1953 British Mount Everest expedition
News of the expedition's success reached London in time to be released on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, on 2 June that year.
Identified as the highest mountain in the world during the 1850s,[1] Everest became a subject of interest during the Golden age of alpinism, although its height made it questionable if it could ever be climbed.
Most early attempts on Everest were made from the north (Tibetan) side, but the Chinese Communist Revolution, and the subsequent annexation of Tibet by the People's Republic of China led to the closure of that route.
[9] George Band recalls Committee member Larry Kirwan, the Director-Secretary of the Royal Geographical Society, saying that "they had made the right decision but in the worst possible way".
[10] Hunt later wrote that the Joint Himalayan Committee had found the task of raising funds for the expedition challenging:[11] One of the principal tasks of the Joint Himalayan Committee in addition to those of conceiving the idea of an Everest expedition, seeking political sanction, deciding matters of policy in preparation, is to finance it.
Only those who have had this care can fully appreciate the work and anxiety of raising very substantial funds for an enterprise of this nature, coloured as it inevitably is in the mind of the public by a succession of failures, with no financial security other than the pockets of the Committee members themselves.Initial training took place in Snowdonia in Wales during the winter.
[13] Although a sea passage was cheaper, Hunt stated that the main reason for choosing it over an air journey was "the further chance which life in a ship would provide for us to settle down as a team in ideal conditions, accompanied by no discomfort, urgency or stress".
In early March twenty Sherpas, who had been chosen by the Himalayan Club, arrived in Kathmandu to help carry loads to the Western Cwm and the South Col.
They were led by their Sirdar, Tenzing Norgay, who was attempting Everest for the sixth time[16] and was, according to Band, "the best-known Sherpa climber and a mountaineer of world standing".
[19] A few days were then taken up, as planned, in establishing a route through the Khumbu Icefall, and once this had been opened teams of Sherpas moved tonnes of supplies up to Base.
[27] On 27 May, the expedition made its second assault on the summit with the second climbing pair, the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay from Nepal.
[31] Jan Morris, the correspondent on the spot of The Times newspaper, heard the news at Base Camp on 30 May and sent a coded message by runner to Namche Bazaar, where a wireless transmitter was used to forward it as a telegram to the British Embassy in Kathmandu.
[note 1] The message was received and understood in London in time for the news to be released, by coincidence, on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation on 2 June.
[42] On 22 June, the Government of Nepal gave a reception for the members of the expedition at which the senior queen of the country presented Tenzing with a purse of ten thousand rupees, which was then about £500.
[51] The expedition's cameraman, Tom Stobart, produced a film called The Conquest of Everest, which appeared later in 1953 [52] and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
[53] Although Hillary and Tenzing represented their triumph as belonging to a team effort by the whole of the expedition, there was intense speculation as to which of the two men had actually been first to set foot on the summit of Everest.
Finally I cut around the back of an extra large lump and then on a tight rope from Tenzing I climbed up a gentle snow ridge to its top.
[6] The mountaineers were accompanied by Jan Morris, the correspondent of The Times newspaper of London, and by 362 porters, so that the expedition in the end amounted to over four hundred men, including twenty Sherpa guides from Tibet and Nepal, with a total weight of ten thousand pounds of baggage.
