Hillary and Norgay become first humans to summit Mount Everest

Story: 1953 C.E.  |  Last updated: January 1, 1953

At 11:30 in the morning on May 29, 1953 C.E., two men stood on the roof of the world. Edmund Hillary, a beekeeper from New Zealand, and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa climber born in the borderlands between Nepal and Tibet, had just accomplished what many had called impossible: reaching the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth at 29,035 feet (8,850 meters). Hillary extended his hand. Norgay pulled him into a hug.

Key facts

• Mount Everest summit: Hillary and Norgay reached the top at 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953 C.E., after departing their highest camp at 6:30 a.m. that morning.
• Tenzing Norgay’s role: Norgay was not merely a guide — he was a highly experienced high-altitude climber who had attempted Everest multiple times before 1953 C.E. and whose Sherpa heritage gave him a physiological and cultural edge at extreme altitude.
• British Everest Expedition: The climb was part of a coordinated, 11-person British-led effort commanded by Colonel John Hunt, which established nine camps on the mountain and sent two summit teams before Hillary and Norgay succeeded.

The mountain that defied reaching

Mount Everest sits along the border of Nepal and Tibet, China, in the Himalayan range. For generations, the peak had drawn explorers and climbers who found it brutally resistant to human ambition.

The most haunting earlier attempt came in 1924 C.E., when British climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine were last seen near 28,000 feet — still moving upward. Neither man returned. Whether they reached the summit before dying remains one of mountaineering’s enduring mysteries. Mallory’s body was found on the mountain in 1999 C.E., but the question of how high he climbed is still debated by historians and climbers alike.

The dangers were not merely romantic. Above 8,000 feet, the human body struggles to extract enough oxygen from the thin air, a condition known as hypoxia. Symptoms range from headaches and fatigue to dementia, loss of coordination, and coma. Climbers must spend weeks slowly acclimatizing — pushing higher, retreating, pushing higher again — just to give their bodies a chance to adapt. Even then, survival is not guaranteed.

How the 1953 C.E. expedition was built

Colonel John Hunt organized the British Everest Expedition of 1953 C.E. with meticulous care. He assembled a team of experienced climbers from across the British Commonwealth and beyond, selected two summit teams, and established nine camps up the mountain, some of which are still used today.

The first summit team — Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans — departed on May 26, 1953 C.E. They climbed to within approximately 300 feet of the top, higher than any human had ever been. Then bad weather, a fall, and oxygen equipment failures forced them to turn back.

Hillary and Norgay were the second team. They woke at 4 a.m. on May 29. Hillary’s boots had frozen solid overnight. He spent two hours thawing them before the pair could even begin. They set off at 6:30 a.m., moving carefully through conditions that had already defeated the first team.

One near-impassable rock face blocked their route. Hillary found a way to squeeze through a crack between the rock and an adjacent ice wall. Climbers now call it Hillary’s Step.

Fifteen minutes at the top of the world

At the summit, they had only 15 minutes before their oxygen supply demanded they descend. Norgay left a food offering in the snow — a quiet act of reverence. Hillary took photographs and searched the area for any trace of Mallory and Irvine. He found none.

The pair then began the long descent. When Hillary encountered his New Zealand teammate George Lowe lower on the mountain, his reported words were characteristically blunt: “Well, George, we’ve knocked the bastard off.”

News reached the outside world within days. Both men became global figures almost overnight. Queen Elizabeth II knighted Hillary. Norgay received the George Medal. In Nepal, Norgay was celebrated as a national hero — a man whose people had long carried the expeditions of others to within reach of a summit that now bore his footprints.

Lasting impact

The first ascent of Everest opened mountaineering’s modern era. Within years, every one of the world’s 14 peaks above 8,000 meters had been summited. The physiological research that supported the 1953 C.E. expedition — including the work of the team’s physiologist — helped deepen understanding of how the human body performs under extreme oxygen deprivation, with implications that extended into medicine and aviation.

Hillary went on to devote much of his post-climbing life to building schools and hospitals in Nepal through the Himalayan Trust, an organization he founded in 1960 C.E. His partnership with the Sherpa community outlasted the climb itself.

Norgay’s achievement also elevated global awareness of the Sherpa people, whose skill, endurance, and deep knowledge of high-altitude terrain had been essential to virtually every serious Himalayan expedition before and after 1953 C.E. Their contributions had long been undercounted in Western accounts of Himalayan exploration.

Blindspots and limits

The 1953 C.E. expedition was a British-organized effort, and much of the early global coverage framed the climb through that lens — sometimes sidelining Norgay’s equal role or treating him as support rather than co-summiteer. Norgay himself later noted the importance of being recognized as a full partner in the climb, not a guide. The Sherpa community more broadly has faced decades of underrecognition for the physical and logistical labor that makes Everest ascents possible — labor that carries enormous personal risk, as the mountain’s history of Sherpa casualties makes plain. Today, with hundreds of climbers attempting the summit each season, questions about crowding, commercialization, and environmental degradation on the mountain remain unresolved.

Read more

For more on this story, see: ThoughtCo — The First to Climb Mount Everest

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