Word: everest
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...aggressive climber in your Himalayan years.. I was quite competitive, and I tended to compete with members of my own expedition. I don't think I was unpleasantly aggressive, but I think I rather enjoyed grinding my companions into the ground on a big hill. I remember when [Everest expedition leader] John Hunt and I were walking in from Kathmandu to Everest, we crossed over a river and had to climb up a very long, steep hill. We were going to camp at the top of the hill. I always used to enjoy going fast up these hills...
...Everest expedition was, by the standards of the day, a very professional one? I think it was well organized, but I wouldn't have said we were very heavily funded. We were a relatively small expedition...
...many were you? There were really only 10 foreign climbing members, and then Tenzing, who became a climbing member. So there were really only 11 of us who were climbing Everest, and there were three other people, there was the film camera man, the doctor and James Morris, the press bloke. So there was really only 13 or 14 of us. After us came those really huge expeditions: the Japanese and Italian expeditions, with 50 or 60 people on them and vast numbers of Sherpas. Ours was nothing compared to what came afterwards...
...pass. I beat him to it. But he was obviously very fit, very strong and I was impressed. Tenzing was very competitive too, he wanted to be up front. That was a good sign. And he was a good, sound mountaineer. He had been on quite a few Everest expeditions. He really started as just an ordinary porter on the north side of Everest, and then, since he was obviously strong and accomplished, he became a very useful technical climber as well...
...pushed on. I wouldn't say the final push was fun. It was jolly hard work actually, and the long slope up to the South Summit had soft snow and we were very concerned about the potential avalanche. But, you know, as I've said many times - this was Everest so we felt we had to push it a bit harder than maybe we would. Once we climbed that step on the ridge, which is now called the Hillary Step, the ridge sort of ran away, almost out of sight. You couldn't really see exactly where...