Edmund Hillary |
New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist
Sir Edmund Percival Hillary KG ONZ KBE (20 July 1919 - 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand
Sir Edmund Hillary was the middle child of Percival and Gertrude's three children. He got his first experience of mountain climbing whilst at school, climbing New Zealand's Southern Alps, Mt. Ruapehu, in 1935. By the time he was 20 years old, Sir Hillary had successfully climbed his first mountain, Mt. Ollivier.
But mountain climbing isn't all what he did, Sir Hillary was a beekeeper and patron of the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre. He also established the Himalayan Trust in 1964, which helped with the construction of schools and hospitals in the Himalayas. But before we look at this, let's have a look at Sir Hillary's early life.
Sir Edmund Hillary, the Mountain Climber
In 1948, Sir Hillary climbed Mt. Cook, the highest peak in New Zealand, and then in 1949 he scaled the 4,158-metre high Jungfrau in the Swiss Alps. Two years later, he participated in New Zealand's expedition to the Garhwal Himalayas, which are some 6,000 metres high. Achieving this led to being part of Eric Shipton's British Everest Reconnaissance Expedition in 1951, and, subsequently, the British Cho Oyu expedition a year later.
In 1953, the British were given permission to scale Mt. Everest. Nepal would only allow one expedition per year on the Mount, so this was something special. John Hunt, leader of the expedition, asked Sir Hillary to join his team. Mountains are climbed in stages, with fewer and fewer people continuing to climb, the higher they get. They also have to stop for a few weeks to get used to the altitude at designated camps. When they got to the final camp, there were two teams that were going to continue onto the summit. One team consisted of Sir Hillary and a Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, and the other team was made up of Tom Bourdillan and Charles Evans.
Bourdillan and Evans tried first, but had to turn back when they reached 300 feet (ca. 91 m). Then it was Sir Hillary and Norgay's turn to try. Despite a huge rock wall, known as "Hillary's Step" they made it to the top of the world and stayed there for around 15 minutes before climbing down.
After his success scaling Mt. Everest, he married Louise Mary Rose, his first wife, on 3rd September 1953. Incredibly, after all that he had achieved, he was too scared to ask her to marry him, and got his mother to ask her, on his behalf, instead. They went on to have three children: Peter, who was born in 1954, Sarah, who was born two years later, and then Belinda, who was born in 1959.
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