Edmund Hillary & Tenzing Norgay Summit Everest (1953)
At 11:30 AM on May 29, 1953, New Zealand beekeeper Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay of Nepal stood on the summit of Mount Everest — 29,032 feet above sea level — becoming the first people confirmed to reach the highest point on Earth. The achievement, announced to the world on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, became an instant symbol of human determination and post-war optimism.
The Race to the Summit
By 1953, Everest had resisted more than a dozen serious attempts. The mountain straddles the border between Nepal and Tibet, and access to the Nepali southern approach had only opened in 1950. The British-led expedition of 1953 was meticulously organized by Colonel John Hunt, who assembled a team of ten climbers, including Hillary, a seasoned New Zealand alpinist who had climbed with the Himalayan Club, and Tenzing Norgay, the most experienced Everest guide of his era, having already reached the mountain's upper slopes on six previous expeditions. Hunt's strategy used a series of high camps to shuttle oxygen bottles and supplies up the mountain, allowing climbers to spend enough time at altitude to make a summit bid. A first attempt by Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans on May 26 reached the South Summit — about 300 feet below the top — before weather and oxygen problems forced a retreat. Hillary and Tenzing were selected for the second attempt.
Did You Know?
When asked who stepped onto the summit first, Hillary and Tenzing always said they reached it "together." In private, Hillary later acknowledged he was technically a step ahead, but both men agreed never to make it a point of rivalry — the achievement belonged to both of them equally.
The Final Climb
Hillary and Tenzing set out from Camp IX at 27,900 feet in the pre-dawn cold of May 29. A 40-foot near-vertical rock step — now called the Hillary Step — blocked the route near the summit ridge. Hillary squeezed himself up a crack between the rock face and an overhanging cornice of ice, then pulled Tenzing up behind him. The two men continued up the final slope and reached the top at 11:30 AM. Hillary later described shaking hands, then Tenzing throwing his arms around him. They spent about fifteen minutes on the summit: Hillary photographed Tenzing holding aloft ice axes bearing the flags of Nepal, Britain, the United Nations, and India; Tenzing made a small offering of food in the snow in accordance with Buddhist tradition. Hillary looked for signs of George Mallory, who had disappeared near the summit in 1924, but saw nothing. They descended safely to a lower camp, where expedition member George Lowe greeted them with hot soup.
Aftermath & Legacy
News of the summit reached London on the morning of June 2, 1953 — the day of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation — and was printed in The Times under the headline "The Crowning Glory." The timing made the ascent feel almost mythological. Hillary was knighted that same day; Tenzing received the George Medal (knighthoods were not available to non-Commonwealth citizens). Both men became global icons. Hillary went on to lead the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition and devoted much of his later life to building schools and hospitals for Sherpa communities in Nepal. Tenzing became director of field training at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute in Darjeeling. Since 1953, more than 6,000 climbers have reached Everest's summit, and the Hillary Step itself collapsed in the 2015 Nepal earthquake. But the first ascent remains one of the defining feats of the 20th century — proof that a planet's last great geographic prize could be won through teamwork, preparation, and sheer will.