Exploring Everest

Mount Everest is over 8,000 metres high and over 60 million years old. The rocky summit is covered in snow all year round.

Sir Edmund Hillary was an explorer and mountain climber. Together with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay from Nepal, he was the first to climb to the summit of Mount Everest.

Edmund Hillary was born in 1919 in Auckland, New Zealand. He became interested in climbing when he was 16 years old and climbed his first major mountain when he was 20 years old.

The government of Nepal only allowed one expedition of Mount Everest a year. In 1953, the British received approval to try to climb to the top of Everest. There were more than 400 climbers in the expedition team. They moved to a higher camp every few weeks and climbed the mountain in stages. At each stage fewer and fewer people continued to climb.

When they got to the final camp, they chose two teams to climb the last stage to the summit. One team was Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. On May 29th 1953, Hillary and Tenzing got their chance to try for the summit. They faced many difficulties along the way, including a 12-metre wall of rock that is now called ‘Hillary’s Step’. But they kept going and made it to the top in the end. They were the first people to climb to the top of the world! However, the air was so thin at the top that they could only stay there for a few minutes before they had to come back down.