The Summit

At 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay stood on the summit of Mount Everest -- the highest point on earth. Hillary, a New Zealand beekeeper, and Tenzing, a Nepali-Indian Sherpa with decades of Himalayan experience, were part of a British expedition led by Colonel John Hunt. They were the first confirmed humans to reach the top.

The climb was a logistics problem as much as an athletic one. The expedition established camps stocked by over 400 porters. At 29,000 feet, the air contains roughly a third of sea-level oxygen. Hillary and Tenzing used supplemental oxygen sets weighing over 30 pounds each. Their final push took five hours, including the now-famous Hillary Step -- a 40-foot rock face just below the summit.

the north face of mount everest viewed from the approach toward base camp, tibet, 2006. source: wikimedia commons

They spent 15 minutes on top. Tenzing buried chocolates as a Buddhist offering. Hillary photographed Tenzing holding his ice axe aloft -- one of the 20th century's most iconic images. No photo of Hillary exists from the summit; Tenzing could not operate the camera. News reached London just in time for Queen Elizabeth II's coronation on June 2.

Everest has since been summited thousands of times, often by guided clients paying large fees. But in 1953, it was the edge of the possible. Hillary and Tenzing proved it was reachable -- not through superhuman ability, but through planning, logistics, teamwork, and the willingness to keep climbing when every system in the body says stop.