that Hunt is being put in charge of a new Everest expedition instead of Shipton. But at the age of 42, the Colonel is an experienced climber and a renowned military mind. The British have secured permission from the Nepalese government to climb Everest in 1953. There are strict limits on the number of teams allowed on the mountain, so the pressure to succeed now is intense. The French have the authorization to mount an expedition in 54, and the Swiss have bagged the slot in 55. Knowing this could be the last chance for a British-led team to plant their flag first, the committee takes a fresh approach
19:17 Speaker 02 by appointing a military man to lead their 1953 campaign.
19:25 Speaker 03 John Hunt was completely different. He was a very successful soldier, who had been Montgomery staff during the Second World War, had a very systematic way of approaching things, was a great man-manager, who was able to get the best out of all the people in his team. He was very methodical in the way that he approached the whole expedition. He did an awful lot of planning before they got there, but also was in a sense the sort of heart and soul of the expedition, that got the logistics right, was open to the science, made sure that they had the best possible equipment, the best possible oxygen sets, put everything in their favour before they went. And then when they were on the mountain, worked very hard to make sure that it all worked.
20:07 Speaker 03 A key moment, that Hunt was willing to put himself to one side. His ambition really was to climb Everest himself, but realistically that was never going to happen because he was simply too old. Something like that had to be a huge team effort and to get a team effort working properly, you had to have a very good leader, that's what he was.
20:29 Speaker 02 In preparation, John Hunt takes a team to Farnborough Airport, a military and aviation research centre about 50 miles south-west of London. Swapping his double-breasted suit for state-of-the-art nylon overalls, he climbs inside a decompression chamber, a willing guinea pig to test prototype breathing apparatus.
20:50 Speaker 02 The door closes. Sealed inside this claustrophobic space, he adjusts the thick straps that hold a plastic mask over his face. On the wall beside him is the round dial of a pressure valve. Its needle drops as the tank simulates the conditions of thin air at altitude.
21:09 Speaker 02 Soon, the lack of oxygen bites. His head swims. Hunt paws at the walls, scrabbling for relief that isn't there. After a few minutes deprived of oxygen, it seems like a good idea to lay his head against the thick metal door and sleep. The decompression chamber is switched off and Hunt quickly recovers. But he knows that when he enters the low-oxygen zone at the top of Everest, there will be no one to bail him out. His team need an oxygen system that works. The British also test nylon that is virtually windproof, and invent vacuum-packed meals, easier to open than the heavy, fiddly tins used on previous expeditions.
21:53 Speaker 02 Shrunken packets of energy-giving foods are boxed up and labelled as assault rations.
22:02 Speaker 03 The Second World War had been a very technological war, and there'd been lots of innovations in terms of cold-weather clothing and things like nylon ropes, which hadn't really existed before the Second World War. And I think that soldiers from that era came from a background where they sort of understood that if you want to leverage your strengths, you had to have a boffin, you had to use the best possible equipment available, you had to think smart, minimise your losses, maximise your chances of success, use everything that was on offer. And also, obviously, working with an enormous team, the logistics are crucial, you know, making sure that everybody's well-fed, making sure there are enough oxygen bottles. So you had to have somebody who was organised, and systematic, and methodical,
22:47 Speaker 03 and that's what Hunt was.
22:53 Speaker 02 On the 12th of February 1953, Hunt and his team board the SS Stratheden at Tilbury in Essex, bound for India. They ship fifteen tonnes of supplies. Upon arrival in Bombay, the equipment is sent onwards by rail. Although there are roads inside Nepal, it is necessary to haul everything over the border using cable lifts and hundreds of porters. Slowly, the expedition assembles in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal.
23:25 Speaker 02 Very few Europeans have been to the country, which had been closed to outsiders for a century by the isolationist Rana dynasty.
23:34 Speaker 02 But Hunt is not there to see the sights. He needs to complete his team. On the 5th of March 1953, he is introduced to a group of Sherpa guides in the garden of the British Embassy compound. Their leader is Tenzing Norgay. Some say Tenzing is destined for the top. Born in a Nepali village around 1915, from a young age, he helped his father, a yak breeder, to herd the family's animals to high pastures. But like many indigenous Sherpa youngsters, he was soon drawn to the bright lights of Darjeeling and was first hired as a porter by a British expedition in 1935. The Second World War interrupted Himalayan exploration, but in the early 50s,
24:18 Speaker 02 Nepal opened up and foreigners returned. By the time Hunt meets him in March 1953, Tenzing is a Sherpa serda, or leader. His reputation already sealed by his leadership of the Swiss expedition a year earlier. Though the summit remained out of reach, Tenzing Norgay has already climbed higher than any other human on earth.
24:48 Speaker 02 Hunt is charmed by his ready smile and humorous banter. But the Sherpa serda is also a steely leader. A British reporter from the Daily Mail newspaper describes him as having the bearing of a sergeant major. Colonel John Hunt has found his man. But Tenzing has recently suffered from malaria and two attempts to reach the summit in 1952 have taken their toll. Tenzing intends to walk himself fit on the long march from Kathmandu to the mountain.
25:21 Speaker 03 By the time it came in 1953, Tenzing had a very proprietary sense to an extent over Everest. He thought, "I've almost climbed Everest with a Swiss team. I would quite like to come back with a Swiss team if they make another attempt in 1955." And he was a little bit ambivalent really about working with the British. Because you've got to remember, this is the sort of post-colonial era. Tenzing had gotten on very well with the Swiss and he really liked being with them and he felt that they treated him in a very equal fashion. And he wasn't quite so sure whether the same thing would happen with the British. But nevertheless, the other thing you've got to remember about him is he was incredibly goal-driven. And I think he recognised that this was a pretty good British team, that they were
26:04 Speaker 03 going to go all out to get to the summit, and he wanted to be part of that.
26:09 Speaker 02 The journey from Kathmandu to the foot of Everest means crossing 175 miles of mountain ridges. While the capital of Nepal stands at 4,000 feet, base camp is at 18,000 feet, so the hike before the climb is a test of endurance in itself.
26:32 Speaker 02 As they set off, Tenzing is wearing his lucky Swiss hat. It's made of canvas with a wide brim and a peacock feather. The man who walks beside him is wearing a homemade skiing hat with a blue and white striped peak and a flap of fabric at the back to protect his neck from the intense sun.
26:52 Speaker 02 This is Edmund Hillary, a climber from New Zealand who humbly describes himself as a beekeeper. As a Commonwealth citizen, the Kiwi has been a long-term member of the British team, along with his fellow countryman George Lowe. Tenzing and Hillary strike up a friendship on the long hike to base camp.
27:13 Speaker 03 The press loved the idea that he was this beekeeper, but that belied the reality, which that he was a very determined, very clever guy from an educated background, who'd been in the army, but whose passion was climbing and who had been on the reconnaissance expedition in 1951, who'd been back in 1952 on an expedition to Choyi, which was billed as a training expedition, who when he came back to Everest in 1953 was full of confidence and liked Tenzing, was at the kind of peak of his form, I think.
27:48 Speaker 02 350 locals are employed to carry provisions in traditional wicker baskets slung on their backs, held in place by leather straps. Each Sherpa hauls a 40-pound load, plus a bamboo walking stick to steady himself on uneven ground. They are paid 3 rupees per day, around 40 cents. As a Sherpa surda, tenzing is much better paid, earning the equivalent of 400 dollars per trip, around 4,000 dollars in today's money. He leads his huge team in a long column, like a marching army. They navigate ridge after ridge, passing through forests of rhododendrons, shrines fluttering with Buddhist prayer flags
28:33 Speaker 02 that are shredded by the wind. The expedition is fuelled by chapatis, cooked on camping stoves, washed down by pints of tea.
28:44 Speaker 02 The foothills are higher than most European mountains. The team use rickety bridges to cross rivers whose water has been turned a milky-white colour by melted snow. In local villages, the inhabitants treat the visitors to Chang, a millet beer as thick as soup. After two weeks of walking, in March 1953, they reach base camp. But they still can't see Everest because it is hidden behind other peaks.
29:17 Speaker 02 Here the wind howls all day. The only other sound is the ice cracking and rumbling. Sometimes there is a noise like a train, an avalanche falling in the distance.
29:31 Speaker 02 The team pitched their tents on top of the Kumbu Glacier.
29:36 Speaker 02 Base camp is way below what is known as the "death zone", a term first coined by the leader of the Swiss expedition, Dr. Edward Wistunon. "Above 26,000 feet, or 8,000 metres", he says, "there is so little oxygen in the atmosphere that human body cells die off. This causes the loss of vital functions and eventually the shutdown of the brain."
30:02 Speaker 02 It is from the relative safety of base camp that the team must start their long climb towards the death zone. Hunt divides the journey ahead into three stages, each with its own considerable challenges.
30:17 Speaker 02 Stage one is to move the whole team to a high glacial valley known as the Western Koom. They will need to carry three tonnes of stores, equipment and oxygen to this point at 21,000 feet. Stage two involves a reduced team climbing to the South Kool at 26,000 feet, where another camp must be established with 500 pounds of gear. Only then will the elite climbers embark on stage three, the push to the base of the summit.
30:51 Speaker 02 For now, they concentrate on ascending the Western Koom. Both the Sherpa porters and the elite climbers such as Tenzing and Hillary lift all they can carry.
31:03 Speaker 02 It will require a team effort to pass the next obstacle, a huge ice fall almost half a mile wide that blocks the route ahead.
31:15 Speaker 03 When they did the first reconnaissance of Everest, they looked over this huge long ridge down into the southern side of Everest. And they saw this feature, this ice fall, that kind of glacier, which as it moved down the mountain, hit a very steep point and broke up. And Mallory looked down on it and he said, "That is just impossible to get through. Nobody's ever going to get up the Kumbu Glacier because there was this kind of horrific feature full of enormous lumps of ice as tall as a building, constantly tottering, falling down, constantly on the move. Very, very dangerous place to be." So he dismissed it. When Eric Shipton got there in 1951, he had a look at it and he thought, no, this
31:58 Speaker 03 looks pretty difficult, but we'll have a go. And he and his team, which included Ed Hillary, found a route through the icefall, managed to work out how to get around some of these huge blocks of ice, managed to figure out how to get across the crevasses. So whereas on the northern side, the climbing got very difficult when you got close to the top, on the southern side and then the polly side, the most difficult bit was this huge barrier, this very, very dangerous icefall. Even today, if you look at where people get killed on Everest, it's either very close to the summit generally, or in the Kumbu Icefall because it's so unstable.
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33:40 Speaker 02 One of the climbers, Mike Ward, ventures first into the icefall. He fixes guide ropes along the path by hammering spikes into the frozen walls. Rope bridges are put up to cross crevasses that are blue on the inside. Metal ladders are used to climb vertical sections. This route becomes known as Mike's Horror. But he does make a path, and the team use it to establish the Western Koom camp.
34:09 Speaker 02 It takes the porters three days to carry each load from base camp via the icefall to this staging post where the climbers stay with a reduced team of Sherpas. Here, load tents huddle under the blasting wind already layered in ice. Their location is shown by a red flag because visibility is so poor in the swirling snow that anyone could get lost in minutes. And they are still almost 9,000 feet from the summit.
34:43 Speaker 02 Above them stands the peak of Everest's neighbour, Lhotse, the fourth highest mountain on Earth. Now, they must traverse the face of this mountain to build yet another base on the south call, the saddle hanging between the peaks of Lhotse and Everest. Camp Eight will be at 26,000 feet, right on the edge of the death zone.
35:09 Speaker 02 Progress up the face of Lhotse is slow. Climbers set out in pairs to pick a route through deep snow, but movement at this altitude is exhausting. Their limbs growing heavy, time and again, they are forced to give up and turn back.
35:26 Speaker 02 John Hunt had estimated it would take three to four days to reach the next camp. After nine days, they are still struggling and 3,000 feet short of their destination. He makes the journey himself to find out what is causing the delay. His face is snow-white from a layer of sunscreen, and his hands are bright red because he walks without gloves, the better to hold on to ropes. At once, the problem is obvious. They simply cannot breathe once they ascend higher into the death zone.
36:00 Speaker 02 During his trek, Hunt spots these skeletal remains of the tent used in 1952 by Raymond Lombert and Tenzin-Norgay. But the sight urges him onwards, knowing as he does that the improved oxygen system developed back at Farnborough could be the difference between a successful assault and the failed Swiss attempt. Up until now, Hunt has been preciously guarding their oxygen ration, but the time window is closing. It is late May, and in June the monsoon rains will bring flooding. So Hunt sends the British climber Wilf Neuss and a Sherpa named Anna Lou up the South Col using breathing apparatus for the first time.
36:44 Speaker 02 The men set off into thick cloud and are quickly lost from sight. But when the wind changes, the pair appear as tiny specks high on the face of Lothsee. They've done it. They've found a passable route to the next camp. Soon, what becomes known as the Great Lift gets underway. Without the benefit of oxygen masks, Sherpas carry the 500 pounds of rations and kit needed to sustain the final push to the top. They deposit their loads high on the South Col and immediately make the arduous journey back down. Only elite climbers will continue further up the mountain.
37:29 Speaker 02 Finally, a core team is assembled on the South Col. It is a lunar landscape up here, nothing but hard ice and strewn rock. Hunt decides on the two men who will make the first attempt at the summit. Thomas Bodilian is an expert rock climber. Charles Evans is a brain surgeon with experience of the Himalayas. On the 26th of May, 1953, the two men tie on their oxygen tanks with string secured by climbers' knots. Their primary aim is to reach the base of the peak, known now as the South Summit.
38:05 Speaker 03 When you're on the South Col and you look up, you see what you think is the summit of Everest. And when the first attempt was made in 1953 by Charles Evans and Tom Bodillet, they climbed high up this southeast ridge towards the summit and then got to this point, the South Summit.
38:27 Speaker 03 Down on the south coal, these Sherpas rushed into John Hunt's tent and said they've made it, they've got to the top of Everest. But in fact, what nobody really realised at this point was that Everest had two summits. There was a lower summit, which was about 200 feet from the true summit.
38:51 Speaker 02 At 1pm on May the 26th, Badilan and Evans reached the false summit. Evans is exhausted, and their oxygen supply is low. After some debate, they turn back and start the three-hour descent. Years later, Badilan will say it is a decision he always regrets.
39:13 Speaker 02 Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay are waiting in the camp when the weary pair appear on the ridge. But even the descent is a painstaking process. Every hundred yards, they sit and rest. Hillary walks up to meet them and help carry their packs. Eleven hours after they set out, Badilan and Evans reach the tents on the south coal.
39:37 Speaker 02 Tenzing carefully washes away icicles that hang from their eyebrows and moustaches, and feeds the exhausted men with tea and broth. Over the howling wind, they explain their findings to Hunt. There is a last obstacle that stands between climber and summit. A vertical rock face that might prove insurmountable. "It is too high," they say, "too steep, too exposed."
40:03 Speaker 02 Hunt, however, hasn't come all this way just to give up. The team wait for a break in the weather to try again. But at this altitude, the wind comes directly from the jet stream. They are camping higher than passenger jets at that time can fly. Three days later, on May the 29th, there's an opportunity. And this time, it's Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay who set out.
40:39 Speaker 02 The yellow of the sunrise makes the swirling snow look like a dust storm. But it is a trick of the light. The atmosphere remains painfully cold. Hillary wears a dark blue jacket and a leather cap with ear flaps. Tenzing sports a puffy camel-coloured coat and a cream woolen hat. Both have lace-up boots with crampons and goggle-style sunglasses. Plus, of course, oxygen masks.
41:08 Speaker 02 They set off with high energy. Their footsteps quick but careful over rock and ice.
41:15 Speaker 02 Tenzing and Hillary reach the south summit by 9am. From here, their first challenge is to cross a 300-foot ice cornice that seems to hang in the air. Mindful of the sheer drops on either side that would be terrifying even without the high winds, they inch across on hands and knees.
41:36 Speaker 02 After that, the final obstacle still remains: A sheer rock face about 40 feet high. With no ropes to prevent a fall, the only way up is to scale the outcrop in a method known to climbers as chimneying. Hillary goes first.
41:55 Speaker 03 There was a crack in the middle of this feature, and he wiggled his way up with his kind of back against one side of the crack, his hands on the other. He knew that if he pushed too hard, one half of this, what you call an ice chimney, potentially could break off. And if it broke off, he'd be hurled down thousands of feet below. Very dangerous, very risky thing to do. But Hillary had this idea that on Everest you had to take more risks. He cranked the oxygen up, gave himself a bit of a boost, and had a go. If he didn't do that, there was no way of getting around it. So he would be the latest team that almost got to the top. So he literally jammed himself in. At some points it was narrow, or other points it was a little bit wider, and kind of hauled his way up.
42:39 Speaker 03 And then, Tenzing, with the benefit of the rope, was able to get up a little bit more quickly. And they still hadn't reached the summit, but you've still got to slog over what at the time seemed like an endless succession of rises and falls and bumps. They're getting closer and closer. And they're both thinking, "When is this going to end? When is it going to stop?"
43:04 Speaker 02 The Rocky Outcrop, a final challenge thrown into their path by Everest, will become known to future climbers as the Hillary Step. Beyond it lies the summit.
43:18 Speaker 02 Hillary makes the final steps and Tenzing joins him a moment later. The two men stand side by side under an intense blue sky on the top of the world. The horizon is bent by the curvature of the earth.
43:33 Speaker 02 Below them, even the tallest mountains look tiny. Hillary gets his camera and starts taking photographs, but Tenzing is overcome and grabs his climbing buddy in a tight hug.
43:47 Speaker 03 Hillary got to the top. He tried to see if there were any signs that Malu and Irving had got there. Couldn't see anything. Then he started photographing all the mountains around. He wanted to bring back visual evidence that they'd been to the summit. And then he looked at another mountain called Makalu, thinking, "Well, I want to climb that next." Tenzing, I think, found it a much more spiritual experience. Hillary brought a small cross that had been given to him by John Hunt, and he buried that in the snow. But Tenzing's offerings were much more personal. I think some sweets, maybe a pencil given to him by his daughter. Very simple, kind of Buddhist offerings. And he looked around and I think that he said later on, he kind of sees his whole life around him,
44:30 Speaker 03 the village in Tibet where he'd been born. He's looking around at his land. I think it was a very moving experience for him.
44:39 Speaker 02 Tenzing raises the flags of Great Britain, Nepal, India, and the United Nations, leaving them to flutter in the wind.
44:48 Speaker 02 Hillary takes a photo of his partner, but doesn't get one of himself.
44:53 Speaker 02 The men allow themselves a handful of sweets as they enjoy the view, and then they start their descent.
45:01 Speaker 02 They spend no more than 15 minutes on the summit of Everest.
45:07 Speaker 02 A few days later, on June 2, 1953, over 4,000 miles from Everest, a national party is underway in Great Britain for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. News travels slowly from Nepal, but it's on this festive morning that the world learns how two men have reached its highest summit. Tenzing and Hillary are still making their arduous descent as the British newspapers link the two significant events into a heady story of post-war optimism. “Crowning glory, Everest conquered,” shouts the front page of The Daily Mail.
45:47 Speaker 02 But though it prints a photograph of the New Zealander Edmund Hillary, there is no picture of the Nepali Tenzing Norgay.
45:55 Speaker 02 Back in the Himalayas, as the Everest climbers trek towards Darjeeling, festooned with flower garlands, they are besieged by journalists. While some are in a celebratory mood though, others are furious.
46:09 Speaker 03 A lot of people, both in Nepal and India, who see a sort of post-colonial moment here and this dispute develops over who actually got to the top first. And the claim is that Tenzing got to the top first and that he's the true hero of the day. And both Hillary and Tenzing thought this was absurd because they were climbing as a team and it wasn't that relevant who'd actually set foot on the summit first. But a very sort of bitter, nasty dispute comes out. But equally on the other hand, there were some other strange things that happened that Hunt and Hillary were awarded nightwoods. But Tenzing didn't get an item. Now the politics is very complicated because there was an argument that the reason why they didn't give him one was because Indian law wouldn't allow him to get a nightwood.
46:54 Speaker 03 It was written into the constitution that you couldn't take on a foreign title. But equally, it just got to the top of Everest. So would anybody in India have objected if he'd been made Sir Tenzing Norgay? I doubt it very much.
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48:14 Speaker 02 After Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary enjoys an illustrious career as an adventurer and an ambassador. His portrait features on New Zealand's $5 note. Sir John Hunt returns to the Army, where he becomes commander of the Training College at Sandhurst and the first director of the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme. Fame is less straightforward for Tenzing. A modest man, he is sometimes uncomfortable with the political and social fallout of his success. An airport and a peak in Nepal are named after him, as well as an entire mountain range on Pluto. At times, the adulation gets out of control.
48:57 Speaker 02 A legend circulates in the local press that he is blessed with three lungs. Tenzing and Hillary make a pact, never to say who first set foot on the summit. It holds for years, until Tenzing reveals in his autobiography, called Tiger of the Snows, that it was Hillary. For his part, Hillary reveals that he and Tenzing felt, in 1953, that no one else would ever attempt to climb Everest. They couldn't have been more wrong.
49:31 Speaker 02 The mountain becomes the ultimate prize for thrill seekers, and a lucrative adventure business is born. In 2019, the busiest year on Everest sees a thousand people make the ascent during the climbing season. The slopes are so crowded that some unlucky walkers succumb to altitude sickness or run out of oxygen while waiting in queues at choke points. The most deadly year comes in 2015, when 22 people are killed during the massive earthquake that devastates Nepal and breaks up the famous Hillary Step.
50:06 Speaker 02 For those hoping to prove their physical prowess by conquering a mountain, it is hard to surpass the Sherpa guides who accompany foreigners on every climb. A Nepali named Khanirita even reaches the summit a record 24 times. In the busiest year of 2019, he goes twice in three days. But the peak of mountain climbing achievements will always be synonymous with the names of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary. These pioneers lived by the New Zealanders motto: "Aim high. There is little virtue in an easy victory."
50:48 Speaker 02 Next week on Short History of, we'll bring you a short history of Cleopatra.
50:57 Speaker 05 We don't know if she was beautiful or not. We do know, if we look at the evidence, that she was clear sighted. She achieved a lot. She was unlucky. Julius Caesar was assassinated. If Julius Caesar hadn't been assassinated, what would have happened? If Mark Antony and Cleopatra had won the Battle of Actium, what would have happened? She almost got it. She almost was able to do everything she wanted to. And she certainly gave it her best shot. So I think we should respect her as an intelligent woman and not as some sort of ancient world bimbo, because that just seems to be so wrong.
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