Well, now, the Himalay as...
Well, we introduce to you this morning
Ed Hillary, a very interesting personality in the alpine world.
Good morning, Ed. EDMUND HILLARY: Good morning.
How many attempts have been made on Everest altogether?
Well, there have been at least 10.
Well, why have the others failed?
A combination of circumstances which hasn't been right.
Well, do you think it's possible to climb Everest?
Yes, I definitely think it's possible to climb it
and, well, I'm sure it will be done some day.
It's only 60 years ago, but it was a completely different world,
and the idea that you would be the first man
to stand on the highest point on earth
is a quest, a romantic quest,
There was a real race on for the world's highest peak,
And it wasn't just Britain,
There were other nations in the queue,
This really was Britain's last chance to grab this great prize,
Nobody knew if someone could survive at 29,000 feet,
Like the guys going into space, you know, you 're breaking frontiers,
There is a physiologic limit of what human beings can take,
I'm sure they didn't want to die,
but you 're taking risks in which death is one of the outcomes,
You are going into the unknown,
Could it be done?
Back in 1953, it was a great big question mark,
EDMUND HILLARY: I think it's all really a matter of challenge,
Not so much challenge only with the mountain,
but challenge with oneself,
seeing if you can force yourself to overcome your fears
and hopefully, ultimately, get to the top,
Members of the British Everest expedition
have begun assembling on the Subcontinent
where deputy leader Major Wylie
is looking forw ard to the adventure to come.
We are very pleased that the first stage
of our journey to Mount Everest is over.
We are now off tow ards the hills.
If we get some fine weather tow ards the end of May
just before the monsoon arrives
we should have a chance of getting to the top.
The first time I joined up with the expedition
was at the British Embassy in Kathmandu,
We had 13 Western members of the expedition,
John Hunt, a senior army officer, was expedition leader,
I'd really never heard of John Hunt before
and the first time I met him was in Kathmandu,
I was very keen to have people I knew already
so I had big question marks about Ed,
I can only say that from the moment I met Ed
I knew that here was somebody who would be a dominating influence,
He was a tower of strength,
Mr Hillary, as a matter of interest,
how long have you been climbing?
EDMUND HILLARY: Well, I've been climbing, I suppose,
for altogether about 10 years.
And how many trips have you done out of New Z ealand climbing?
I have already had a couple of expeditions to the Himalay a.
You were quite strictly brought up, weren't you?
EDMUND HILLARY: I was brought up during the Depression
and my family was pretty short on cash during that period,
I was just a rough old country boy, as it were,
A beekeeper, A beekeeper,
lused to wander around our farm dreaming about great adventures
and climbing mountains and all that sort of thing,
INTERVIEWER: What a contrast between
beekeeping on the one hand and climbing mountains,
EDMUND HILLARY: Oh, not really,
In the beekeeping, I was constantly
lugging around 80-pound boxes of honey,
And my brother was also doing beekeeping, and we competed,
And I think the sense of competition
carried on to my mountaineering activities,
Well, the party were first all together as a team in Kathmandu,
Before us we had 17 days of marches to Tengboche,
which is where we were going to place our first base camp,
We had to cross a succession
of high ridges and deep valleys,
We could really get gradually fit
and - most important - get to know each other as a team,
Everything had been calculated to the last detail -
7,5 tons of material,
443 packages, all numbered,
and the contents of each listed down to the last matchbox or needle,
EDMUND HILLARY: It is a team expedition
and it's very much in the form of a pyramid of effort,
13 Western members of the expedition,
30 permanent high-altitude Sherpas,
These are men who will be carrying loads for us to great altitudes,
Some 600 Nepalese porters
carried loads across country into our climbing regions,
Because there had been no less
than seven British attempts on the mountain,
we felt that by right, the mountain should be climbed by Britain
and by extension the British Commonwealth,
The Swiss so nearly got to the summit in 1952,
The Americans were waiting in the wings,
And so there was huge pressure on John Hunt
with this colossal expectation that this quest had to succeed,
Mr Hillary, how many New Z ealanders
are in this year's expedition?
EDMUND HILLARY: Well, only two of us. There's George Lowe and myself.
George Lowe and my father were great friends,
They had climbed extensively in the Southern Alps of New Zealand,
They were very good climbers together
and had a tremendous rapport,
We had 18 days of trekking
and during that period of getting to know one another
there was always a little bit of a funny edge
towards the New Zealanders,
Both Ed and I had been to ordinary high schools,
They, of course, the greater number of them,
had been to public schools,
We did come from a different background, there was no doubt,
HUNT: Kathmandu is only about
4,000 feet above sea level,
The foot of Everest is about 18,000,
Our 17 days approach march
was an essential part of my policy
of acclimatisation,
The whole thing is a race against time,
There was a constant fear that the monsoon would come,
So that's why John Hunt said,
"We want to be in a position to climb Everest on May 15,"
The later in May, the more likely that the monsoon would arrive,
It's always a race against time,
EDMUND HILLARY: As we got steadily higher, our excitement increased
and more and more great peaks were coming into view,
And over it all towered the summit pyramid of Everest
only 20 miles away,
but still 20,000 feet above us,
Mr Hillary, you started climbing in New Z ealand, didn't you?
EDMUND HILLARY: Oh, yes, I started in New Z ealand.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: And there's Mount Cook, the 'Cloud Piercer',
reaching majestically skyw ard for over 12,000 feet.
EDMUND HILLARY: A friend and I decided
to have a short trip to Mount Cook,
The closer we got, the more impressed I was with the magnificent mountains,
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: Those jagged peaks there
provide the real alpinist with some of the best climbing outside Europe.
EDMUND HILLARY: That night, inside the Hermitage where I was staying,
two young men came in,
I heard the whisper go around - "They have just climbed Mount Cook,"
These chaps were really living,
I felt, "What a hopeless life I lead,
"no great adventures, nothing particularly exciting,"
And that's when I decided that I was going to take up mountaineering,
HUNT: Well, after 17 days
our caravans arrived at the Monastery of Tengboche at over 12,000 feet,
PETER HILLARY: Once they got up to Tengboche Monastery
it's getting pretty cold,
The low-country porters largely only had cotton clothes
so they get paid off and they return to their villages
and Sherpa porters take over,
The Sherpas who stay on the expedition
might have had previous experience of climbing,
although not many did,
Tenzing was an exception to that
in that he did have quite a lot of experience,
In fact, he really had more experience
at climbing on Mount Everest than anyone else,
Without the Sherpas you can't climb Everest
and my father was the head man,
People respected him,
They knew that he had been climbing Everest with foreigners since 1935,
You know, he'd been up six times already,
EDMUND HILLARY: I knew Tenzing by repute,
You know, he'd done a lot of mountaineering
and I knew he was very highly regarded,
But I wasn't able really to communicate well with him,
His English was very limited and my Nepali was very limited,
He had a flashing smile, absolutely charming smile,
It was impossible not to like him,
In the next fortnight, we had a period of training
and testing ourselves and our equipment at altitudes,
Well, in 1953, getting to the summit of Everest
in terms of physiologic capability was a big unknown,
It was like sending somebody into space,
They knew from altitude experiments in chambers
that altitude can make you seize
and one of the ideas was that people would haemorrhage in their brains
because their blood vessels would be so dilated,
There were lots of reasons to think that there might be a stroke,
Nobody knew whether or not it could really be done,
When Ed was heading up the mountain in 1953,
13 people had already died on the mountain
and I think that for anyone who would be climbing at that time
it would be something of a daunting statistic -
13 deaths and zero summits at that point,
HUNT: Now, about six miles up from Tengboche
looking north is the Khumbu Glacier
where we were to place our main base camp
for the attack on the mountain,
This icefall was to be our next great obstacle
and I sent a party to explore it,
Ed Hillary led this first party,
EDMUND HILLARY: The Western Cwm is guarded by a great icefall,,,
,,a tumbled mass of ice dropping 2,500 feet to the Khumbu Glacier,
We first had to discover whether it
was possible to ascend this icefall,
The icefall was a constant hazard
and we had no alternative but to make a route through country
which we knew to be unjustifiable in the ordinary alpine climb,
It's like a waterfall that's come off and has frozen,
The weight of the glacier above them is shoving,
It's all a jumble of ice,
It is unstable objective danger
that you have no control over,
Crazy! My God, You 're dumb to be going up a route like that,
But you just can't go any other way but through the icefall,
In '52, the Swiss went up the icefall
and said, "It's a thing that's always on the move,"
And it's a dangerous place for that reason,
More people are killed in the icefall than anywhere else on Everest,
It's immense, It's 2,500 feet high,
And we had to go up the middle of it,
Ed Hillary, George Lowe, Mike Westmacott and myself
were the four of us chosen to make the first route through
in a week or five days if we could,,,
,,and then of course to make it safe
by a lot of step-cutting, a lot of fixed ropes
so that eventually it would be possible
for loaded porters to carry the stores safely through it,
WESTMACOTT: The icefall was a dangerous place
because things did collapse without warning
and if you were in the way, it was a thoroughly bad thing,
BAND: You had these great towers of ice
and great lumps and strips the size of a row of cottages
that could slump down at any moment,
We gave names to the more dangerous parts,
There was Mike's Horror, Hillary's Horror,
an area called the Nutcracker, the Atom Bomb area,
WESTMACOTT: There are certain,,,
,,what climbers call objective dangers
which basically you can't do much about,
There's also a risk of falling into a crevasse,
BAND: We had these light aluminium ladders about six feet long
which we could bolt together across the crevasses,
And there were so many crevasses
that we soon ran out of all the ladders we had,
So we had to send down to where the nearest trees grew,
which would be about three days' walk away,
to cut small tree trunks to make little log bridges,
And you balanced as well as you could,
For us, it was clearly going to be the only way to climb Everest,
CONEFRE Y: Ed Hillary wanted to please,
He wanted to be on the summit team,
He would've known that only a few people
would get a chance to go for the summit
so from very early on he wanted to impress John Hunt
and he felt there was time pressure on him
to recce the icefall to get it prepared,
PETER HILLARY: My father was never afraid of hard work,
but part of that was to cover I think what Dad felt
were a lot of psychological or emotional inadequacies,
He had been raised with high expectations
and they sent him off to Auckland Grammar School
two years too young,
EDMUND HILLARY: I was only 11 years old
and I was rather terrified, really,
When lunchtime came,
I would go out the back of the school
and there were a whole lot of ants living there,
When I first went to Auckland Grammar,
the only friends I really had were the ants,
I was a dreamer until I started climbing,
HUNT: The icefall was really chaotic
and yet they forced a way
and Ed's job of route finding was a particularly good show,
BAND: The New Zealanders
had a lot more snow and ice climbing experience
than the average European climber
because their mountains are very like the Himalayas in miniature,
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: The Southern Alps -
the great mountain tangle which sprawls northw ards
in an almost unbroken chain of rock and ice.
Well, Ed, how do the Southern Alps
compare with the Swiss Alps?
That's where the English climbers get their training.
EDMUND HILLARY: Here in New Z ealand, with our terrific glaciation,
a greater amount of our climbing is done on snow and ice -
in many w ays very similar to the Himalay a.
They're rather different from the Swiss Alps
where the predominant feature for climbing is rock.
Mount Aspiring, New Zealand's Matterhorn -
a shark's tooth of a mountain whose dangerous slopes
demand skill and careful climbing.
EDMUND HILLARY: Our New Z ealand mountains
are really a wonderful training ground for the Himalay a.
VENABLES: Kiwis have that tough resilience
so I think that the younger British climbers
were somewhat in awe
of these formidable Kiwis brought in to reinforce the team,
HUNT: Now, the next big doubt
was regarding the lip of the coomb itself
at the very top of the icefall,
You see, there was an enormous, gaping crevasse,
Could we get into the coomb?
PETER HILLARY: The decision on who would be going
all the way to the top
was very much the leader's prerogative,
John Hunt would evaluate the team
throughout the course of the expedition,
So there was a fair amount of
sort of posturing and positioning going on
as people tried to put themselves in the best light
for that sort of opportunity,
BAND: I think amongst the British
there wasn't any particular jockeying for position,
but I think our two New Zealanders, Hillary and Lowe,
were perhaps rather more straightforward
in wanting to get as high as possible,
They were the sort of colonials that would make good
and we were perhaps a little bit more inhibited -
the public school type that wouldn't push our way forward
unless Hunt had said, "Look, you 're the chap to do it,"
EDMUND HILLARY: I'd always hoped that George Lowe and I
would be the final summit pair,
but there was no time that John Hunt, our leader,
wanted to have two New Zealanders stand on top of Mount Everest,
So I had to look around and find someone
who was as fit as I was and who could do a good job,
Tenzing was that person,
Nobody alive had more experience of Everest,
He really understood the value of it
and how it could change his life,
Tenzing had been very, very poor,
He had struggled,
He wanted his children to go to good schools,
He wanted more for them than he'd had,
Tenzing understood what climbing Everest meant,
My father was a bit of an anomaly as far as a Sherpa goes
because he always wanted to climb Everest,
That's very unusual for a poor kid from Tibet,
So unlike many other Sherpas who actually climb just to make a living,
he was a mountaineer at heart,
His drive was to go to the top just like Ed Hillary,
HUNT: As we walked on into the coomb, the crevasses grew fewer
and we realised that the coomb itself was open to us,
HUNT: We are now established at Base Camp
and the first problem is to get our supplies
up to Camp 4 high up in the Western Cwm,
Owing to the climbing difficulties in the icefall,
laden porters require three days to reach Camp 4,
CONEFREY: There was this idea in those days
of laying siege to a mountain,
This meant you would do it in a very systematic way -
you would set up a camp and you would set up another camp
and get higher and higher,
VENABLES: You build up this pyramid of camps
to get enough tents, food, cooking fuel, oxygen -
to get enough of those supplies where you can rest
before going up to the next stage,
And to do that, people have got to go up and down the mountain,
Ideally, people go up to a camp and then go back down again
'cause if everyone goes up to a camp and then stays there
they then consume all the food they've carried up,
CONEFRE Y: People tried to come up with solutions
which would help the team to get to the top,
people from around the world
sending in madcap suggestions on inventions,
Somebody had an ingenious device
which was a type of harpoon
with an incendiary device on the end of it,
The idea was that it would burn its way into the ice
and give a secure holding
so people could haul themselves up,
Most of them were completely crazy ideas,
My method involves the use of a hand cable
laid in adv ance by aircraft...
With my relay warmth
personal heating apparatus,
air could be passed through a heating chamber
and pumped via rubber tube
to the hands, feet and head...
May I mention a Wonder Gun
for driving steel bolts into concrete...
I suggest that a woollen suit
be wired in much the same w ay
as an electric blanket...
It should be possible
to ascend the mountain using a large helium-filled balloon.
A significant amount of helium would be required.
Nearly all of the technological innovations
that were used on the 1953 expedition
arose from things developed by the military
during the Second World War,
They tested the windproof equipment they were going to be wearing
in the wind tunnel at Farnborough Aircraft Factory,
30 different firms, UK firms,
were involved in designing the boots alone,
The ascent of Everest in '53 had become a question of national pride,
When World War II ended, Britain was completely bankrupt
and because of the austerity, the postwar austerity in Britain,
the really awful days that had past,,,
,,it was the last great colonial project,
the last hurrah of the British Empire,
PETER HILLARY: My father and Tenzing
kept volunteering to help in different situations
to demonstrate their competency as being one of the summit teams,
Dad could see that there were a whole lot of reasons
why this could be a great combination for success,
They were very at home in this alpine environment,
They were hungry, They wanted the top,
CONEFRE Y: There's a point where they were partnered together
and they were racing down the Khumbu Icefall,
trying to prove that they could do it quickly,
But as a sort of product of his over-exuberance, really,
he's racing through it and something goes wrong,
EDMUND HILLARY: Tenzing and I headed back down to Base Camp,
When we were about halfway down the icefall
we came to one of the crevasses,
On one side of it there was a great chunk of ice
and we had used this as a stepping stone
to reach the other side,
CONEFRE Y: It was slightly ironic
that it was Ed Hillary, who was such a good climber,
that it should happen to him,
EDMUND HILLARY: People have often said to me,
"You must've been very thankful,
"Tenzing having saved your life like that,"
but I don't think I was,
You know, I'd have been very annoyed if he hadn't saved my life,
HUNT: Camp 4 has now been established
and we have successfully carried
the three tons of supplies up here,
VENABLES: You don't conquer a mountain,
If you 're lucky enough,
the mountain gives you a chance to stand on the top,
You 're trying to overcome your own weaknesses,
CONEFRE Y: Ed Hillary, he was so kind of gung-ho
and he always wanted to be out front,
he always wanted to be in the lead,
He wasn't brash, He was a quieter, sort of more reserved, character,
PETER HILLARY: Dad was quite a complicated person,
I think my father had quite a few demons
born out of being a perfectionist,
but also the sense of inferiority - nothing is ever quite good enough,
I think it came out of a very complicated family background,
EDMUND HILLARY: My father really wasn't very interested
in adventurous activities,
He was a man of very strong beliefs,
The climbing of mountains he probably regarded as a bit of a waste of time,
I fought with my father,
And I would usually end up being taken over to the woodshed
and being given a good thumping,
I'm rather proud of the fact
that I never actually admitted I was wrong,,,
,,even if I had been,
WESTMACOTT: Well, of course it was of tremendous interest to all of us
who would be chosen for the final push,
VENABLES: In those days, the leader's word was absolute,,,
,,particularly for men who had all been in the armed forces,
Hunt had to make the decision,
He would say who were going to be the lucky ones
who were going to have a crack at the summit,
It was at our Base Camp
and John Hunt got everybody round
and outlined his plans for the rest of the expedition,
The crucial thing, of course, was the attempts for the summit,
VENABLES: At that meeting,
that extraordinary meeting with this team
totally isolated from the rest of the world,
thousands of miles from home,,,
,,those men, each thinking, "Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful
"if I was one of the lucky ones,"
BAND: You 're all chosen as basic climbers to go to the top,
but there are all these other jobs to be done as well,
PETER HILLARY: My father was absolutely determined
that he was going to have an opportunity to climb this mountain,
NORBU TENZING: One of the conditions
for my father to go with the English team
was that he'd have a chance to go to the top,
There was no other climber quite as accomplished,
WESTMACOTT: All of us would have liked to have a crack at the top,
but the first attempt on the summit
was to be made by Tom Bourdillon with Charles Evans,,,
,,and, "If needed, the second attempt," he said,
"is going to be made by Ed Hillary and Tenzing,"
PETER HILLARY: I'm sure my father
would have loved to have been in the first team,
Tenzing was probably quite conflicted by it,
HUNT: The next stage, and the really crucial one,
is up the Lhotse Face to the South Col,
VENABLES: John Hunt said, "OK, Tom Bourdillon with Charles Evans,
"We'll send the two of them up first,
"They can do a huge leap from the South Col
"right to the summit in a day,"
HUNT: The first major task in this plan fell to George Lowe,
He was to make a route up the Lhotse Face and prepare the way
for the high-carrying parties to reach the col,
This was to be finished by 15 May,
CONEFRE Y: Basically what he said was,
"We want to be in a position to climb Everest on May 15,"
because there was a constant fear in the back of Hunt's mind that
“The monsoon would come and end all our hopes,"
But they had to get up this thing called the Lhotse Face,
EDMUND HILLARY: This is a vast 4,000-foot snow-and-ice face
leading up steeply to the South Col at 26,000 feet,
George Lowe, my fellow New Zealander, spent much time and energy
bashing a route up this difficult problem,
LOWE: Well, the work on the face was very difficult
and made more difficult and atrocious
by the weather and daily falls of snow which covered the tracks,
I shared my high perch for a long time with Ang Nyima,
a splendid little Sherpa,
WESTMACOTT: George Lowe worked on the Lhotse Face
without oxygen for over a week up to about 24,500 feet,
LOWE: The cold was terrific and the wind was bad
and all the time I was hoping to get the traverse complete
and the route right through to the South Col,
But I was thrashed by the weather and the altitude was affecting me,
We didn't seem to be able to make the last 1,000 feet to the col,
CONEFRE Y: John Hunt's big mistake
was that he underestimated the Lhotse Face,
It's just so big,
He didn't give enough support to George Lowe,
LOWE: It really was myself and Ang Nyima,
Whenever they did send up support,
within 24 hours, they were not able to carry on,
HACKETT: Being at high altitude,
you never feel very well,
Each breath of air we take in at high altitude
has fewer oxygen molecules
so we need more breaths in order to get the same amount of oxygen,
WHITTAKER: Put a pillow over your mouth
and try and breath through it as you 're running,
You just suck in air, you 're trying to get enough air
and the oxygen debt builds up until you just can't go any,,,
You have to stop,
Take three, four breaths to a step,
five breaths to a step, six breaths to a step,
15 breaths to a step,
You 're just not getting the air,
LOWE: Up there, your mind somehow gradually accepts slowness,
I thought I was going extremely well,
but in fact we were staggering about like men in a dream,
HUNT: We had spent 10 days on the Lhotse Face -
considerably more than I'd reckoned on -
but we had still not broken through to the South Col,
The time factor was becoming critical,
BAND: Watching the progress on the Lhotse Face,
there was no doubt that the momentum of the attack
seemed to be winding down,
and the first inklings of the monsoon
were building up in the Bay of Bengal,
VENABLES: It was a very, very critical time,
You could imagine Hunt
feeling that this whole great enterprise was just unravelling
and, "If we don't get a grip on this thing soon
"we're going to lose our chance,
"The monsoon will arrive
"and we won't even have reached the South Col, let alone the summit,"
This is London calling the British Mount Everest expedition.
Here is the latest weather bulletin.
Western disturbance apparently moving eastw ards
across the extreme north of Nepal
is likely to cause cloudy to overcast skies
with occasional thunderstorms...
CONEFRE Y: The later in May it was,
the more likely that the monsoon would arrive,
When the monsoon comes,
you get huge dumps of snow and they make climbing much more difficult,
You don't want to be climbing through large amounts of soft snow,
wading your way through it,
The British expeditions of the 1930s had all failed
because the monsoon had come early,
And so all of this was piling on the pressure, you know?
BAND: So even though the route
hadn't actually been made all the way to the South Col
John Hunt had to make a sort of crucial decision
to start sending up the team of 14 Sherpas
to carry all the stores we needed,
HUNT: Nothing must endanger the getting of our stores to the col
in time for our attempts on the summit,
EDMUND HILLARY: On 21 May, Tenzing and myself
led a band of 14 high-altitude Sherpas up the Lhotse Face,
13 Sherpas struggled up to the col that day, without oxygen,
The 14th only just failed to make it, and his load was carried on,
We were proud of them, and grateful,
It was a 10,5-hour day,
They carried 30 pounds each, and their only nourishment
was a single cup of tea apiece for breakfast,
BAND: And so we were able to equip the camp properly
with tents, sleeping bags, oxygen equipment and food,
and that was one of the biggest achievements,
EDMUND HILLARY: The South Col is probably
the most barren spot in the world,
The continual strong wind
is always blowing over the dreary waste of rock and ice,
Adding an air of desolation
are the remnants of the Swiss tents of the previous year,
with pieces of tattered cloth still clinging to them,
NORBU TENZING: 1952, the Swiss had invited my father to climb Everest,
and he had been up where no human had been before,
but bad weather turned them back,
LOWE: I remember André Roch, of the Swiss party, said,
"On the col there's a smell of death,"
We thought that was Continental dramatics,
but when we'd been there, we understood,
WHITTAKER: I'm telling you, the cold,
you can feel it coming up the extremities,
You know you 're gonna freeze your hands and toes,
and you just feel the cold creeping up,
It's a race between the body and what you hope you can do,
You know that you 're dying a little bit up there,
EDMUND HILLARY: A major step had been achieved,
and we then returned once more to the Western Cwm,
Without wasting any time, we brought into action our assault plan,
CONEFRE Y: Hunt wanted to have two attempts on the summit,
but he realised that he couldn't have two attempts
which were using open-circuit oxygen sets,
WESTMACOTT: In the open-circuit,
when you breathe out, the expired air goes to the atmosphere,
and when you breathe in,
the atmospheric air comes with an addition of a puff of oxygen
from your oxygen set,
CONEFRE Y: The thing about open-circuit oxygen sets
is that they use a lot of oxygen,
so he would have to get an awful lot of oxygen
up onto the South Col and to the Southeast Ridge,
so he sort of thought,
"Well, no, we're not gonna be able to do this,"
But there was an alternative form of oxygen set,
which was called a closed circuit,
WESTMACOTT: The closed-circuit, when you breathe out
the carbon dioxide goes through a canister
of something called soda lime, which extracts the carbon dioxide
and gives you back the oxygen into the set,
and you 're completely insulated from the outside air,
Now, if it works, the closed system can be more efficient
than the open-circuit system,
CONEFRE Y: The people who are using the closed-circuit set
can start from lower down,
But the thing about a closed-circuit set
was that the only person who really knew how to use them
was the person who had designed them, Tom Bourdillon,
WESTMACOTT: And the first attempt on the summit,
using the closed-circuit oxygen,
was to be made by Tom Bourdillon with Charles Evans,
John Hunt went ahead to the South Col in support,
PETER HILLARY: Evans and Bourdillon left Advanced Base
down in the Western Cwm
and climbed up the South Col to camp,
WESTMACOTT: Tom and Charles were to go all the way
from the South Col to the top,
I thought at the time they had a chance,
but it was a hell of a long way,
PETER HILLARY: If Bourdillon and Evans reach the summit,
John Hunt might go, "Job done,
"We're all going home, Everyone's safe,"
But the weather closed in and everyone got stuck for two days,
including Bourdillon and Evans on the South Col,
My father and Tenzing left Advanced Base
down on the Western Cwm
to come up to the South Col to be the second summit team,
EDMUND HILLARY: Well, we left Base Camp in the Western Cwm,
There was our support party -
George Lowe, Alf Gregory and several Sherpas,
And then Tenzing and myself, who were the actual assault party,
with the open-circuit,
PETER HILLARY: As my father and Tenzing were departing from Camp 4,
Bourdillon and Evans were making their summit bid,
EDMUND HILLARY: Well, we went up the Lhotse Face
and across the long traverse that leads up to the South Col,
And we're just about up to the South Col
when we notice the support party,
George started shouting and jumping around,
And we looked up and we saw Evans and Bourdillon
going up the tiny little peak far above us,
onto the top of the South Summit,
I think it was somewhere around about 12:00 in the morning,
and we thought, "Ooh, they've,,, South Summit, 12:00,
"They've time to get to the top,
"They're going to climb it,"
PETER HILLARY: You know, when Bourdillon and Evans went out of sight,
there would've been very high emotions,
because these guys wanted to be up there,
EDMUND HILLARY: We crossed over and reached the South Col,
A little later in the day, we kept an eye out
for the clouds that come over the mountain,
and we were a bit worried about Evans and Bourdillon,
But, uh, I think it was about 3:30,
George once again caught sight of them
coming down the couloir from the Southeast Ridge,
down towards the South Col,
LOWE: And it was a long time
before they actually started to come down,
And when they were coming down, they were clearly very, very tired,
PETER HILLARY: When Bourdillon and Evans came down,
Dad walked out to meet them,
People tend to see it in terms of
this really good guy going out to meet them and help them back,
and there was that, absolutely,
But there was another part, which was inside, where he,,,
,,he wanted to climb this mountain,
He needed to know, "Where did they get to?"
EDMUND HILLARY: And they told us
that they'd reached the South Summit alright,
had a look at the summit ridge,
but hadn't had sufficient time or oxygen or energy to go any further,
CONEFRE Y: They were in a terrible state,
Most of the day Charles Evans had been climbing with an oxygen set
which didn't work properly,
so he'd been inhaling carbon dioxide as well as oxygen,
But I think also Tom Bourdillon was very,,,emotionally in a bad state,
because it really meant a lot to him, you know,
He had designed this oxygen set which had failed,
So they were in a bad way, physically and emotionally as well,
GREGORY: Tom Bourdillon kept saying, "We should've had a go,
"We should've gone on," you know,
"We should've gone on,"
VENABLES: Evans and Bourdillon
were very strong, very experienced climbers,
Having climbed higher than any human beings had ever been before,,,
,,having got to the South Summit
and looked across at this final, almost knife-edged ridge,
Charles Evans did say to Ed Hillary something like,
"That last ridge looks really hard, I don't know if you can do it,"
HACKETT: Above 26,000 feet is what we call the death zone,
because you are slowly dying,
It's not a place for humans,
GREGORY: John Hunt was a leader leading from the front,
And as the front now was up above the South Col,
that's why he wanted to stay,
and we realised that he really wasn't strong enough to stay,
VENABLES: It was a classic case
of someone having been too high too long,
GREGORY: He'd gone beyond the limit,
like Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans,
And he was eventually persuaded to go down with them,
They were exhausted and we were worried about them
and we dug out some oxygen to help them,
HUNT: Well, I hated to leave the col,
but after a certain amount of discussion,
I saw that I could not weaken the second party,
So I left Ed with the parting instruction not to give in,
CONEFRE Y: This was a great moment on the expedition
in which the leader sacrifices his own personal ambition,
and Ed Hillary says, "Never at any moment
"have I respected John Hunt more,"
LOWE: You know, it was touch and go,
because the monsoon comes in the first week of June,
and it was tight, on the last days of May,
CONEFRE Y: For Hillary and Tenzing to make an attempt on the summit,
they couldn't go from the South Col,
because they would have to carry too much oxygen,
So the only way was to start from higher up, then go for the summit,
EDMUND HILLARY: The following day was extremely windy and cold,
and no movement upwards was possible,
We spent the day preparing the oxygen and gear,
with the hope that the following day would prove clear and fine,
CONEFRE Y: They would use oxygen at night, flowing at a very low rate,
because it would help them sleep
and make them feel slightly warmer as well,
WHITTAKER: Night-time is a tough time,
You lay there listening to the mountain,,,
,,listening to the wind, listening to the avalanche,
Thinking, "Oh, my God," you know,
Demons come,
LOWE: The original plan was that Gregory and three Sherpas
would carry the high camp,
One Sherpa had collapsed on the col and gone down previously,
leaving us two Sherpas,
On the morning of the day we intended to do the carry,
we poked our head into the pyramid tent
and found Sherpa Pemba in a very bad condition,
It was obvious that he wouldn't carry,
and so we had the job of sharing the load,
GREGORY: First of all, early in the day
we knew that we'd have to reorganise the loads and take more,
George Lowe and I and Ang Nyima left about a quarter to nine,
LOWE: Ed and Tenzing left the South Col an hour behind us
to conserve their energy and to go faster through our steps
and so conserve their oxygen,
And we took off carrying between 50 and 60 pounds,
and Ed, I think we estimated his at 63 pounds,
which is quite an enormous load for that altitude,
The wind was very strong on the col,
We had very difficult conditions,
We moved up this ridge looking for a flat spot,
GREGORY: For a long time we couldn't find a camp site,,,
,,until at last Tenzing found one,
a nearly flat spot underneath a rocky bluff,
EDMUND HILLARY: They helped us to the highest camp
ever put up on Everest or any other mountain,
at 27,900 feet,
VENABLES: No-one had ever camped this high before,
George Lowe and Alf Gregory take a few pictures
and then shake hands and say, "Well, 'bye now, Good luck,
"We'd better be off down,"
And then there's a wonderfully poignant moment,
PETER HILLARY: Ang Nyima is very tired, he should go down,
But he said to Dad that he wanted to stay
so he could make some tea when they came down, and help them,
I know Dad was very touched by that,
But eventually they start back down again,
VENABLES: Leaving Hillary and Tenzing completely alone,
EDMUND HILLARY: It was with certain feelings of sorrow
that we saw George and Greg and Sherpa Ang Nyima
descending down the mountain, leaving us up there all alone,
We'd have much preferred to have a bit of company for the night,
However, they had to get down - our oxygen was running short,
PETER HILLARY: You 're totally on your own, really out on a limb,
There's no radio contact with anyone,
You could disappear
and everyone will just wonder, "Whatever happened to them?"
I think it would've been very exciting,
very Ionely and very scary,
EDMUND HILLARY: It took us two hours of solid work to set up the tent
on two strips of ground a yard wide and 10 feet long,
CONEFRE Y: Towards the top of Everest,
you get these very, very powerful winds,
and they were very precariously attached to this slope
and all the time they're worried
they're gonna be blown off the mountain,
DOUGLAS: When the wind gets up in the evening
you 're in quite a dangerous position
because you 're pinned to the mountain,
The noise is really frightening,
CONEFRE Y: That night was the coldest ever recorded on the expedition,
HACKETT: It's such a dehydrating environment,
and there's only one way to make water,
and that is you have to melt snow or ice,
You 're breathing eight times more than you are at sea level,
You can lose more than a litre a day
just from the heavy breathing at high altitude,
In addition, the air is so dry
that it sucks the moisture right from your skin,
EDMUND HILLARY: I made myself as comfortable as possible,
half sitting and half reclining on the upper shelf,
It wasn't comfortable, but I could at least brace my feet and shoulders
to help our meagre anchors hold the tent in the gusts of wind,
VENABLES: High-altitude climbing
is all about being comfortable in uncomfortable places,
He was very good at basic day-to-day survival, as was Tenzing,
and I think that's where they really scored,
EDMUND HILLARY: Early in the night, the wind dropped,
We had some oxygen, which we used for sleeping purposes
for about four hours out of the 16 hours we spent there,
For the four hours, at least, we did doze,
but as soon as the oxygen cut out
we'd immediately wake up and start feeling cold,
CONEFRE Y: He's all the time thinking,
"I don't want to use tomorrow's oxygen,"
There's just little things go wrong,
They've lugged up an enormous black oxygen cylinder
which they planned to use for sleeping oxygen,
But, unfortunately, having lugged this bottle up,
they discovered that somebody has gone back with the adaptor for it,
so the bottle is useless,
EDMUND HILLARY: Well, I didn't have the complete conviction
that we were going to be successful,
I was very aware of the fact
that very good expeditions had attempted the mountain
and had got very high but had not succeeded,
At 6:30am we started off from our tent,
We wasted no time in preparing the oxygen apparatus and equipment,
CONEFRE Y: It's all about oxygen at this point,
Hillary is constantly thinking about this,
"How much oxygen do I need?
"What should the flow rate of the oxygen be?" You know?
"If I have it flowing at a higher rate, then I feel better,
"but I use up the bottle more quickly,"
DOUGLAS: It's very, very cold,
They measure it at below -25,
And that kind of profound, bone-chilling cold
is almost like an assault, you know?
It's just grim,
CONEFRE Y: The team physiologist had said, "When you get to high altitude,
"you 've got to climb using your oxygen sets
"at a rate of four litres per minute,
"Anything less than that, you 're not gonna get real benefit from it,"
EDMUND HILLARY: Our progress at first was pretty steady,
However, we examined the oxygen supplies
and found we couldn't go on our estimated four litres a minute
and have a chance of getting to the top,
Had to cut it down to three,
PETER HILLARY: A fairly simple calculation about the oxygen flow rate
is unbelievably difficult up there
because you 've got an addled, oxygen-deprived mind,
EDMUND HILLARY: After going for some time,
we reached the bottom of a 400-foot slope
which led up to the South Summit,
and this slope was a tremendously steep one,
We felt that this snow could easily avalanche,
DOUGLAS: There was a bit of a crust,
so you 'd think you were standing on firm ground
and then it would give way - it would be powdery underneath,
So Hillary is anxious about that,
And also fear of avalanche,
And they have this exchange,
EDMUND HILLARY: I remember turning to Tenzing and saying to him,
"Well, what do you think about it, Tenzing?"
He said he didn't like it at all,
thought it was decidedly dangerous,
Then I said, "Well, what do you think?
"Do you think we should go on?"
And he said, "Just as you like,"
We climbed up it with a good deal of fear and trepidation,
I think this is the first time I've ever had to make a decision
as to whether something was justifiable or not,
decided it wasn't justifiable, but we still went on,
DOUGLAS: You 're right on the edge of what's possible
and every step you take is putting you more into danger,
so the temptation to turn round and go down is strong,
EDMUND HILLARY: I'm frightened a great deal of the time
when I'm in dangerous country,
But I think being afraid is one of the important factors,
It's a stimulating factor,
Of course, if you just get petrified with fear,
then it would be hopeless,
PETER HILLARY: The crux of it is whether or not you 're gonna survive,
You know, none of that is guaranteed,
If anything goes wrong up there,
even a relatively minor accident
can very rapidly slide into a fatal one,
EDMUND HILLARY: It was a great relief
when we reached the South Summit at 9am,
Oxygen was running short,
so we wasted no time and set off along the ridge,
But we were moving slowly and time was against us,
PETER HILLARY: Evans and Bourdillon had gone to the South Summit
and had had reservations about the route ahead,
Evans had pointed out that there was a very difficult knife-edged ridge,
It's serrated,
it's got these just horrifying drops on both sides,
They must've had concerns about whether or not they could climb it,
VENABLES: On the left you 've got
the immense Southwest Face of Everest,
and if you fell down that,
you 'd probably fall all the way back down to the Western Cwm,
8,000 feet below,
And then to your right is the even bigger precipice
of the Kangshung Face,
and that really concentrates the mind,
EDMUND HILLARY: For the mountaineer,
the thought of the process of dying
is more unpleasant
than the actual fact that you may be dead at the end of it,
HUNT: In the meantime, watching from below down at Camp 4,
we were all waiting most anxiously,
BAND: Obviously we'd hoped to have our little walkie-talkies going
right up to at least the South Col,
but the one that was taken to the South Col didn't work,
So in fact we realised we wouldn't actually know
whether Hillary and Tenzing had been successful
until they actually came down and told us,
PETER HILLARY: No-one had any idea where they were, how they were going,
would they be successful, or, indeed, would they come back?
EDMUND HILLARY: Our oxygen equipment
was not all that sophisticated,
It only had a pressure gauge on it,
so I never really knew just how much oxygen still remained,
My brain was working fairly energetically
working out just how much time we had left,
HACKETT: One of the problems with extreme altitude climbing
is failure of oxygen systems,
And people die on a regular basis when their oxygen packs up,
DOUGLAS: And then there's a bit of a problem,
Tenzing is really struggling,
where before he was following Hillary quite nicely,
EDMUND HILLARY: I suddenly noticed
that Tenzing seemed to be in some distress,
And when I looked at him closely,
I saw that he was breathing very quickly indeed,
I immediately examined his oxygen set
and found that the outlet from his oxygen mask
was almost completely blocked up with ice,
Fortunately I was able to release this ice,
DOUGLAS: Because you 're suddenly hypoxic
and you 're not thinking straight,
you may not immediately think,
"Oh, this is because my oxygen equipment isn't working right,"
You just think, "Oh, my God, I'm incredibly tired all of a sudden,"
VENABLES: You have this strange, slightly surreal blur
of images and thoughts and ideas going through your head,
So you have to watch yourself and watch each other very closely,
EDMUND HILLARY: Well, after about an hour
we had made quite a distance along the ridge,
and then we came to a rock bluff
which barred the way along the ridge,
Now, I really thought that perhaps this was as far as we were going,
I took photographs
because the actual rock itself was very steep
and we knew that it could stop us,
PETER HILLARY: Was that step even climbable?
And was it climbable at 29,000 feet?
No-one had ever gone there before,
WHITTAKER: It's a hell of a step,
You look at that and you think, "Oh, my God, What a decision,"
But Sir Ed took the gamble and thought,
"What the hell, I'm gonna go for it,"
EDMUND HILLARY: The only way to climb it seemed to me a crack
where the ice was sticking to the rock,
and I wasn't at all sure that the ice would remain in place
when I was wriggling my way up,
I was scared stiff,
VENABLES: He just set forth up this nearly vertical step
and wedged himself in this chimney more or less with his feet,
his cramponed feet pressing against the rocks on the left
and his back pushing out against the snow on the right,
and just hoping the snow wouldn't give way
and catapult him 11,000 feet down the Kangshung Face,
Because it's doubtful whether Norgay could've held him on the rope
if he'd come off,
PETER HILLARY: Little slabs were breaking off
and Dad was not really enjoying the conditions,
You know, if he was back in the Southern Alps,
he'd probably turn around and try it another day,
And then, um, that little internal voice going,
"Ed, my boy, this is Everest,
"You 've got to go the extra distance,"
EDMUND HILLARY: By jamming back on the ice with my crampons,
or ice spikes on my boots,
and scrambling on the rock in front,
I was able to wriggle and push my way up the crack and onto the top,
After recovering my breath, I took the rope in
and, with many a heave,
and old Tenzing wriggling and scrambling the same,
got him onto the top of the rock too,
VENABLES: There are times in life, you know,
when you have to be bold and decisive,
So much hung on Hillary's ability to pull out all the stops,
and he was able to give it that little extra,
CONEFRE Y: When Hunt had to go down from the South Col
he turned to Ed and he said,
"Look, you know, this is our last chance,
"You 're carrying a lot of people's hopes on your back,"
WESTMACOTT: What would we do if they failed?
Because that was a feeling, particularly in John Hunt's mind,
I don't think anybody dared express an opinion,
EDMUND HILLARY: We continued on
and we were getting distinctly tired and rather desperate,
for the summit seemed to be continually eluding us,
VENABLES: Beyond the Hillary Step,
it's still a fair distance horizontally to the summit
and you 're going over three or four broad hummocks,
And as you get to the crest of one of these hummocks,
there's another one beyond,
and you think, "Is this ridge ever gonna end?"
DAVID SHLIM: There's just certain human beings
able to put one foot in front of the other,
you know, relentlessly, psychologically able to do it,
whereas other people would fail,
EDMUND HILLARY: We cut steps along the top, round bump after bump,
keeping looking for the top,
And finally we actually reached the summit itself,
I looked at Tenzing,
and even underneath his oxygen mask and balaclava
I could see his infectious grin of sheer pleasure,
We shook hands,
To Tenzing this was not enough,
And we thumped each other on the back
until we had no breath left,
I glanced at my watch, It was 11:30,
On top we only spent quarter of an hour,
We were conscious all the time that our oxygen was running short
and that we had no time to waste and we must get down again,
I took my oxygen off in order to take photographs,
Tenzing dug a little hole in the snow
and in that he put a gift to the gods,
Had a good look round at the view,
and also I took photographs
down all the main ridges of the mountain
just to have some proof that we'd been on top,
And photographed Tenzing waving his ice axe with four flags tied to it,
It was a tremendous moment for both of us,
♪ Only to be
♪ I live in expectancy
♪ No wonder it feels
♪ Like this wasn't meant for me
♪ But, girl, my mind is so confined
♪ That there ain't no point in reasoning
♪ Now that it's clear to see
♪ It was all in front of me
♪ And I'm right where I'm supposed to be
♪ Yeah, yeah
♪ I'm left just turning pages
♪ Mmm
♪ Yeah
♪ Well, I know that it's worth the ride
♪ Ain't it good to be alive?
♪ So what will it be?
♪ My dreams or my company
♪ To lose what is me
♪ Or follow the path I see
♪ Boy, my mind is so confined
♪ That I don't even know where to begin
♪ But it took me so long to find
♪ That I could leave it all behind
♪ 'Cause I've got everything I'd ever need
♪ Yeah, yeah
♪ I'm left just turning pages
♪ Mmm
♪ Yeah
♪ Well, I know that it's worth the ride
♪ Ain't it good to be alive?
♪ 'Cause only to be
♪ Was all that you got from me
♪ You told me it's real
♪ And nothing comes easily
♪ 'Cause that was the truth
♪ I was losing all my youth
♪ To a world that's fit for someone else
♪ Yeah
♪ I'll live just turning pages
♪ Mmm
♪ Yeah
♪ Well, I know that it's worth the ride
♪ Oh, whoa, whoa
♪ Yeah, yeah
♪ I'm left just turning pages
♪ Yeah, yeah
♪ Yeah
♪ But I know it was worth the ride
♪ Ain't it good to be alive?
♪ Alive
♪ Ain't it good to be alive?
♪ Alive, ♪