The death of a true New Zealander

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Axver

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Sir Edmund Hillary, the ordinary yet great man who "knocked the bastard off" and climbed Mount Everest first, died this morning in Auckland aged 88. If anybody embodied what it means to be a New Zealander, Sir Edmund certainly did. He was an ordinary man - he often described himself as "mediocre" - who had a keen sense of adventure that drove him to explore and to climb mountains. And that took him from a small country Kiwi town to the very top of the world. His entire life stands as testimony to his good nature, from his philanthropic endeavours in the Himalaya region to never losing his genuine modesty and good humour in the face of becoming the subject of public reverence, an icon - the icon - of New Zealand. He did not even confirm that he, rather than sherpa Tenzing Norgay, was first to step foot on the very peak of Everest until over two decades after the fact. Beyond all rugby players, beyond all politicians, beyond all others - he epitomised being a Kiwi.

We turn away to face the cold, enduring chill
As the day begs the night for mercy, love
The sun's so bright it leaves no shadows, only scars
Carved into stop on the face of earth
The moon is up and over One Tree Hill
We see the sun go down in your eyes
You run like a river runs to the sea
You run like a river to the sea


The world is now truly a lesser place. Goodbye and RIP, Sir Edmund.

20 July 1919 - 11 January 2008
 
Wonderful man, and an inspiration to all who wish to be kind, adventurous, and inspiring.
 
BluRmGrl said:
That was lovely, Axver... a very fitting tribute to an amazing man.

Thanks. For me, this really is the loss of a childhood hero - I grew up with Sir Edmund at the top of the heap of great people. It's hard to believe he's gone.

And for anyone wondering about the quote I included near the start, it's from Sir Edmund's first words to George Lowe, the first person he and Norgay met on their way back down from the summit of Everest:

"Well George, we finally knocked the bastard off."

One of the most famous quotes in Kiwi history.

Sir Edmund was also the only living person to be put on a New Zealand banknote, the $5 note. I've one that I don't plan to ever spend.
 
Lovely tribute for a man that did so much in life. :up:
 
Eloquent tribute, Axver. thanks for that.

On a side note--I'm going to New Zealand for the first time in my life in March. I can't wait!
 
I'd say being the first to climb Everest was actually one of his lesser achievments. Truly a remarkable man. He lived a good life. RIP.
 
catehope said:
First documented white man. Not the first ever.

Rubbish.

Sir Edmund was the first to "knock the bastard off", with sherpa Tenzing Norgay immediately behind him - and Sir Edmund, to his eternal credit, always emphasised that the two of them together reached the top and that the order with which they put their foot on the summit was irrelevant.

Any undocumented climber such as what you seem to be theorising would have had to have had the most extraordinary lungs in human history. In other words, I don't see how it would have been even possible for someone else to have made it before the successful Hillary/Norgay climb. Even well-funded European expeditions with the most modern mountaineering equipment of the times failed in the 1920s-30s.

We don't need people like you trying to water down this great man's achievement with racial red herrings in a thread like this anyway.
 
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indra said:
I'd say being the first to climb Everest was actually one of his lesser achievments. Truly a remarkable man. He lived a good life. RIP.

Absolutely - his work with the Sherpa people was just exceptional. The man clearly cared about the people of that region very deeply.

Also, I've got to admit that another one of his achievements that I think is awesome, but for an entirely different reason, is that he became the first person to drive to the South Pole - and he did it in a farm tractor!

maycocksean said:
On a side note--I'm going to New Zealand for the first time in my life in March. I can't wait!

Awesome - which parts of the country are you visiting? I'm a North Islander myself, from just outside Wellington, but I think the South Island is easily the better island from a tourist perspective. Places like Kaikoura, Wanaka, and really anywhere in Fjordland are just stunning.
 
coolian2 said:


I love that. Snow tyres? Fuck snow tyres!




Not even worth responding to.

Erm...is that not a response?

I'm not saying that what he did wasn't brilliant, point is give credit where credit is due. Many sherpa's came before Tenzing and Sir Edmund.

He, and Tenzing for that matter, are only the first documented. I guess I'm somewhat correcting my own original statement, fancy that.
 
catehope said:
Many sherpa's came before Tenzing and Sir Edmund.

Er ... how? Even with the best mountaineering equipment of the 1920s-30s, nobody could make it.

Hillary and Tenzing were the first. Unless you're going to put forth the Mallory theory (which seems to be largely debunked now), I don't think there's any serious dispute that nobody had reached the summit beforehand.
 
R.I.P.

For what it's worth, the local man I hired for the day as a guide when I visited some villages in that area (Solukhumbu) back when I was doing my dissertation research--he was Newar though, not Sherpa--said that prior to Westerners' arrival in the region, locals would have considered climbing to Everest's summit "sacrilegious," as it was one of several peaks in the area considered to be the abodes of goddesses. Assuming this was true, even so, I suppose you could still question whether that's perhaps more of a chicken-or-egg rationalization, since there certainly are other very tall--but far more readily ascendable--mountains in the area which have shrines to the goddess/spirits of the mountain built on their summits (of course there could be other explanations for that too, such as different ethnic/caste/sectarian groups with different religious sensibilities). But at any rate, that's what he told me.

It is possible to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen though, no? I didn't do any actual 'mountaineering' while I was there, just some very high-altitude walking between villages, but certainly from having done that I can attest to the fact that, like mountain peoples everywhere, the locals' lungs and circulatory systems are obviously FAR better adapted to the thin air than ours are. I've run more than a dozen marathons and considered myself in pretty good shape at the time, but still I was huffing and puffing just toting my little day-pack up those footpaths, and felt totally humiliated how all these wizened old local women carrying huge loads of stuff on their backs we kept encountering were obviously having a much easier time of it than I was!
 
Axver said:


Awesome - which parts of the country are you visiting? I'm a North Islander myself, from just outside Wellington, but I think the South Island is easily the better island from a tourist perspective. Places like Kaikoura, Wanaka, and really anywhere in Fjordland are just stunning.

The plan is for the South Island, flying in to Christchurch and going from there. We've only got about a week so we won't be able to see as much as we'd like.
 
Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler were the first to climb Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen in 1978, and Reinhold Messner even did a solo climb two years later.

In the 1970s, Messner championed the cause for ascending Mount Everest without supplementary oxygen, saying that he would do it "by fair means" or not at all.[2] In 1978, he summited Everest with Peter Habeler.[3] He later summited Everest on the Tibetan side in 1980, the first solo summit. This was the first time anyone had been that high without bottled oxygen and Messner and Habeler proved what most doctors, specialists, and mountaineers thought impossible. It changed mountaineering forever.

I think it was a great accomplishment by Hillary to climb Mount Everest, and being so humble about it and treating Tenzing Norgay this respectfully is something to admire in my eyes.

It's nice to see that he enjoyed such a long life.
 
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