Beyond the Edge Page #2

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was an essential part of my policy

of acclimatisation,

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,

"We want to be in a position

to climb Everest on May 15,"

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

and 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, didn't you?

Oh, yes,

I started in New Zealand.

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 mountains,

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

going to take up mountaineering,

Well, after 17 days

our caravans arrived at the Monastery of

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 had 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

at climbing on Mount Everest

than anyone else,

Without the Sherpas

you can't climb Everest

and my father was the head man,

People respected him,

They knew that he had been climbing

Everest with foreigners since 1935,

You know, he'd 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

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