Word: everests
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...praise famous men. Fifty years ago this week, a New Zealander and a Nepalese became the first people to stand on the top of the world: the summit of Mount Everest. In modern times, we're not always lucky in our heroes, perhaps because, having elevated skepticism to a virtue, we don't allow ourselves to be. But by all accounts, Edmund Hillary, who is still alive, and Tenzing Norgay, who died in 1986, were the real deal. Hillary was a beekeeper; Tenzing, in effect, a professional climber from the Sherpa community in the Himalayan foothills. The two men, wrote...
...there are reasons to celebrate this anniversary other than the character of Hillary and Tenzing. The records of the 1953 British Commonwealth expedition - especially The Ascent of Everest, a magnificent book written by the team's leader, John Hunt - are a window on a lost world. The assault on the mountain was made by young men who had been forced to grow up fast. Many of them had fought in World War II; one of them, Charles Wylie, had been a prisoner of the Japanese at the notorious Changi camp in Singapore. The experience of wartime meant that the expedition...
...suspect that war cast a more subtle shadow on the Everest expedition. Those who were on the team knew what was really important. They had seen life held cheaply; they had witnessed bravery, nobility, horror, shame and sacrifice. I don't mean to imply that they were depressingly earnest. On the contrary, all accounts of the expedition revel in the fun the group had, with parties galore in Sherpa villages. But I doubt if anyone on the team thought he was doing anything more significant than climbing a mountain. Those men kept things in perspective. One of my single favorite...
...copy of The Ascent of Everest is autographed by George Band, who was the youngest member of the expedition - just 24 in 1953. His parents went to the same church as mine, and my father got his signature when Band gave the congregation a slide show on his exploits in the high mountains. (In 1954 Band and another legendary British climber, Joe Brown, were the first men to summit Kanchenjunga, the world's third highest peak, and technically a much tougher climb than Everest.) Now retired, Band still leads treks in the Himalayas. When I spoke to him last week...
...Yuichiro Miura of Japan, who this month became the oldest person ever to climb Mount Everest...