A short life of the author
Sir Edmund Percival Hillary KG ONZ KBE (20 July 1919 – 11 January 2008) was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist who, at 11:30 a.m. on 29 May 1953, together with the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, became one of the first two human beings confirmed to have stood on the summit of Mount Everest — 29,029 feet above sea level, the highest point on earth. The achievement made Hillary one of the most famous people in the world and a national hero of New Zealand (his face appears on the New Zealand five-dollar note). But the story of his life after Everest — particularly his decades of humanitarian work building schools, hospitals, and infrastructure in the Himalayan communities whose people had made his climb possible — is at least as remarkable as the climb itself.
Life
Hillary was born in Auckland, New Zealand, and grew up in Tuakau, a small town south of the city. He was a beekeeper by trade — a profession he maintained even after Everest — and discovered mountaineering during a school trip to Mount Ruapehu at age sixteen. He climbed extensively in the New Zealand Alps throughout the 1940s and joined the British Everest reconnaissance expedition of 1951, which identified the route through the Khumbu Icefall that would be used for the 1953 attempt.
The 1953 British Everest expedition, led by Colonel John Hunt, included a strong team of climbers and Sherpas. After the first summit pair (Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans) was turned back by exhaustion and equipment failure, Hillary and Tenzing made the second attempt. They spent the night at a camp at 27,900 feet and set out for the summit the next morning, climbing the Hillary Step — a forty-foot rock face near the summit that is the final technical obstacle — and reaching the top at 11:30 a.m.
Hillary was knighted upon his return. He later led the New Zealand component of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1955–1958), becoming the first person to reach the South Pole overland since Scott in 1912.
The Books
High Adventure (1955) is Hillary’s account of the 1953 Everest expedition — a straightforward, modest narrative written in the understated style that characterised New Zealand men of his generation. The book is valuable for its first-person account of the summit day and for its portraits of the expedition members.
Nothing Venture, Nothing Win (1975) is a more comprehensive autobiography covering his early life, his climbing career, the Everest expedition, the Antarctic crossing, and his jet-boat expedition on the rivers of Nepal. The title — taken from a proverb — captures Hillary’s approach to life.
View from the Summit (1999) is his final autobiography, written in old age, and is the most reflective of his books — covering not only the mountaineering achievements but the personal losses (his wife Louise and their daughter Belinda were killed in a plane crash near Kathmandu in 1975) and the humanitarian work that occupied his later decades.
The Himalayan Trust
Beginning in the 1960s, Hillary devoted increasing time and resources to building schools, hospitals, airstrips, and bridges in the Solu-Khumbu region of Nepal — the Sherpa homeland. Through the Himalayan Trust, which he founded in 1960, he oversaw the construction of over thirty schools and two hospitals. He worked directly with Sherpa communities, learning their needs and respecting their culture.
Hillary regarded this work as more important than climbing Everest. “I have enjoyed great satisfaction from my climb of Everest and my trips to the poles,” he wrote, “but there’s no doubt that my most worthwhile things have been the building of schools and medical clinics.”
Critical Standing
Hillary was not a literary stylist — his books are plainly written and lack the self-conscious artistry of mountaineering writers like Joe Simpson or Jon Krakauer. But their value lies precisely in their modesty and directness: they are the authentic accounts of one of the most remarkable lives of the twentieth century, written by a man who was constitutionally incapable of self-aggrandisement.
Collecting Hillary
High Adventure (1955, Hodder & Stoughton) in first edition with dust jacket brings $100–$400. Nothing Venture, Nothing Win (1975) brings $30–$80. Signed copies are available — Hillary was generous with autographs — and items signed by both Hillary and Tenzing Norgay are particularly valuable.