The month was May. The year was 1953. The place was Mount Everest.
People from all over had tried to reach the top. No one had done it. This year it would be different. At least that is what one group of climbers believed.
Fourteen strong climbers set out for the top of Mount Everest. On May 26, two members of the group left camp. They began the trek to the top. They were 300 feet away. Their air tanks broke down. They had to go back.
Next, it was Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay’s turn. The men left camp on the 28th. They had to stand on a narrow ice shelf. They had to climb a rock step 40 feet high. At night, they set up camp and went to sleep. The next morning, they set out again. At 11:30 a.m., they turned the last corner.
“At that great moment for which I had waited all my life, my mountain did not seem to me a lifeless thing of rock and ice, but warm and friendly and living.”
—Tiger of the Snows, The Autobiography of Tenzing of Everest
