Conquest of Everest

Famed Alpinist George Mallory was once asked: "Why do you climb this mountain?" His answer has been the climbers' answer ever since: "Because it's there."

The message that flashed from the foot of Everest on coronation-eve sounded heartbroken: "BAD SNOW CONDITIONS.

EXPEDITION ABANDONED BASE CAMP

TWENTYNINTH . . ." But the cable was a ruse, coded to prevent a leakage of the great news that the British Ambassador to Nepal was relaying to London. Decoded, the message ran: HILLARY & TENZING

CLIMBED MAY 29TH . . .

Thus, with laconic drama, the ninth British Everest expedition told of the conquest of earth's highest spire. In reaching the roof of the world simply because it is there, the New Zealander and the Sherpa mountaineer had done what Columbus, Scott and Lindbergh had gloriously done before: asserted that puny man can measure all things earthly.

The conquerors of Everest came down from the mountain last week to find a world avidly curious. This was their story:

The Trek. The ascent had been planned with the thoroughness of a commando raid: vast preparation for a brief but crucial hour. The expedition assembled in March at Katmandu, capital of Nepal. Its leader was John Hunt, 43, a grizzled British colonel whose knowledge of mountains (Kangchenjunga, K-36) and men (in World War II, he commanded Pathans, Gurkhas, Dogras and Scots) quickly won respect.

Three hundred and fifty porters (at 49-c- a day) divided up the baggage into 50-lb. packs and struck out, in two caravans, toward the valley of the Sun Kosi. The track lay through rhododendrons, oak trees and patches of fern; then the country roughened, and three great ridges rose before them. From the first, Chyanjma-la. the leaders looked north and saw Everest face-to-face--a hunchbacked Atlas with the sky of Tibet on his back. At last they entered the valley that drains Everest itself.

Northward were the Himalayan pastures, where the gentle Sherpa tribesmen live. The trail crossed giant mountains, crowding the icy torrent of the Dudh Kosi and soaring on the other side to 20,000 ft. Sometimes by day there were rain and sleet; sometimes there were hornets that can drive a man mad. And so, on March 25, they came to Namche Bazar, the chief of the Sherpa towns.

First Base Camp. The Namche people blessed them and gave them almond cakes. Rested, they went on, and came to a pale red shrine, Thyangboche Monastery (at 13,000 ft.).

Beautiful Thyangboche was where they made their First Base Camp. Towering above was the Everest trinity: Lhotse (27,890) and Nuptse (25,680), joined by a razor edge; beyond, Everest itself, plumed in a wisp of vapor that streams from the summit at 29,002 ft. The three giants together enclose a vast glacial basin known as the Western Cwm (a Welsh word that rhymes with tomb). This was the key to the climb.

At 21,000 ft., the eastward end of the Cwm is sealed by the South Col, a 25,850 ft. ridge that joins Everest to Lhotse. Westward, the Cwm falls away in a giant ice fall that leaps precipitously down 4,000 ft. Beyond, at the foot of Nuptse, is the Khumbu glacier, the only known entrance to the Cwm.

From Thyangboche camp, the climbers skirted Nuptse and pitched Camp I on the scree of Khumbu. All around were towers of ice that rumbled by day and creaked and moved by night. Above was the great ice fall, savage and unstill.

The ice fall is a labyrinth, gashed by echoing crevasses where a cathedral spire might be lost, crisscrossed by sharp seracs (ice towers) that no man can scale. In the deepest ice corridors, the air is foul and weakening; often as the climbers moved, ice blocks the size of houses vanished into chasms that yawned at their feet. Always, there was snow.

Where the crevasses Vere widest, the climbers built bridges with ropes and a portable ladder that stretched to 30 ft. Camp II was halfway, Camp III at the top. And after 45 days, they stood in the Western Cwm.

In the Western Cwn. A man has not long to live above 22,000 ft. His heart dilates and beats faster, he has no desire to eat. The thin air leaves him gasping, the cold that numbs his limbs fills his throat with lumps of mucus. Worst, it can sap his courage so that every step forward demands a conscious effort of will to jog the body on.

Camp V was at 22,600 ft. at the head of the Western Cwm. Here the South Col rose 3,000 ft. sheer. Ice boots were changed for high-altitude footwear soled with microcellular rubber (to keep out -- 50DEG cold). Goggles protected the men from snow blindness; padded smocks enclosed their bodies. One by one, Hunt and Hillary, Bourdillon and Evans, Noyce, Wilson and Tenzing, put on their oxygen masks and learned to sleep in them.

Climb to the Col. Thus, fully accoutred, they struck at the face of Lhotse. Heavy icing is dangerous on a slope of 30DEG; Lhotse, in many places, is close to vertical. Wilfred Noyce, a Charterhouse schoolmaster, took two days to hack an ice staircase diagonally up to the -col. Camp VI and Camp VII were established on the face; finally, Noyce and a Sherpa gang reached the col and stood in a clear sky on the threshold of Everest. Here they made Camp VIII at 25,850 ft.

The last climb was 3,000 ft. No one man could have tried it if Hunt had not planned well. In the last exhausting stages, two assault teams (two men to each) had been "babied" for the final attack. Team No. 1 got the order to go.

Tom Bourdillon, a nuclear physicist, and Charles Evans, a Liverpool physician, went up from Camp VIII toward the halfway mark--a rounded shoulder of rock known as the south summit. Stumbling and panting, they made it and vanished in the cloud beyond. No man had been higher and lived, but the pair lacked strength to go on. Back they came.

Team No. 2 was Hillary, the beekeeper from Auckland, New Zealand, and Tenzing, the sinewy Asian whom Colonel Hunt named "the greatest Sherpa of them all." They dragged themselves up to 27,900 ft. and there, on a rocky ledge, they spent a gale-swept night in a ragged tent.

Dawn on May 29 made the Himalayas glow. Tenzing saw Thyangboche Monastery, 16,000 ft. below. At 6:30 they thawed out their boots and buckled on all that remained of the precious oxygen. The summit was hidden in cloud, but they knew it lay ahead and above.

On and up they stumbled, like flies on a whitewashed wall. An unmapped ice ridge stopped them, as it had stopped Team No. i. On one side, the ridge's gables projected over a face that fell 12,000 ft. Opposite was snow, firm enough for footholds, but guarded by a sheer rock face, 40 ft. high and holdless. At sea level this would be a minor obstacle to a trained mountaineer, but at 29,000 ft., neither Hillary nor Tenzing could attempt it. Instead they found a chimney that opened to the top. Hillary went first and crabbled his way upward through the chimney, using shoulders and knees as levers. Then it was Tenzing's turn, and soon the pair lay together in the frozen snow at the top.

They got up and plodded on. As fast as one hump was cleared, the next blocked the view. Both men were slowing down when suddenly it loomed into view--one last narrow snow ridge running up to a peak beyond which nothing was higher.

Bear Hug. They made it, roped together, and stood on the roof of the world. It was exactly 11:30 a.m. on Friday, May 29, 1953.

Gravely they shook hands, and Tenzing, forgetting formality, hugged Hillary like a bear. Then they took photographs of the British, Nepal, Indian and U.N. flags lashed to Tenzing's icepick.

What did it feel like to be there? Said Hillary: "Damn good." Tenzing, a devout Buddhist, said: "I thought of God and the greatness of His work."

After 15 minutes' exposure, both were weakening rapidly. They started down and arrived, half frozen, at Camp VII. At first neither could speak, but their comrades forgave them that. On both bearded faces, festooned with icicles, a broad grin told the story that Everest at last had yielded to men who accepted the challenge because it was there.

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