Everest Seventy Years After the First Ascent May 29th 1953

A condensed version of this article appears in The Hindu May 28th 2023

https://www.thehindu.com/society/everest-70-years-later/article66873075.ece

On 28^th May 1953, two men started out from the South Col of Everest at around 26,000 feet to set up Camp Nine at 27,900 feet. Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa had attempted Everest six times and failed. Edmund Hillary, a bee keeper from New Zealand, was on the mountain for the second time, having accompanied Eric Shipton on the Everest Reconnaissance in 1951. The British had made eight attempts on Everest since 1921 and this could well be their last chance.  In the year of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II, it was imperative that they succeed. Camp IX at 27,900 feet would be the highest that men had ever slept.  The next morning dawned clear and still as Tenzing pointed out the tiny dot of Tengboche monastery, 16,000 feet below, where the Rimpoche had prayed for the safe return of the team. “God of my father and mother be good to me today” prayed Tenzing. Hillary’s boots were frozen and he had a tough job trying to unfreeze them for the climb. The duo started out at 6.30 am and at 11.30 am on 29th May 1953 history was made as the two men stood on the summit of Everest.

 The first ascent of Everest was followed by three decades of successful high-altitude mountaineering in the Himalayas.  After the fourteen 8000 metre peaks were climbed, climbers turned their attention on new routes and unclimbed walls. On Everest itself, in 1963, an American team led by Willi Unsoeld and Tom Horbein summitted the peak by the west ridge. In an astounding feat, they completed the first traverse of the mountain through the night by descending the south East Ridge down to the South Col.  In 1975 a British team led by Chris Bonington laid siege to the south west face of Everest and completed the first ascent of this huge wall. In 1978 Messner and Habeler accomplished the first ascent without supplementary oxygen and again in 1980 Messner set a new benchmark by making a solo ascent of the mountain completely unsupported from the north side. In 1983 an American team climbed the avalanche ravaged the Kangshung face, one of the last great challenges of Everest. And by the early nineties, the stage was set for the first guided climbs on the mountain.

 May 2023 marks seventy years of the first ascent of Everest and it is interesting to see that the lure of Everest has not diminished in any way. Mountaineers dream to stand on the highest point on earth, every trekker’s bucket list includes Everest Base Camp and once the Everest season begins in April, arm chair travelers follow internet dispatches with great interest as this drama of life and death is played out every year.  Sadly, the mountain has now become a playground for guided expeditions, with rich clients paying up to sixty thousand dollars and more for a chance to be guided to the summit.

 But there are many changes since the days of Hillary and Tenzing. The South Col route climbed in 1953 is now disdainfully referred to as the “yak trail”. The dangerous icefall below the Western Cwm is maintained by a team of sherpas right through the season led by a senior “Icefall Doctor.” In order to make it possible for inexperienced clients to summit Everest, the entire mountain has fixed rope from bottom to top. Climbers assisted by their sherpas clip onto the fixed rope and move up the mountain. Helicopters also play a major role on the mountain today. There are stories of rich climbers after completing their acclimatization routine and rotation on the mountain flying to Namche Bazar to a plush hotel or even Kathmandu to recuperate for a few days before their summit bid. 1953 it took the British team around three weeks to walk from Banepa outside Kathmandu to the base camp, a journey which would now take 45 minutes in a helicopter.

  Due to the limited “summit windows” when the jet stream winds stop and the weather is stable, human traffic jams on the summit ridge are the order of the day. In May 2019, Nirmal Purja, who climbed all the 8000 metre peaks in less than seven months, published a photo of a long line of climbers in a jam which went viral and provoked a huge uproar.  Due to the slow progress, climbers were stranded barely two hundred feet below the summit for upto two hours in minus 20C temperatures and gale force winds waiting for the human jam to clear. Many of them had finished their oxygen and were at great risk on the mountain.  In the quest to reach the summit at all costs “turn around times” as set by the guides are often ignored resulting in a number of fatal casualties.  In 1996 twelve climbers died on the mountain, eight in a single day. Again in 2006 on the north side eleven climbers lost their lives and in 2012 ten climbers lost their lives.

 But sadly, the support Sherpas without whom Everest would not be climbed are at highest risk.  In 2014 a serac collapsed in the Icefall and 16 sherpas died. There was a huge uproar from the sherpa families demanding better compensation and insurance and they closed the climbing season that year. Sadly, again in 2015 the Nepal earthquake resulted in a huge avalanche in the Icefall and 22 climbers including sherpas lost their lives in the worst disaster on the mountain.  

 “Everest was not a private affair, it belonged to many men” wrote Tom Horbein in his classic book, Everest the West Ridge. Horbein who passed away on May 6^th 2023 at the ripe old age of 92, just a few days short of the sixtieth anniversary of the first West Ridge climb, could hardly have imagined that Everest would become a public arena with news and dispatches beamed off the mountain as the action takes place. Most expeditions set up large communication tents at Base Camp with laptops, video and sound equipment   connected to the climbers on the mountain. Daily news bulletins, photographs and video are uploaded onto internet sites, social media and news channels for viewers back home.

 In 2023, Kami Rita Sherpa climbed Everest twice and now leads at 28 ascents as compared to his nearest rival  Pasang Dawa Sherpa  who has ascended Everest 27 times including two ascents in 2023.

 In the 1996 disaster on Everest, leading guide Rob Hall was benighted near the summit with his client Doug Hansen. Hall would not abandon Hansen and remained with him as a fierce storm raged on Everest. Base Camp was able to connect Hall to his pregnant wife in New Zealand.   “Sleep well my sweetheart, please don’t worry too much” said Hall signing off as the world watched the disaster unfold. Twelve days later IMAX filmmaker David Breashears and Ed Viesturs climbing near the south summit found Hall’s body in an ice hollow.

 Though rescue on 8000 metre peaks is getting more sophisticated with the example of the recent long line helicopter rescue on Annapurna of Indian climber Baljeet Kaur in April 2023, it still remains an arduous and dangerous task to rescue a climber from the death zone above 8000 metres.  There have been many horrific stories like the one of David Sharpe in 2006 who lay below the first step of Everest on the north side badly frostbitten and unable to move. Many climbers passed him by and spoke to him as well but none could help him.   Sharpe died that night on that cold and inhospitable ridge which has been the death knell of many a climber. Most Everest experts agree that a rescue above the “death zone” is an immensely difficult proposition and beyond the ability of “guided clients” most of whom are struggling to stay alive themselves.

 One of the most daring rescues carried out on the mountain during the guided era is worth recounting. In 1996, Beck Weathers part of the Mountain Madness team led by Scott Fischer was left for dead on the South Col. Miraculously Beck survived the night and staggered into camp the next morning. From the South Col, Beck was helped down to the Western Cwm where at an altitude of around 20,000 feet, Captain Madan Chettri, a dare devil helicopter pilot evacuated him to a hospital in Kathmandu without landing the helicopter, an incredible feat in those days.

 Reinhold Messner, who was the first to climb all the fourteen 8000 metre peaks says “Everest has become a tourist mountain and clients pay sherpas to be brought to the summit.”

 The commercialization of Everest has led to a number of best-selling books on the triumph and tragedy that is played out at these altitudes. The most famous is undoubtedly Jon Krakauer’s into Thin Air which has sold more than three million copies. For the dark side of an Everest climb, Dark Summit by Nick Heil covering the infamous 2006 season and High Crimes by Michael Kodas are worth a read.

 But despite there being more than ten thousand ascents on the mountain since 1953, Everest is still Everest. In the words of Tenzing Norgay Sherpa, “I needed to go and the pull of Everest was greater than any force on earth.”  And as I write this more than 450 climbers and possibly a similar number of sherpas in support are getting ready to jumar up the fixed ropes to the highest and most sacred place of all – the summit of Everest.