Tenzing Norgay brandishes his ice axe on the summit of Mount Everest on 29 May 1953. Edmund Hillary took this photograph using a modest Kodak Retina compact camera loaded with Kodachrome colour film, he kept the camera tucked inside his jacket during the final ascent to keep it from freezing. Hillary apparently refused a photograph when Tenzing offered to return the favour
Photograph: Edmund Hillary
Edmund Hillary, Colonel John Hunt And Sherpa Tenzing Norgay 1953
A beekeeper from New Zealand, Edmund Hillary, and the Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first people to stand on the summit of the world’s highest peak.
After climbing with British teams in the Himalayas in 1951 and 1952, Hillary and another New Zealander, George Lowe, were invited to join John Hunt’s 1953 British Everest Expedition.
On 29 May – four days before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II – the chosen pair, Hillary and the experienced Tenzing, reached the 8848-m summit of Mt Everest via the south-east ridge.
The men shook hands, as Hillary later wrote, "in good Anglo-Saxon fashion," but then Tenzing clasped his partner in his arms and pounded him on the back. The pair spent only 15 minutes on top.
From the moment Hillary told Lowe that they had ‘knocked the bastard off’, his life changed forever...
