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Edmund Hillary recalls how Tenzing Norgay saved his life

May 21 2003

Everest Anniversary ... Sir Edmund Hillary. Photo: AFP

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first ascension to the summit of Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary recalled yesterday how his partner, Tenzing Norgay, saved his life just before they began the historic climb.

Sir Edmund said he didn't feel any great appreciation for Tenzing saving his life, as the New Zealand adventurer hurtled down a crevasse on a block of ice.

When Tenzing tightened the rope that bound them, enabling Sir Edmund to climb out of the sheer-walled ice chasm, Sir Edmund: "Tenzing and I were a team. I expected Tenzing to carry out the right procedures in an emergency, just as I would."

"Teamwork got Tenzing and me to the top of Everest," Sir Edmund told an audience of mountaineers and school children, as the government handed out awards to Indian sportsmen in honour of Tenzing, who was born in Nepal but was a resident of India for much of his life.

Sir Sir Edmund did not mention his claim - made in his autobiography published after Tenzing's death in 1986 - that it was he, not his Sherpa guide and teammate, who had been the first to step onto the 8850-metre summit.

That claim has caused bad blood with Tenzing's family, because during Tenzing's lifetime, neither man would say who reached the summit first, insisting that it was a team effort.

But the ill feeling was not evident today as Tenzing's son Jamling shook hands with Sir Edmund on stage and listened to the New Zealand-born adventurer's praise of his father.

"Tenzing was a strong and brave man, a man of whom your country can well be proud," said Sir Edmund, a former New Zealand high commissioner to India who stopped in New Delhi to commemorate the Everest climb.

Larger ceremonies are planned next week in Nepal, on the anniversary of the May 29, 1953 achievement.

Sir Edmund told a rapt audience about how he almost died shortly before the Everest climb as he and Tenzing headed up the dangerous icefall from base camp "just to prove how fit we were".

On the way back down from 6400 metres, the two men were trying to reach camp before dark.

Sir Edmund recalled, "We were roped together and I pounded down in the lead, when we reached another of the innumerable crevasses, very deep ... and too wide to step across."

A chunk of ice was attached to the wall of the crevasse, providing an extension point to cross. "Without too much sense, I leapt into the air and landed with both feet on the chunk of ice," said Sir Edmund. "The chunk of ice broke off and fell down into the crevasse with me on it."

Describing what seemed like an elevator ride down a tube of ice, Sir Edmund said that, as time passed, he "came to the conclusion that if Tenzing didn't tighten the rope soon", he and the chunk of ice would hit the bottom of the chasm and "smash into smithereens".

Just then, Sir Hillary said, "the rope came tight, and I swung into the ice wall. Then it was just a routine matter of cutting steps in the wall and climbing up."





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