Who Got There First?
Mountaineers first set their sights on conquering the world’s tallest mountain in the 1920s. Until then little was known about Mt Everest, largely because both the borders of Tibet to the north and Nepal to the south were closed to Western climbers.
Little was known about the geography of the Himalayan Mountains or the approaches to Mt Everest. The earliest expeditions did not have the luxury of detailed maps or climbing routes and every step in those earliest days was a step into the unknown. The Nepal and Tibetan authorities also restricted the number of expeditions to Mt Everest to two a year. From the earliest days the British were determined that it would be the Union Jack that would reach the summit first. But the Swiss had other ideas and very nearly caused the British a huge upset the year before Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay’s triumph in May 1953.
The earliest serious expedition and summit attempt was the June 1924 assault by Britain’s George Mallory and Andrew Irvine – a mission from which they would never return, perishing in Everest’s notorious Death Zone high on the mountain. 
The expedition’s geologist Noel Odell wrote in his diary that he saw Mallory and Irvine on a ridge nearing the base of the final pyramid before the summit on the day the two climbers vanished.
There is a school of thought that maintains either Mallory or Irvine reached the summit, and were killed during their descent. In 1979, Chinese climber Wang Hongbao revealed to a climbing companion that he had discovered a body in 1975 thought at the time to be Irvine. Hongbao died in a fall the next day before he could provide precise details.
In 1999, however, a Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition found Mallory's body in the predicted search area near the old Chinese camp. This added further controversy in the mountaineering community as to whether the duo did in fact summit 29 years before the 1953 ascent by Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay. While there is no physical evidence of either man climbing above the Second Step, there is speculation that if Mallory had made it that far he would most likely have reached the summit given that there is no technically difficult climbing further up.
The leading theory amongst those supporting the summit has Mallory tackling the sheer face of the Second Step by standing on Irvine's shoulders. Armed with Irvine's spare oxygen tanks he could have made the summit late in the day. Almost everyone agrees, however, that Mallory died in a short fall during his descent. Irvine probably briefly survived him as he awaited his companion's return at the foot of the Second Step but died later of exposure.
During a speaking tour of the United States the year before the ill-fated British expedition, George Mallory gave the famous quip, "Because it is there," when a New York journalist asked Mallory why he wanted to climb Everest. In 1995 George Mallory’s South African grandson, George Mallory II, reached the summit of Everest.
1933 - 1953
In 1933, Lady Houston, a millionaire ex-showgirl, funded the Houston Everest Flight which saw a formation of airplanes fly over the summit in an effort to deploy the British Union Jack flag at the top. It was unsuccessful.
After taking part in a 1935 reconnaissance expedition, the prolific mountaineering explorer Bill Tilman was appointed leader of a 1938 Everest expedition that attempted an ascent via the Tibetan northwest ridge. The expedition reached over 27000ft (8200m) without supplementary oxygen. The climbers, however, retreated due to bad weather and sickness. All early expeditions ascended the mountain from Tibet, via the north face. This access, however, was closed to western expeditions in 1950 after the Chinese reasserted control over Tibet. But in 1950, Bill Tilman and a small party that included Charles Houston, Oscar Houston and Betsy Cowles undertook an exploratory expedition to Mt Everest through Nepal along the route that has now become the standard approach to Everest from the south.
Hillary and Tenzing
During 1951 another British expedition led by Eric Shipton and including Edmund Hillary traveled to Nepal to survey a new route via the southern face. This mission’s principle purpose was to survey possible routes to the top rather than making any serious summit attempt.
The next year, however, a Swiss expedition followed in the footsteps of the British expedition the previous year and made a serious attempt to climb via the southern face. The assault team of Raymond Lambert and the now famous Sherpa Tenzing Norgay turned back just 200 meters short of the summit. The Swiss tried again in the autumn of 1952. The team included Lambert and Tenzing but the climbers were forced to retreat at an even earlier stage in the climb because of ferocious weather. In 1953, the ninth British expedition led by John Hunt returned to Nepal. Hunt selected two climbing pairs to attempt to reach the summit. The first pair turned back after becoming exhausted high on the mountain.
The next day the expedition made its second and final assault on the summit with its fittest and most determined climbing pair - New Zealand’s Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay from Nepal. Climbing the South Col route, they reached the summit at 11:30 am local time on 29 May, 1953. At the time both climbers acknowledged the summiting as a team effort by the whole expedition. Sherpa Tenzing Norgay later revealed that Hillary had been the first to put his foot on the top of the mountain.
The pair paused at the summit just long enough to take photographs and bury chocolate and a small cross in the snow before descending. News of the expedition's success reached London on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation. Returning to Kathmandu, Hillary and Hunt discovered that they had been knighted for their efforts.
1996 Disaster
The 1996 Everest climbing season saw 19 people killed trying to reach the summit - the worst year for casualties in Everest climbing history. 10 May, 1996 was the deadliest day when a storm stranded climbers on the “Hillary Step” near the summit. Eight climbers died including experienced mountaineers Rob Hall and Scott Fischer – both paid expedition leaders.
The disaster gained wide publicity and raised questions about the commercialisation of Mt Everest. Outside magazine journalist, Jon Krakauer, was a member of Hall's expedition party and later published the bestseller Into Thin Air. The book related his experience. Anatoli Boukreev, a guide who felt impugned by Krakauer's book, co-authored a rebuttal book called The Climb. The dispute sparked vigorous debate within the climbing community. In May 2004, Kent Moore, a physicist, and John L. Semple, a surgeon, both researchers from the University of Toronto, told New Scientist magazine that an analysis of weather conditions on that day suggested that freak weather caused oxygen levels to plunge by around 14 percent.
During the same climbing season climber and filmmaker, David Breashears and his team, filmed the IMAX feature Everest. The 70mm IMAX camera was modified to ensure it functioned in the extreme cold. Production, however, was halted when Breashears and his team helped survivors of the 10 May storm. The team eventually reached the top on 23 May and filmed the first large-format footage of the summit. Among Breashears' team was Jamling Tenzing Norgay, son of Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.
NZ Schools join global interactive campaign to learn about Nepal and Everest while following the Rescue on Everest Challenge at www.rescueoneverest.org
Get Involved here...
