Summiting Everest: How a Photograph Celebrates Teamwork at the Top of the World
27,900 feet and there at 3 o’clock in the afternoon George Lowe Ang Nyima and I turned to go down leaving Ed Hillary and Tenzing to their lonely vigil of the night of May 28th Hillary left and Norgay moments before being left alone on the mountain But Gregory does not mention something else he did before heading down the mountain He pulled a small camera from under his down suit and snapped a quick picture Hillary and Norgay on the rocky slope of Everest the Himalayas spread behind them in all their vast snowy glory It was the highest any photographer had ever taken a picture For six weeks the team had been alone in the hidden world of Everest Only they had seen the dangerous beauty of the deep-blue ice crevasses and the brilliant sun reflecting off
the smooth snow Only they had seen the Sherpas climbing ladders while carrying loads affixed to their bodies by headbands With a click of his camera’s shutter Gregory opened this hidden world for the rest of humanity to share As he wrote in the introduction to The Picture of Everest Neither I nor the pictures themselves can tell much of the struggle in the rarified air or the unbelievable fatigue that can come to a climber toiling up the last slopes of the mountain where he almost reaches the end of human endurance and lives at the physical limit of possible life but these pictures will perhaps bring you nearer to our adventure and say a little of why men climb
Chapter Two A CRACK AT EVEREST After George Mallory and Sandy Irvine died on Everest in 1924 there were no more expeditions for almost a decade Another attempt by the British in 1933 was a failure with the team worn down by the altitude and hallucinating invisible companions and pulsating objects in the sky Other attempts during the 1930s got no higher But once World War II was over the British were ready to try for the summit again And they had a new route to try Earlier expeditions had climbed Everest from the north starting in Tibet But now with the shifting postwar political landscape Tibet was closed to outsiders On the other hand Nepal which had been closed to foreigners for decades was now opening its borders Members of an exploratory expedition thought the Everest summit could be approached from a new direction the south starting in Nepal But just as today an expedition could not climb Everest without a permit issued by the government in this case the government of Nepal Only one group was allowed on the mountain per year And it just so happened that a Swiss team had applied for a permit right before the British They had first crack at the summit If they succeeded they would receive the worldwide acclaim that came with being the first team to climb Everest Only if they failed would the British have a shot In 1952 the Swiss expedition began its trek up the mountain One of its members was a man who would soon have a very important place in history Tenzing Norgay He was a Sherpa a member of a Himalayan ethnic group living in Tibet and Nepal Sherpas have
lived for hundreds of years in a group of valleys at the base of the slopes of Mount Everest For centuries the Sherpas in this rugged region had farmed herded yaks and traded goods But Sherpa culture changed forever in 1921 when the British took their first expedition to Mount Everest Tenzing Norgay atop a peak in Nepal
