On 29 May 1953, Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest. Their final push was only the last part of a much larger expedition. The route climbed from the Khumbu Glacier through a shifting icefall, crossed the high Western Cwm, rose up the Lhotse Face to the South Col, and then followed the narrow southeast ridge toward the summit. Seen on a map, the achievement becomes more than a single point at 8,849 metres. Each stage solved a different problem: unstable ice, enclosed glacier, steep face, altitude, exposed ridge — and finally the obstacle that would later carry Hillary’s name.
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生田北８６号線, Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture, Japan
The British expedition established Base Camp on the Khumbu Glacier in April 1953. From here, supplies, climbers and Sherpas had to be moved progressively higher through a chain of camps. The scale was enormous compared with the two men eventually photographed at the top: hundreds of porters had helped move equipment toward Everest, while the climbing team spent weeks building and supplying the route above. For Hillary and Tenzing, the summit attempt began with infrastructure laid by an entire expedition.
28.0073°N · 86.8594°E
Nepal
Immediately above Base Camp stood one of the route’s most dangerous sections: the Khumbu Icefall. The glacier breaks here into towers, blocks and deep crevasses that shift as the ice moves downhill. Hillary had already helped force a way through this terrain during the expedition, building on reconnaissance work from earlier attempts. Before the climbers could even approach Everest’s upper slopes, the expedition had to establish a repeatable route through moving ice.
Nepal
At the head of the Western Cwm, progress changed from crossing a glacier to climbing the steep Lhotse Face. The 1953 expedition followed the line pioneered by the Swiss the previous year. Cutting and securing a route up the hard ice took time, and the British team needed twelve days to regain the Swiss line toward the South Col. This face was the gateway to the high saddle from which a summit attempt could finally begin.
27.9833°N · 86.9333°E
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The South Col is the high saddle between Everest and Lhotse. The expedition finally established itself here on 21 May. At nearly 8,000 metres, it became the staging point for the summit attempts. Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans went first, reaching the South Summit on 26 May before oxygen problems and exhaustion forced them back. Hillary and Tenzing would be the second summit pair.
27.9750°N · 86.9321°E
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On 28 May, George Lowe, Alfred Gregory and Ang Nyima helped carry supplies higher up the ridge and established the final camp for Hillary and Tenzing. The two men spent the night at roughly 8,500 metres. The following morning they prepared their oxygen equipment and left at about 6:30. From here there would be no more camps between them and the summit.
27.9796°N · 86.9294°E
Nepal
Hillary and Tenzing reached the South Summit at about 9 a.m. From here the true summit looked close, but the remaining ridge was exposed and technically harder than the distance suggested. Three days earlier, Bourdillon and Evans had reached this same point before turning back. For Hillary and Tenzing, the crucial difference was that they still had time, strength and functioning oxygen to continue.
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Between the South Summit and the top stood a steep rock step of roughly 12 metres. Hillary found a narrow gap between the rock and an adjoining ridge of ice and climbed through it, with Tenzing following. The obstacle later became known as the Hillary Step. Once above it, the pair still had to climb the final snow slopes, but the most difficult technical obstacle on the upper ridge was behind them.
Nepal
At 11:30 a.m. on 29 May, Hillary and Tenzing reached the summit. They remained there for roughly fifteen minutes. Hillary photographed Tenzing holding his ice axe; Tenzing did not photograph Hillary because he had never used a camera. They looked for signs that George Mallory and Andrew Irvine might have reached the summit in 1924, but found none. The famous question of who stepped onto the summit first was deliberately played down by both men. Tenzing later wrote that Hillary had gone ahead — but both regarded the ascent as a shared achievement.
