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Mount Everest
This Week in AsiaOpinion
The Conversation

Opinion | Everest challenges mount 70 years after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached top

  • The two men were the first to scale Earth’s highest point, on May 29, 1953; mountaineering has since become increasingly popular and commercial
  • There are big implications, including determined novices putting others’ lives at risk, overcrowding and environmental degradation

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Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay on their climb to the top of Everest in May 1953. What might the men think of the overcrowding on the mountain now? Photo: Alfred Gregory, Royal Geographic Society
The Conversation
Mountains – their height, their mass, their climates and ecosystems – have fascinated humans for thousands of years. But there is one that holds extra-special meaning for many – Mount Everest, or Chomolungma as the Nepalese Sherpa people call it.
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A sacred mountain for some, for others the world’s highest peak represents a challenge and a lifelong dream. Seventy years ago, on May 29, 1953, that challenge and dream became reality for two members of a British expedition: New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to reach the 8,848-metre summit.

Their achievement was a testament to endurance and determination. It was also the crowning glory of the British expedition’s nationalistic motivations on the eve of the young Queen Elizabeth’s coronation.

From our vantage in the present, it also represents a high point, not just in climbing terms, but in what we now think of as the modern era of mountaineering. Since then, mountaineering has become massively popular and commercial, with serious implications for the cultures and environments that sustain it.

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Double amputee reaches top of Mount Everest in historic first

Double amputee reaches top of Mount Everest in historic first

Scaling the heights

The early mountaineering era began in 1786 when Jaques Balmat and Michel Paccard reached the summit of Mont Blanc, the highest peak in the European Alps at 4,808 metres. From 1854 to 1899 (known as the classic mountaineering period), advances in climbing technology saw ascending peaks by challenging routes become possible and popular.

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