High Adventure

Sir Edmund Hillary

Description

In 1953, when he was thirty-three years old, Edmund Hillary became the first man to stand at the summit of Mount Everest, the Holy Grail for a generation of mountain climbers who had tried and failed to reach the highest point on earth (29,035 feet). High Adventure is Hillary’s definitive and wonderfully entertaining memoir of his Himalayan quest, beginning with the 1951 expedition that discovered a possible route up the south slope of Everest, and culminating in the successful expedition of 1953 led by Sir John Hunt. Hillary’s memoir takes us step-by step up the slopes of Everest, describing vividly and in great detail the agonizing climb that he and Tenzing Norgay embarked upon, the perils they faced, and the dramatic final ascent that forever secured them a place of honour in the annals of human exploration. High Adventure is a mountaineering classic, to be sure. But it is also a thrilling and inspiring story of courage and endurance – a story that will captivate a new generation of readers on the 60th anniversary of Hillary’s extraordinary achievement.

Sujets

• Special Interest
• Adventure (Guyana)
• Monte Everest
• Travel
• Mount Everest
• Himalayas
• Writing
• Mountaineering
• Adventure
• Mount
• Mountain
• India
• Everest

Informations

• Publié par: Roli Books
• Date de parution: 01 mai 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788174369949
• Langue: English

Extrait

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© Edmund Hillary, 1955

Hardback edition published in 2003 by Roli Books Pvt. Ltd. by arrangement with Book Creation, LLC
216 East 49 th Street, 3 rd floor, New York, NY 10017, and the author.
For sale in Southeast Asia only.
First published by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd, 1955 This paperback edition, 2013
The Lotus Collection An imprint of Roli Books Pvt. Ltd M-75, Greater Kailash II Market, New Delhi 110 048 Phone: ++91 (011) 4068 2000 Fax: ++91 (011) 2921 7185 E-mail: [e-mail] Website: www.rolibooks.com Also at Bengaluru, Chennai, & Mumbai
Cover Design : Bonita Vaz-Shimray
Production : Shaji Sahadevan
Photographs are copyright and reproduced under licence by The Royal Geographical Society, London. All rights reserved.
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
ISBN: 978-81-7436-939-0


Preface to the Anniversary Edition
Ever since I reached the summit of Mount Everest fifty years ago the media have classified me as a hero, but I have always recognized myself as being a person of modest abilities. My achievements have resulted from a goodly share of imagination and plenty of energy.
Modern developments in technology and equipment have produced major changes in the techniques of exploration. Aircraft and vehicles are in many cases replacing the human legs; oxygen bottles are giving new strength to air-starved lungs in the thin air that clothes the highest peaks; and satellite communication has removed the loneliness from even the most desolate spaces. But despite all this I firmly believe that in the end it is the man himself that counts. When the going gets tough and things go wrong the same qualities are needed to win through as they were in the past—qualities of courage, resourcefulness, the ability to put up with discomfort and hardship, and the enthusiasm to hold tight to an ideal and to see it through with doggedness and determination.
The explorers of the past were great men and we should honour them. But let us not forget that their spirit still lives on. Today, it is still not hard to find a man who will adventure for the sake of a dream or one who will search, for the pleasure of searching, and not for what he may find.

Sir Edmund Hillary

Author’s Preface to First Edition
This book makes no attempt to be an official account of any of the expeditions in which I have taken part. It is simply a personal record of my own part in them. Inevitably many of my companions are hardly mentioned, merely because they didn’t happen to be doing the same job as myself.
I have gained much from the mountains, and not least has been the companionship and friendship of many fine mountaineers.
IT IS TO FOUR OF THESE MEN
THAT I WOULD DEDICATE THIS BOOK
TO
HARRY AYRES
for his superb mastery of snow and ice
TO
ERIC SHIPTON
for his inspiration and unquenchable spirit
TO
JOHN HUNT
for his courage and singleness of purpose
AND
TO MY OLD FRIEND
GEORGE LOWE
for so many years of cheerful comradeship
Sir Edmund Hillary
A UCKLAND ,
March 1955.

Contents
One FIRST FOOTSTEPS
Two TO EVEREST, 1951
Three DISCOVERY OF THE SOUTHERN ROUTE
Four PREPARATION ON CHO OYU
Five ACROSS THE NUP LA
Six THE SWISS ATTACK
Seven EVEREST 1953 —THE FIRST BARRIER
Eight THE SECOND BARRIER
Nine SOUTH COL
Ten CAMP NINE
Eleven SUMMIT
Twelve ADVENTURE’S END
Glossary AN EXPLANATION OF SOME OF THETERMS USED IN THIS BOOK
Maps

CHAPTER ONE
First Footsteps
I WAS SIXTEEN BEFORE I ever saw a mountain. My father’s rapidly expanding bee business had occupied all my holidays and I’d learned to do a full-size job before I entered my teens. But in the winter of 1935 I’d saved a little money and I was allowed to join a School Skiing Party to Ruapehu—one of our large New Zealand volcanoes. I was in the Lower Sixth Form at the time—a tall, bony, clumsy-looking youth, far from being the brightest lad in the class; and I don’t think I’d been more than fifty miles outside of Auckland. I’d heard glowing tales from the other boys about skiing holidays, but it didn’t mean a great deal to me—all I wanted was a chance to see the world.
I saw my first snow at midnight when we stepped off our train at the National Park station. There wasn’t much of it but it was a tremendous thrill and before long snowballs, as hard as iron, were flying through the air. And as our bus carried us steadily up towards the Château, perched high on the mountainside, its powerful lights sparked into life a fairyland of glistening snow and stunted pines and frozen streams. When I crawled into my bunk at two in the morning, I felt I was in a strange and exciting new world.
For ten glorious days we skied and played on the lower slopes of the mountain and I don’t think I ever looked towards the summit. We had been told the upper parts of the mountain were dangerous and I viewed them with respect and fear. I never dared to venture on them. I returned home in a glow of fiery enthusiasm for the sun and the cold and the snow— especially the snow!
But I didn’t see a great deal of the snow in the next few years. It took two years of university life to convince my parents that I was unsuited to an academic career. I don’t think I was particularly dull, but I was certainly lazy and couldn’t work up much interest in a lecture on solid geometry. So I joined my father’s business and became a full-time beekeeper.
It was a good life—a life of open air and sun and hard physical work. And in its way it was a life of uncertainty and adventure; a constant fight against the vagaries of the weather and a mad rush when all our 1,600 hives decided to swarm at once. We never knew what our crop would be until the last pound of honey had been taken off the hives. But all through the exciting months of the honey-flow, the dream of a bumper crop would drive us on through long hard hours of labour. I think we were incurable optimists. And during the winter I often tramped around our lovely bush-clad hills and learned a little about self-reliance and felt the first faint stirrings of interest in the unknown.
When I was twenty years old I had my first long trip. With an older friend I visited the South Island of New Zealand. One of our plans was to spend two days at a famous tourist resort, The Hermitage, right in the heart of the giant peaks of the Southern Alps.
We had a magnificent drive through the mountains and arrived at The Hermitage in the early afternoon. It was a perfect day and the great peaks around seemed to tower over our heads. I looked on them with a growing feeling of excitement—the great rock walls, the hanging glaciers and the avalanche-strewn slopes. And then, strangely stirred by it all, I felt restless for action and decided to go for a walk. The nearest snow I could see was high up in a gully in the Sealy Range behind the hotel. I set off towards it. For a long time I climbed upwards, stumbling over the loose rocks in my light shoes. I soon realized it was much farther than I had judged, but for some reason I kept on going. And at last I reached it—a tattered remnant of old avalanche snow spanning a mountain torrent. In an excess of enthusiasm I kicked steps up and down it and then, with an astonishing sense of achievement, I climbed back down the long slopes to The Hermitage.
As I sat in the lounge that evening, I felt restless and excited. And then the hum of voices suddenly hushed and I looked up to see two young men coming into the room. They were fit and tanned; they had an unmistakable air of competence about them. I could hear a whisper going around the room: ‘They’ve just climbed Mount Cook.’ And soon they were the centre of an admiring group. As I hovered a little forlornly on the outside, I heard one of them say: ‘I was pretty tired when we got to the ice cap, but Harry was like a tiger and almost dragged me to the top.’ It wasn’t until some years later that I found out that they were Stevenson and Dick, a famous climbing partnership and they’d just completed the first Grand Traverse of Mount Cook from north to south.
I retreated to a corner of the lounge filled with a sense of futility at the dull, mundane nature of my existence. Those chaps, now, were really getting a bit of excitement out of life. I decided there and then to take up mountaineering. Tomorrow I’d climb something!
I approached my companion and