Because it is there: The lure of climbing Mount Everest

Mountaineers making their way to the summit of Mount Everest, by ascending on the south face from Nepal. Photo: AFP/Phunjo Lama

On May 29, 1953 when Edmund Hillary (a reclusive beekeeper from Auckland, New Zealand) and his intrepid Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay emerged above the clouds to finally ruffle Mount Everest’s 8,848m killer peak, it was the culmination of decades of romantic endeavour at the lung-bursting limits of human endurance. No mortal had set foot this high before. Sagarmatha, or Chomolungma, as the mountain is reverentially known in the Nepalese and Tibetan vernacular, was exclusively the abode of the Gods.

Later, in typically understated fashion – entirely without artifice or in the glare of media flashbulbs – Hillary said in an aside to a climbing companion, “Well George, we knocked the b-----d off”.