Original subtitles

[wind whistling]

[heavy breathing]

[breathing intensifies]

[indistinct radio chatter]

- Well, we introduce to you this morning Ed Hillary,

a very interesting personality in the alpine world.

Good morning, Ed.

- Good morning.

- How many attempts have been made on Everest altogether?

- Well, there have been at least ten.

- Why have the others failed?

- Combination of circumstances that haven't been right.

- Well, do you think it's possible to climb Everest?

- Yes, I definitely think it's possible to climb it.

And I'm sure it'll be done someday.

[wind whistling]

- It's only 60 years ago,

but it was a completely different world.

And the idea that you would be the first man to stand

on the highest point on Earth

is a quest, a romantic quest.

[wind whistling]

- There was a real race on

for the world's highest peak,

and it wasn't just Britain.

There were other nations in the queue.

This really was Britain's last chance

to grab this great prize.

- Nobody knew if someone could survive at 29,000 feet.

Like the guys going into space,

you know, you're breaking frontiers.

- There is a physiologic limit

of what human beings can take.

And I'm sure they didn't want to die,

but you're taking risks in which death

is one of the outcomes.

- You were going into the unknown.

Could it be done?

Back in 1953, it was a great, big question mark.

- I think it's all really a matter of challenge...

not so much challenge only with the mountain

but challenge with oneself,

seeing if you can force yourself to overcome your fears

and hopefully,

ultimately, get to the top.

[dramatic music]

##

- Members of the British Everest expedition

have begun assembling on the subcontinent,

where deputy leader Major Wylie is looking forward

to the adventure to come.

- We are very pleased that the first stage

of our journey to Mount Everest is over.

We're now off towards the hills.

If we get some fine weather towards the end of May,

just before the monsoon arrives,

we should have a chance of getting to the top.

- The first time I joined up with the expedition

was at the British embassy in Kathmandu.

We had 13 Western members of the expedition.

John Hunt, our senior army officer,

was expedition leader.

I'd really never heard of John Hunt before,

and the first time I met him

was in Kathmandu.

- I was very keen to have

people I knew already,

and so I had big question marks about Ed.

And I can only say that from the moment I met Ed,

I knew that here was somebody

who would be a dominating influence.

He was a tower of strength.

- Mr. Hillary, as a matter of interest,

how long have you been climbing?

- I've been climbing, I suppose,

for altogether about ten years.

- And how many trips have you done

out of New Zealand, climbing?

- I have already had a couple of expeditions to the Himalaya.

- You were quite strictly brought up, weren't you?

- I was brought up during the Depression,

and my family was pretty short on cash during that period.

I was just a rough old country boy, as it were.

- A beekeeper.

I used to wander around our farm,

dreaming about great adventures

and climbing mountains and all that sort of thing.

[bees buzzing]

- But what a contrast between beekeeping, on the one hand,

and climbing mountains.

- Oh, not really.

In the beekeeping, I was constantly lugging around

80-pound boxes of honey,

and my brother was also doing beekeeping, and we competed.

And I think the sense of competition carried on

to my mountaineering activities.

[insects buzzing, birds chirping]

- Well, the party were first

altogether as a team in Kathmandu.

Before us,

we had 17 days of marches to Tengboche,

which is where we were going to place our first base camp.

We had to cross a succession

of high ridges and deep valleys.

We could really get gradually fit

and, most important, get to know each other as a team.

- Everything had been calculated to the last detail:

7 1/2 tons of material,

443 packages-

all numbered and the contents of each listed,

down to the last matchbox or needle.

- It is a team expedition,

and it's very much in the form of a pyramid of effort.

13 Western members of the expedition...

30 permanent high-altitude Sherpas-

these are men who will be carrying loads for us

to great altitudes.

Some 600 Nepalese porters carried loads across country

into our climbing regions.

- Because there'd been no less than seven British tents

on the mountain, we felt that, by right,

the mountain should be climbed by Britain

and, by extension, the British Commonwealth.

The Swiss so nearly got to the summit in 1952.

The Americans were waiting in the wings.

And so there was huge pressure on John Hunt

with this colossal expectation that this quest had to succeed.

- Mr. Hillary, how many New Zealanders

during this year's expedition?

- Well, only two of us-

George Lowe and myself.

- George Lowe and my father were great friends.

They had climbed extensively in the Southern Alps

in New Zealand.

They were very good climbers together,

and they had a tremendous rapport.

- We had 18 days of trekking,

and during that period of getting to know one another,

there was always a little bit

of a funny edge towards the New Zealanders.

Both Ed and I had been to ordinary high schools.

They, of course, the greater number of them,

had been to public schools.

We did come from a different background.

There's no doubt.

[water rushing]

- Kathmandu is only about 4,000 feet above sea level.

The foot of Everest is about 18,000.

Our 17 days' approach march was an essential part

of my policy of acclimatization.

- The whole thing is a race against time.

There was a constant fear that the monsoon would come.

So that's why John Hunt

said he wanted to be in a position

to climb Everest on May the 15th.

The later in May,

the more likely that the monsoon would arrive.

It's always a race against time.

- As we got steadily higher,

our excitement increased

the more and more great peaks were coming into view.

And over it all towered the summit pyramid of Everest,

only 20 miles away but still 20,000 feet above us.

- Mr. Hillary, you started climbing in New Zealand.

- Oh, yes, I started in New Zealand.

[optimistic music]

##

- And there's Mount Cook, the cloud piercer,

reaching majestically skyward

for over 12,000 feet.

- A friend and I decided

to have a short trip to Mount Cook.

The closer we got, the more impressed I was

with the magnificent mountain.

- Those jagged peaks there provide the real alpinist

with some of the best climbing outside Europe.

- That night inside the hermitage where I was staying,

two young men came in.

I heard the whisper go around,

"They have just climbed Mount Cook."

These chaps were really living.

I felt, "What a hopeless life I lead.

No great adventures, nothing particularly exciting."

And that's when I decided

that I was gonna take up mountaineering.

- Well, after 17 days, our caravans arrived

at the monastery Tengboche at over 12,000 feet.

- Once they got up to Tengboche Monastery,

it's getting pretty cold.

The low-country porters largely only had cotton clothes,

so they get paid off,

and they return to their villages,

and Sherpa porters take over.

The Sherpas who stay on the expedition

might have previous experience of climbing,

although not many did.

Tenzing was an exception to that

in that he did have quite a lot of experience.

In fact, he really had more experience

of climbing on Mount Everest than anyone else.

- Without the Sherpas, you can't climb Everest.

And my father was the headman.

People respected him.

They knew that he had been

climbing Everest with foreigners since 1935.

He had been up six times already.

- I knew Tenzing by repute.

You know, he'd done a lot of mountaineering.

And I knew he was very highly regarded.

But I wasn't able really to communicate well with him.

His English was very limited,

and my Nepali was very limited.

He had a flashing smile,

absolutely charming smile.

It was impossible not to like him.

- In the next fortnight,

we had a period of training and testing ourselves

and our equipment at altitudes.

- Well, in 1953,

getting to the summit of Everest,

in terms of physiologic capability,

was a big unknown.

It was like sending somebody into space.

They knew from altitude experiments in chambers

that altitude could make you seize.

And one of the ideas

was that people would hemorrhage in their brains

because their blood vessels would be so dilated.

There were lots of reasons to think

that there might be a stroke.

Nobody knew whether or not it could really be done.

- When Ed was heading up the mountain in 1953,

13 people had already died on the mountain,

and I think that for anyone

who would be climbing at that time,

it would be something of a daunting statistic.

13 deaths and zero summits at that point.

- Now, about six miles up from Tengboche,

looking north, is the Khumbu Glacier,

where we were to place our main base camp

for the attack on the mountain.

This icefall was to be our next great obstacle,

and I sent a party to explore it.

Ed Hillary led this first party.

- The Western Cwm is guarded by a great icefall...

a tumbled mass of ice dropping 2,500 feet

to the Khumbu Glacier.

And we first had to discover

whether it was possible to ascend this icefall.

The icefall was a constant hazard,

and we had no alternative

but to make a route through country

which we knew to be unjustifiable

in the ordinary alpine climb.

- It's like a waterfall that's come off and has frozen.

[wind whistling]

The weight of the glacier above them is shoving.

It's all a jumble of ice.

It is the unstable objective danger

that you have no control over.

Crazy. My God.

You're dumb to be going up a route like that.

But you just can't go any other way but through the icefall.

- In '52, this Swiss winter, the icefall,

and it's a thing that's always on the move.

[ice crackling]

And it's a dangerous place for that reason.

More people are killed in the icefall

than anywhere else on Everest.

- It's immense.

It's 2,500 feet high.

And we had to go up the middle of it.

- Ed Hillary, George Lowe, Mike Westmacott, and myself

were the four of us chosen to make the first route

through in a week or five days, if we could.

And then, of course,

to make it safe by a lot of step cutting,

a lot of fixed ropes so that, eventually,

it would be possible for loaded porters

to carry the stores safely through it.

- The icefall was a dangerous place

because things did collapse without warning,

and if you were in the way, it's a really bad thing.

[ice crashing]

- You had these great towers of ice

and great lumps and strips the size of a row of cottages

that could slump down at any moment.

We gave names to the more dangerous parts.

There was Mike's Horror,

Hillary's Horror,

an area called the Nutcracker...

the Atom Bomb area.

- There are certain-

well, a climb's got objective dangers,

and, basically, you can't do much about it.

There's also a risk of falling

into a crevasse.

- We had these light aluminum ladders about six feet long

which we could bolt together across the crevasses.

And there were so many crevasses

that we soon ran out of all the ladders that we had.

And so we had to send down to where the nearest trees grew,

which would be about three days' walk away,

to cut small tree trunks to make little log bridges.

And you balanced as well as you could.

For us, it was clearly gonna be

the only way to climb Everest.

- Ed Hillary wanted to please.

He wanted to be on the summit team.

He would have known that only a few people

would get a chance to go for the summit.

So from very early on, he wanted to impress John Hunt.

And he felt there was time pressure on him

to recce the icefall to get it prepared.

- My father was never afraid of hard work,

but part of that was to cover, I think,

what Dad felt were a lot of psychological

or emotional inadequacies.

He had been raised with high expectations,

and they had sent him off to Auckland Grammar School

two years too young.

- I was only 11 years old.

I was rather terrified, really.

When lunchtime came, I'd go out the back of the school,

and there were a whole lot of ants living there.

When I first went to Auckland Grammar,

the only friends I really had were the ants.

I was a dreamer

until I started climbing.

- The icefall was really chaotic...

and yet they forced a way,

and Ed's job of route finding was a particularly good show.

- The New Zealanders had a lot more

snow and ice climbing experience

than the average European climber

because their mountains are very like

the Himalayas in miniature.

[optimistic music]

##

- The Southern Alps,

the great mountain tangle

which sprawls northwards in an almost unbroken chain

of rock and ice.

- Well, Ed,

how do the Southern Alps compare with the Swiss Alps?

That's where the English climbers get their training.

- Here in New Zealand with our terrific glaciation,

and greater amount of our climbing

is done on the snow and ice.

In many ways, it's very similar to the Himalaya.

They're rather different from the Swiss Alps,

where the dominant feature for climbing is rock.

- Mount Aspiring, New Zealand's Matterhorn,

a shark's tooth of a mountain

whose dangerous slopes demand skill and careful climbing.

- Our New Zealand mountains are really

a wonderful training ground for the Himalaya.

- Kiwis have that tough resilience,

so I think the younger British climbers

were somewhat in awe of these formidable Kiwis

brought in to reinforce the team.

- Now, the next big doubt

was regarding the lip of the cwm itself

at the very top of the icefall.

You see, there was an enormous, gaping crevasse.

Could we get into the cwm?

- The decision on who would be going all the way to the top

was very much the leader's prerogative.

[ladders clattering]

John Hunt would evaluate the team

throughout the course of the expedition.

So there was a fair amount of sort of posturing

and positioning going on as people

tried to put themselves in the best light

for that sort of opportunity.

- I think, amongst the British,

there wasn't any particular jockeying for position.

But I think our two New Zealanders,

Hillary and Lowe,

were perhaps rather more straightforward

in wanting to get as high as possible.

They were the sort of colonialists;

they would make good,

and we were perhaps a little bit more inhibited,

the public-school type that wouldn't

push our way forward unless Hunt had said,

"Look, you're the chap to do it."

- I'd always hoped

that George Lowe and I would be the final summit pair.

But there was no time that John Hunt, our leader,

wanted to have two New Zealanders

stand on top of Mount Everest.

So I had to look around and find someone

who was as fit as I was and who could do a good job.

Tenzing was that person.

- Nobody alive had more experience of Everest.

He really understood the value of this

and how it could change his life.

Tenzing had been very, very poor.

He had struggled.

He wanted his children to go to good schools.

He wanted more for them than he'd had.

Tenzing understood what climbing Everest meant.

- My father was a bit of an anomaly

as far as a Sherpa goes,

because he's always wanted to climb Everest.

That's very unusual for a poor kid from Tibet.

So unlike many other Sherpas

who actually climb just to make a living,

he was a mountaineer at heart.

His drive was to go to the top just like Ed Hillary.

[wind whistling]

- As we walked on into the cwm,

the crevasses grew fewer,

and we realized that the cwm itself was open to us.

We are now established at Base Camp,

and the first problem

is to get our supplies up to Camp Four,

high up in the Western Cwm.

Owing to the climbing difficulties in the icefall,

laden porters require three days to reach Camp Four.

- There was this idea in those days

of laying siege to a mountain,

and this meant you would do it in a very systematic way.

You would set up a camp,

and you would set up another camp

and get higher and higher.

- You build up this pyramid of camps to get enough

tents, food, cooking fuel, oxygen,

to get enough of those supplies where you can rest

before going up to the next stage.

And to do that,

people have got to get up and down the mountain,

and, ideally, people go up to a camp

and then go back down again.

Because if everyone goes up to a camp and then stays there,

they then consume all the food they've carried up.

People try to come up with solutions

which would help the team to get to the top,

people from around the world

sending in madcap suggestions on inventions.

Somebody had an ingenious device

which is a type of harpoon

with an incendiary device on the end of it.

The idea was it would burn its way into the ice

and give a secure holding

so people could haul themselves up.

Most of them were completely crazy ideas.

- My method involves the use

of a hand cable laid in advance by aircraft.

- With my Relay Warmth personal heating apparatus,

air could be passed through a heating chamber

and pumped via rubber tube to the hands, feet, and head.

- May I mention a wonder gun...

[gunshot]

For driving steel bolts into concrete.

- I suggest that a woolen suit be wired

in much the same way as an electric blanket.

- It should be possible to ascend the mountain

using a large helium-filled balloon.

A significant amount of helium would be required.

- Nearly all of the technological innovations

that were used on the 1953 expedition

arose from things developed by the military

during the Second World War.

They tested the windproof equipment

they were going to be wearing

in the wind tunnel at Farnborough aircraft factory.

30 different firms, UK firms,

were involved in designing the boots alone.

The ascent of Everest in '53

had become a question of national pride.

When World War Il ended,

Britain was completely bankrupt.

And because of the austerity,

the post-war austerity in Britain,

the really awful days that had passed...

it was the last great colonial project,

the last hurrah of the British Empire.

- My father and Tenzing kept volunteering

to help in different situations

to demonstrate their competency

as being one of the summit teams.

Dad could see that there were a whole lot of reasons

why this could be a great combination for success.

They were very at home in this alpine environment.

They were hungry.

They wanted the top.

- There was a point where they were partnered together,

and they were racing down the Khumbu icefall

trying to prove that they could do it quickly.

But it's a product of his overexuberance, really.

He's racing through it, and something goes wrong.

- Tenzing and I headed back down to Base Camp.

When we were about halfway down the icefall,

we came to one of the crevasses.

On one side of it,

there was a great chunk of ice,

and we had used this as a stepping-stone

to reach the other side.

[ice crashing]

- It was slightly ironic that it was Ed Hillary,

who was such a good climber,

that it should happen to him.

- People have often said to me,

"You must have been very thankful,

Tenzing having saved your life like that."

But I don't think I was.

You know, I would have been very annoyed

if he hadn't saved my life.

- Camp Four has now been established,

and we have successfully carried

the three tons of supplies up here.

- You don't conquer a mountain.

If you're lucky enough,

the mountain gives you a chance to stand on the top.

You're trying to overcome your own weaknesses.

- Ed Hillary, he was so kind of gung ho,

and he always wanted to be out front.

He always wanted to be in the lead.

He wasn't brash.

He was a quieter, sort of more reserved character.

- Dad was quite a complicated person.

I think my father had quite a few demons...

born out of being a perfectionist

but also the sense of inferiority-

nothing's ever quite good enough.

I think it came out of a very complicated

family background.

- My father really wasn't very interested

in adventurous activities.

He was a man of very strong beliefs.

The climbing of mountains-

he probably regarded it as a bit of a waste of time.

I fought with my father.

And I would usually end up

being taken out to the woodshed

and being given a good thumping.

I'm rather proud of the fact

that I never actually admitted I was wrong...

even if I had been.

[typewriter keys clacking]

[typewriter dings]

Well, of course,

it was a tremendous interest to all of us

who would be chosen for the final push.

[typewriter dings]

- In those days, the leader's word was absolute...

[typewriter dings]

Particularly for men who had all been in the armed forces.

Hunt had to make the decision.

He would say who were gonna be the lucky ones

who were gonna have a crack at the summit.

- It was at our base camp,

and John Hunt called everybody around

and outlined his plans for the rest of the expedition.

[wind whistling]

The crucial thing, of course,

was the attempts for the summit.

- At that meeting, that extraordinary meeting

with this team totally isolated from the rest of the world,

thousands of miles from home...

those men each thinking, "Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful

if I was one of the lucky ones?"

- You're all chosen as basic climbers to go to the top,

but there are all these other jobs to be done as well.

- My father was absolutely determined that he was going

to have an opportunity to climb this mountain.

- One of the conditions for my father to go

with the English team was that he'd have a chance

to go to the top.

There was no other climber quite as accomplished.

- All of us would have liked to have a crack at the top,

but the first attempt on the summit was to be made

by Tom Bourdillon with Charles Evans.

And if needed, the second attempt,

he said it's going to be made

by Ed Hillary and Tenzing.

- I am sure my father would have loved

to have been in the first team.

Tenzing was probably quite conflicted by it.

- The next stage and the really crucial one

is up the Lhotse Face to the South Col.

- John Hunt said, "Okay,

"Tom Bourdillon with Charles Evans.

"We'll send the two of them up first.

"They can do a huge leap from the South Col

right to the summit in a day."

- The first major task in this plan fell to George Lowe.

He was to make a route up the Lhotse Face

and prepare the way

for the high-carrying parties to reach the Col.

This was to be finished by the 15th of May.

- Basically what he said was,

"We want to be in a position to climb Everest

on May the 15th,"

because there was a constant fear

in the back of Hunt's mind

that the monsoon would come and end all our hopes.

But they had to get up this thing called the Lhotse Face.

- This is a vast 4,000-foot snow and ice face

leading up steeply to the South Col at 26,000 feet.

George Lowe, my fellow New Zealander,

spent much time and energy

battling a route up this difficult part.

- The work on the Face was very difficult

and made more difficult in the trenches by the weather

and daily falls of snow which covered the tracks.

I shared my high perch for a long time with Ang Nyima,

a splendid little Sherpa.

- George Lowe worked on the Lhotse Face without oxygen

for over a week up to about 24,500 feet.

- Cold was terrific, and the wind was bad,

and all the time,

I was hoping to get the traverse complete

and the route right through to the South Col.

But I was thrashed by the weather,

and the altitude was affecting me.

We didn't seem to be able to make

the last 1,000 feet to the Col.

- John Hunt's big mistake

was that he underestimated the Lhotse Face.

It's just so big.

He didn't give enough support to George Lowe.

- It really was myself and Ang Nyima

whenever they did send up support.

Within 24 hours, they were not able to carry on.

- Being at high altitude,

you never feel very well.

Each breath of air we take in at high altitude

has fewer oxygen molecules,

so we need more breaths

in order to get the same amount of oxygen.

- Put a pillow over your mouth and try and breathe through it

as you're running.

You're just sucking air.

You're trying to get enough air,

and the oxygen debt builds up until you just can't go on.

You have to stop.

[heavy breathing]

Take three, four breaths to a step.

Five breaths to a step.

Six breaths to a step.

15 breaths to a step.

You're just not getting the air.

- Up there, your mind somehow gradually accepts slowness.

I thought I was going extremely well.

But, in fact, we were staggering about

like men in a dream.

- We had spent ten days on the Lhotse Face,

considerably more than I'd reckoned on,

but we had still not broken through to the South Col.

The time factor was becoming critical.

- Watching the progress on the Lhotse Face,

there was no doubt that the momentum

of the attack seemed to be winding down.

And the first inklings of the monsoon

were building up in the Bay of Bengal.

- It was a very, very critical time.

You could imagine Hunt

feeling that this whole great enterprise was just unraveling,

and, "If we don't get a grip on this thing soon,

"we're gonna lose our chance.

"The monsoon will arrive,

"and we won't even have reached the South Col,

let alone the summit."

[radio beeping]

- This is London calling

the British Mount Everest expedition.

Here is the latest weather bulletin.

Western disturbance apparently moving eastwards

across the extreme north of Nepal

is likely to cause cloudy to overcast skies.

- The later in May it was,

the more likely that the monsoon would arrive.

When the monsoon comes,

you get huge dumps of snow,

and they make climbing much more difficult.

You don't want to be climbing

through large amounts of soft snow,

wading your way through it.

The British expeditions of the 1930s had all failed

because the monsoon had come early.

And so all of this was piling on the pressure,

you know.

- So even though the route

hadn't actually been made all the way to the South Col,

John Hunt had to make a sort of crucial decision

to start sending up the team of 14 Sherpas

to carry all the stores we needed.

- Nothing must endanger the getting of our stores

to the Col in time for

our attempts on the summit.

- On the 21st of May,

Tenzing and myself led a band

of 14 high-altitude Sherpas up the Lhotse Face.

- 13 Sherpas struggled up the Col

that day without oxygen.

The 14th only just failed to make it,

and his load was carried on.

We were proud of them and grateful.

It was a 10 1/2 hour day,

they'd carried 30 pounds each,

and their only nourishment

was a single cup of tea apiece for breakfast.

- And so we were able to equip the camp properly

with tents, sleeping bags, oxygen equipment, and food,

and that was one of the biggest achievements.

- The South Col is probably the most barren spot in the world.

A continual strong wind is always blowing

over the dreary waste of rock and ice.

Adding an air of desolation

are the remnants of the Swiss tents

from the previous year

with pieces of tattered cloth still clinging to them.

- 1952, the Swiss had invited my father to climb Everest,

and he had been up

where no human had been before.

But bad weather turned them back.

- I remember Andre Roch

of the Swiss party said on the Col,

there's a smell of death.

We thought that was continental dramatics.

But when we'd been there, we understood.

- I'm telling you, the cold,

you can feel it coming up the extremities.

You know you're gonna freeze your hands and toes,

and you just feel the cold creeping up.

It's a race between the body and what you hope you can do.

You know that you're dying a little bit up there.

[wind howling]

- A major step had been achieved,

and we then returned once more to the Western Cwm.

Without wasting any time,

we brought into action our assault plan.

- Hunt wanted to have two attempts on the summit,

but he realized that he couldn't have two attempts

which were using open-circuit oxygen sets.

- In the open-circuit, when you breathe out,

the expired air goes to the atmosphere,

and when you breathe in, the atmospheric air comes

with an addition of a puff of oxygen from your oxygen set.

- The thing about open-circuit oxygen sets

is that they use a lot of oxygen.

So he would have to get an awful lot of oxygen

up on the South Col

and to the Southeast Ridge, so he sort of thought,

"Well, no, we're not gonna be able to do this."

But there was an alternative form of oxygen set

which was called a closed-circuit.

- The closed-circuit, when you breathe out,

the carbon dioxide goes through

a canister of something called soda lime,

which extracts the carbon dioxide

and gives you back the oxygen into the set,

and you're completely insulated from the outside air.

Now, if it works,

the closed system can be more efficient

than the open-circuit system.

- The people who are using the closed-circuit set

can start from lower down.

But the thing about the closed-circuit sets

was that the only person who really knew how to use them

was the person who had designed them,

Tom Bourdillon.

- And the first attempt on the summit

using the closed-circuit oxygen was to be made

by Tom Bourdillon with Charles Evans.

John Hunt went ahead to the South Col in support.

- Evans and Bourdillon left Advanced Base

down on the Western Cwm

and climbed up to the South Col to camp.

- Tom and Charles were to go all the way

from the South Col to the top.

I thought at the time they had a chance,

but it was a hell of a long way.

- If Bourdillon and Evans reach the summit,

John Hunt might go, "Job done.

We're all going home. Everyone's safe."

[wind howling]

But the weather closed in,

and everyone got stuck for two days,

including Bourdillon and Evans on the South Col.

My father and Tenzing

left Advanced Base down on the Western Cwm

to come up to the South Col to be the second summit team.

- When we left Base Camp in the Western Cwm,

was our support party, George Lowe,

Alf Gregory, and several Sherpas.

And then Tenzing and myself,

who were the actual assault party with the open-circuit.

- As my father and Tenzing were departing from Camp Four,

Bourdillon and Evans were making their summit bid.

- We went up the Lhotse Face

and across the long traverse that leads up to the South Col.

And we're just about up to the South Col

when we notice the support party.

George started shouting and jumping around.

And we looked up,

and we saw Evans and Bourdillon going up

the tiny, little peak far above us

onto the top of the south summit.

- I think it was somewhere around

about 12:00 in the morning,

and we thought, "Oh, the south summit, 12:00.

"They have time to get to the top.

They're going to climb it."

- You know, when Bourdillon and Evans went out of sight,

there would have been very high emotions

because these guys wanted to be up there.

- We crossed over

and reached the South Col.

A little later in the day, we kept an eye out.

The clouds had come over the mountain,

and we were a bit worried about Evans and Bourdillon.

But I think it was about 3:30, George, once again,

caught sight of them coming down the cwm

from the southeast ridge

down towards the South Col.

[wind whistling]

- And it was a long time

before they actually started to come down.

And when they were coming down,

they were clearly very, very tired.

- When Bourdillon and Evans came down,

Dad walked out to meet them.

People tend to see it in terms

of this really good guy going out to meet them

and help them back,

and there was that, absolutely.

But there was another part,

which was inside where he wanted to climb this mountain.

He needed to know, where did they get to?

- And they told us that they'd

reached the south summit all right,

had a look at the summit ridge,

but hadn't had sufficient time or oxygen

or energy to go any further.

- They were in a terrible state most of the day.

Charles Evans had been climbing

with an oxygen set which didn't work properly,

so he'd been inhaling carbon dioxide

as well as oxygen.

But I think also Tom Bourdillon

was very emotionally in a bad state

because it really meant a lot to him, you know.

He had designed this oxygen set,

which had failed.

So they were in a bad way physically

and emotionally as well.

- Tom Bourdillon kept saying, "We should have had a go.

We should have gone on," you know?

"We should have gone on."

- Evans and Bourdillon were very strong,

very experienced climbers.

Having climbed higher

than any human beings had ever been before,

having got to the south summit

and looked across at this final

almost knife-edged ridge,

Charles Evans did say to Ed Hillary something like,

"That last ridge looks really hard.

I don't know if you can do it."

[wind whistling]

[wind whooshing]

- Above 26,000 feet is what we call the "death zone,"

because you are slowly dying.

It's not a place for humans.

- John Hunt was a leader leading from the front,

and as the front now was up above the South Col,

that's why he wanted to stay,

and we realized that he really wasn't strong enough to stay.

- It was a classic case

of someone having been too high too long.

- He'd gone beyond the limit

like Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans,

and he was eventually persuaded to go down

with them.

They were exhausted, and we were worried about them,

and we dug out some oxygen to help them.

- Well, I hated to leave the Col,

but after a certain amount of discussion, I saw

that I could not weaken the second party,

so I left Ed with the parting instruction not to give in.

- This was a great moment in the expedition,

in which the leader sacrificed his own personal ambition.

And Ed Hillary says,

"Never at any moment have I respected John Hunt more."

- You know, it was touch and go,

because the monsoon comes in the first week of June,

and it was tight on the last days of May.

[wind howling]

- For Hillary and Tenzing to make an attempt on the summit,

they couldn't go from the South Col

because they would have to carry too much oxygen,

so the only way was to start from higher up,

then go for the summit.

[wind whistling]

- The following day is extremely windy and cold,

and no movement upwards is possible.

We spent the night preparing the oxygen and gear

with the hope that the following day

would prove clear and fine.

- They would use oxygen at night

flowing at a very low rate

because it would help them sleep

and make them feel slightly warmer as well.

- Nighttime, it's a tough time.

You lay there listening to the mountain...

listening to the wind, listening to the avalanche,

thinking, "Oh, my God," you know.

Demons come.

- The original plan was that Gregory and three Sherpas

were to carry the high camp.

One Sherpa had collapsed on the Col

and gone down previously,

leaving us two Sherpas.

On the morning of the day we intended to do the carry,

we poked our head into the pyramid tent

and found Sherpa Pemba in a very bad condition.

It was obvious that he wouldn't carry,

and so we had the job of sharing the load.

- First of all, early in the day, we knew

that we'd have to reorganize the loads and take more.

George Lowe and I and Ang Nyima

left about a quarter to 9:00.

- Ed and Tenzing left the South Col an hour behind us

to conserve their energy

and to go faster through our steps

and so conserve their oxygen.

And we took off carrying between 50 and 60 pounds,

and Ed, I think, we estimated his at 63 pounds,

which is quite an enormous load for that altitude.

The wind was very strong on the Col.

[wind whistling]

We had very difficult conditions.

We moved up this ridge, looking for a flat spot.

- For a long time,

we couldn't find a campsite,

until at last, Tenzing found one,

a nearly flat spot underneath a rocky bluff.

- They helped us to the highest camp ever put up on Everest

or any other mountain

at 27,900 feet.

- No one had ever camped this high before.

George Lowe and Alf Gregory take a few pictures

and then shake hands and say, "Well, bye now.

"Good luck.

We better be off down."

And then there's a wonderfully poignant moment.

- Ang Nyima is very tired.

He should go down, but he said to Dad that he wanted to stay

so he could make some tea

when they came down and helped them.

I know Dad was very touched by that.

But eventually they start back down again.

- Leaving Hillary and Tenzing completely alone.

- It was with certain feelings of sorrow

that we saw George and Greg and Sherpa Ang Nyima

descending down the mountain,

leaving us up there all alone.

We'd have much preferred to have a bit of company

for the night.

However, they had to get down.

Their oxygen was running short.

- You're totally on your own, really out on a limb.

There's no radio contact with anyone.

You could disappear and everyone will just wonder,

"Whatever happened to them?"

I think it would have been very exciting,

very lonely, and very scary.

[wind howling]

- Took us two hours of solid work to set up the tent

and two strips of ground a yard wide and ten feet long.

- Towards the top of Everest,

you get these very, very powerful winds,

and they were very precariously attached to this slope,

and all the time,

they're worried they can be blown off the mountain.

- When the wind gets up in the evening,

you're in quite a dangerous position

because you're pinned to the mountain.

The noise is really frightening.

[wind howling]

- That night was the coldest ever recorded

on the expedition.

- It's such a dehydrating environment,

and there's only one way to make water,

and that is, you have to melt snow or ice.

You're breathing eight times more than you are at sea level.

You can lose more than a liter a day

just from the heavy breathing at high altitude.

In addition, the air is so dry

that it sucks the moisture right from your skin.

- I made myself as comfortable as possible,

half sitting and half reclining on the upper shelf.

Wasn't comfortable,

but I could at least brace my feet and shoulders

to help our meager anchors hold the tent

in the gusts of wind.

- High-altitude climbing is all about being comfortable

in uncomfortable places.

He was very good at basic day-to-day survival,

as was Tenzing.

And I think that's where they really scored.

- Early in the night, the wind dropped.

We had some oxygen,

which we used for sleeping purposes

for about 4 hours out of the 16 hours we spent there.

For the four hours, at least, we did doze.

But as soon as the oxygen cut out,

we would immediately wake up and start feeling cold.

- He's all the time thinking,

"I don't want to use tomorrow's oxygen."

Little things go wrong.

They've lugged up an enormous black oxygen cylinder,

which they planned to use for sleeping oxygen,

but, unfortunately, having lugged this bottle up,

they discover that something has gone bad

with the adaptor for it,

so the bottle is useless.

- Well, I didn't have the complete conviction

that we were going to be successful.

I was very aware of the fact

that very good expeditions had attempted the mountain

and they got very high but had not succeeded.

- At 6:30 a.m., we started off from our tent.

We wasted no time in preparing

the oxygen apparatus and equipment.

- It's all about oxygen at this point.

Hillary is constantly thinking about this.

"How much oxygen do I need?

"What should the flow rate of the oxygen be?

"You know, if I have it flowing at a higher rate,

"then I feel better,

but I use up the bottle more quickly."

- It's very, very cold.

They measure it at below minus 25.

And that kind of profound bone-chilling cold

is almost like an assault.

You know, it's just grim.

- The team physiologist had said,

"When you get to high altitude,

"you've got to climb using your oxygen sets

"at a rate of four liters per minute.

"Anything less than that,

you're not gonna get real benefit from it."

- Our progress at first was pretty steady.

However, on examining the oxygen supplies

and found we couldn't go on our estimated four liters a minute

and have a chance of getting to the top,

had to cut it down to three.

- A fairly simple calculation about the oxygen flow rate

is unbelievably difficult up there

because you've got an addled, oxygen-deprived mind.

- After going for some time,

we reached the bottom of a 400-foot slope,

which led up the south summit,

and this slope was a tremendously steep one.

We felt that this slope could easily avalanche.

- There was a bit of a crust,

and so you'd think you were standing on firm ground,

and then it would give way,

and it would be powdery underneath.

So Hillary is anxious about that

and also the fear of avalanche.

And they have this exchange.

- I remember turning to Tenzing and saying to him,

"What do you think about it, Tenzing?"

And he said he didn't like it at all,

thought it was decidedly dangerous.

[ice crackling]

And then I said, "Well, what do you think?

Do you think we should go on?"

He said, "Just as you like."

We climbed up it with a good deal of fear and trepidation.

I think this is the first time

I've ever had to make a decision

as to whether something was justifiable or not.

Decided it wasn't justifiable, but we still went on.

- You're right on the edge of what's possible,

and every step you take is putting you more into danger,

so the temptation to turn around and go down is strong.

- I am frightened a great deal of the time

when I'm in dangerous country,

but I think being afraid is one of the important factors.

It's a stimulating factor.

Of course, if you just get petrified with fear,

then it would be hopeless.

- The crux of it is whether or not

you're gonna survive, you know.

None of that is guaranteed.

If anything goes wrong up there,

even a relatively minor accident

can very rapidly slide into a fatal one.

- It was a great relief

when we reached the south summit at 9:00 a.m.

Oxygen was running short,

so we wasted no time and set off along the ridge.

But we were moving slowly, and time was against us.

- Evans and Bourdillon had gone to the south summit

and had had reservations about the route ahead.

Evans had pointed out

that there was a very difficult knife-edged ridge.

It's serrated.

It's got these just horrifying drops on both sides.

They must have had concerns

about whether or not they could climb it.

- On the left, you've got the immense

southwest face of Everest.

And if you fell down that,

you'd probably fall all the way back down

to the Western Cwm 8,000 feet below.

And then to your right

is the even bigger precipice of the Kangshung Face,

and that really concentrates the mind.

- For the mountaineer,

the thought of the process of dying

is more unpleasant than the actual fact

that you may be dead at the end of it.

- In the meantime, watching from below, down at Camp Four,

we were all waiting most anxiously.

- Obviously, we'd hoped to have our little walkie-talkies going

right up to at least the South Col,

but the one that was taken to the South Col didn't work,

so, in fact, we realized we wouldn't actually know

whether Hillary and Tenzing had been successful

until they actually came down and told us.

- No one had any idea where they were,

how they were going, would they be successful,

or, indeed, would they come back.

[wind whistling]

- Our oxygen equipment was not all that sophisticated.

It only had a pressure gauge on it,

so I never really knew just how much oxygen still remained.

My brain was working fairly energetically

working out just how much time we had left.

- One of the problems with extreme-altitude climbing

is failure of oxygen systems.

And people die on a regular basis

when their oxygen pack's up.

- And then there's a bit of a problem,

and Tenzing is really struggling,

where before, he was following Hillary quite nicely.

- I suddenly noticed

that Tenzing seemed to be in some distress.

When I looked at him closely,

I saw that he was breathing very quickly, indeed.

I immediately examined his oxygen set

and found that the outlet from his oxygen mask

was almost completely blocked up with ice.

Fortunately, I was able to release this ice.

- Because you are suddenly hypoxic

and you're not thinking straight,

you may not immediately think,

"Oh, this is because my oxygen equipment isn't working right."

You just think, "Oh, my God.

I'm incredibly tired all of a sudden."

- You have this strange,

slightly surreal blur of images,

thoughts, and ideas going through your head.

[insects buzzing]

So you have to watch yourself

and watch each other very closely.

[wind whistling]

- After about an hour,

we had made quite a distance along the ridge,

and then we came to a rock bluff

which barred the way along the ridge.

And I really thought

that perhaps this was as far as we were going.

I took photographs

because the actual rock itself was very steep,

and we knew that it could stop us.

[camera shutter clicks]

- Was that step even climbable?

And was it climbable at 29,000 feet?

No one had ever gone there before.

- It's a hell of a step.

You look at that, and you think,

"Oh, my God, what a decision."

But Sir Ed took the gamble and said,

"What the hell?

I'm gonna go for it."

- The only way to climb it seemed to me

a crack where the ice was sticking to the rock.

And I wasn't at all sure that the ice would remain in place

when I was wriggling my way up.

I was scared stiff.

- He just set forth up this nearly vertical step

and wedged himself in this chimney,

more or less, with his feet, his cramponed feet,

pressing against the rocks on the left

and his back pushing out against the snow on the right

and just hoping that the snow wouldn't give way

and catapult him 11,000 feet

down the Kangshung Face,

because it's doubtful

whether Norgay could have held him

on the rope if he'd come off.

- Little slabs are breaking off,

and Dad was not really enjoying the conditions.

You know, if he was back in the Southern Alps,

he'd probably turn around and try it another day,

and then that little internal voice going,

"Ed, my boy, this is Everest.

You've got to go the extra distance."

- By jamming back on the ice with my crampons,

or ice spikes on my boots,

and scrambling on the rock in front,

I was able to wriggle and push my way up the crack

and onto the top.

After recovering my breath, took the rope in,

and with many a heave,

old Tenzing wriggling and scrambling the same,

got him onto the top of the rock too.

- There are times in life, you know,

when you have to be bold and decisive.

So much hung on Hillary's ability

to pull out all the stops,

and he was able to give it that little extra.

- When Hunt had to go down from the South Col,

he turned to Ed and he said,

"Look, you know, this is my last chance.

You're carrying a lot of people's hopes on your back."

- What would we do if they failed?

'Cause that was a feeling

particularly in John Hunt's mind.

I don't think anybody dared express an opinion.

- We continued on,

and we were getting distinctly tired and rather desperate,

for the summit seemed to be continually eluding us.

- Beyond the Hillary Step, it's still a fair distance,

horizontally, to the summit.

And you're going over three or four broad hammocks.

And as you get to the crest at one of these hammocks,

there's another one beyond.

And you think, "Is this ridge ever going to end?"

- There's just certain

human beings able to put one foot in front of the other,

you know, relentlessly,

psychologically able to do it,

whereas other people would fail.

- We cut steps along the top,

round bump after bump,

keeping looking for the top.

And finally, we actually reach the summit itself.

[triumphant music]

##

I looked at Tenzing,

and even underneath his oxygen mask and balaclava,

I could see his infectious grin of sheer pleasure.

We shook hands.

For Tenzing, this was not enough.

And we thumped each other on the back

until we had no breath left.

I glanced at my watch.

It was 11:30.

On top, we only spent a quarter of an hour.

We were conscious all the time

that our oxygen was running short

and that we had no time to waste

and that we must get down again.

I took my oxygen off in order to take photographs.

- Tenzing dug a little hole in the snow,

and in that, he put a gift to the gods.

- I had a good look around at the view,

and also, I took photographs

down all the main ridges of the mountain

just to have some proof that we'd been on top...

[camera shutter clicks]

[camera shutter clicks]

And photographed Tenzing waving his ice ax

with four flags tied to it.

[camera clicks]

- It was a tremendous moment for both of us.

[camera shutter clicks]

[triumphant music]

##

[relaxed rock music]

##

- # Mm #

# Only to be #

# I live in expectancy #

# No wonder it feels #

# Like this wasn't meant for me #

# But, girl, my mind is so confined #

# That there ain't no point in reasoning #

# Now that it's clear to see #

# It was all in front of me #

# And I'm right where I'm supposed to be #

# Yeah, yeah #

# I'll live just turning pages #

# Mm #

# Yeah #

# Well, I know that it's worth the ride #

# Ain't it good to be alive? #

##

# Mm #

# So what will it be? #

# My dreams are my company #

# To lose what is me #

# Or follow the path I see #

# Boy, my mind is so confined #

# That I don't even know where to begin #

# But it took me so long to find #

# That I can leave it all behind #

# 'Cause I've got everything I'd ever need #

# Yeah, yeah #

# I'll live just turning pages #

# Mm #

# Yeah #

# Well, I know that it's worth the ride #

# Ain't it good to be alive? #

##

# 'Cause only to be #

# Was all that you got from me #

# You told me it's real #

# And nothing comes easily #

# 'Cause that was the truth #

# I was losing all my youth #

# To a world that's meant #

# For someone else #

# Yeah #

# I'll live just turning pages #

# Mm #

# Yeah #

# Well, I know that it's worth the ride #

# Whoa, whoa, whoa #

# Yeah, yeah #

# I'll live just turning pages #

# Yeah, yeah #

# Yeah #

# But I know it was worth the ride #

# Ain't it good to be alive? #

# Alive #

# Ain't it good to be alive? #

# Alive #