'This was a mountain that he had to climb': How Hillary and Tenzing survived the 'death zone' to conquer Everest

To reach Everest's summit Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had to climb sheer rock, while battling treacherous ice and a deadly lack of oxygen on the most dangerous part of the mountain. Seventy-two years ago, they shared their victory with the BBC.

"I think my first reaction was definitely one of relief," New Zealander Edmund Hillary told the BBC on 3 July 1953, as he described how he and Nepalese sherpa Tenzing Norgay felt when they stood on the highest point on Earth. "Relief that we had found the summit for one thing and relief that we were there." Tenzing too, having survived the precarious icy terrain and the biting cold, said through his translator, the expedition's team leader Colonel John Hunt, that his first feeling on reaching the top was "immense relief", followed by joy. This was because in order to stand on Everest's summit the two men had managed to scale a seemingly insurmountable sheer 40ft vertical rock face in the mountain's most treacherous region – the infamous "death zone".

The mountain, which towers 8,849m (29,032ft) above sea level, straddling the border of Nepal and Tibet, goes by many names. The British named it after surveyor George Everest in 1856, but it has long been known locally as Sagarmatha in Nepal and is called Chomolungma, meaning goddess mother of the world, in Tibet.

The death zone was a term given to a particular section of Everest by Edouard Wyss-Dunant, a doctor who led the Swiss attempt to scale it in 1952. Tenzing had been a member of this expedition, too. The moniker refers to the altitude that climbers reach on the mountain – 8,000m (26,000ft) above sea level – where the low-oxygen atmosphere starts to have disastrous effects on their physiology and their cells start to die. The majority of the climbers who have died on Everest have met their end in the death zone.

Humans have simply not evolved to survive in the incredibly cold temperatures, brutal winds and lack of oxygen that exists there. The thinness of the atmosphere means that mountaineers suffer hypoxia, where their vital organs do not get enough oxygen and bodies begin to break down. As their brains and lungs get starved of oxygen, their heart rate spikes, increasing their risk of a heart attack. The shortage of oxygen to the brain causes it to swell, triggering headaches, nausea and quickly impairing a climber's judgment and ability to make decisions, especially when they are under stress. As their brains swell, mountaineers have been known to experience delirium, talking to people who aren't there, burrowing in the snow or even shedding their clothing.

Tenzing and Hillary – along with the others on the expedition – had planned for this slowly acclimating themselves to the harsh conditions in the Himalayas by establishing a series of camps at increasing altitudes, gradually making their way up the mountain through April and May, 1953. This allowed their bodies time to expand their lung capacity and produce more haemoglobin – the protein in red blood cells that helps carry oxygen from the lungs to the other parts of the body – to compensate for the decreasing oxygen as they moved towards Everest's peak. But this acclimatisation was also not without risk for the team as too much haemoglobin thickens the blood. This makes circulation more difficult, which increases the likelihood of a stroke and accumulation of fluid in the lungs.

However, it is virtually impossible to acclimatise your body at any altitude above 6,000m (19,700ft) and the vertical rock face they needed to scale that sat 8,790m (28,839ft) above sea level. So, the climbers had brought with them specially designed oxygen apparatus, which would help combat the effects of the altitude's atmosphere. But they were under no illusion about the magnitude of the challenge facing them. Three days earlier the expedition's primary climbing team, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans, came within 100m (328 ft) of the summit. But, exhausted by the climb, beset by malfunctioning oxygen sets and battered by freezing winds, they had been forced to turn back before reaching the top.

In the early hours of 29 May 1953, Tenzing and Hillary began the expedition's second attempt, battling their way through the snow along the exposed ridgeline towards the peak. As they scrambled over icy ridges, the New Zealand mountaineer started having his own doubts about if they could go on, Hillary's son, Peter, told BBC Witness History in 2023.

"One of the things I remember most is his description of moving up the steep snow and ice flanks up towards the south summit. He says he was out in front, cutting these steps, great sheet of snow and ice breaking loose, and just taking off down these steep slopes into the Kangshung Face (eastern-facing side) of Everest dropping down into Tibet. And he said, and I have seen it in his diary as well, he started having some doubts about the conditions, whether it was safe to go on," he said. "I always remember him telling this story with a twinkle in his eye and a wry smile, and he looked down at Tenzing and he said they both smiled at each other and kept on going despite those conditions."

Hillary’s climbing companion Tenzing felt it was his destiny, that he "had a calling for this mountain. It was a special mountain for him," his son Jamling Norgay, told BBC Witness History in 2023. "He had tried to climb this mountain six times already over a period of over 21 years. The attempt one year before with the Swiss he had reached almost 400m from the summit and had to turn back. He always felt this was a mountain that he had to climb," he said.

The exposed sheer vertical rock face was the last major barrier that stood between the two climbers and their goal. Its smooth surface with seemingly no foot or hand holds, appeared impossible to climb. With a rope attached to him held by Tenzing, Hillary wedged his body into a narrow crack between the rock face and an adjacent ridge of ice, praying that the ice didn't give way. He then slowly and painstakingly inched his way up. When he reached the top, he threw down the rope to Tenzing who followed him up. The rock face he had managed to shimmy up would later be named the Hillary Step in his honour. It was destroyed by a devastating earthquake in 2015.

"The last few moments, we were going along the ridge and we couldn't see the summit of the ridge," Hillary told the BBC in 1953. "It kept running away to the right from us and we came round the last bump, and we found the ridge dropping away to the north which was quite a relief, so we looked up and there was the summit just 30, 40ft above us. So, we cut up on the summit and stepped on it."

As the two climbers stood on the top of the world, they embraced each other in elation. Hillary took out his camera and began photographing Tenzing waving his ice axe strung with the flags of Britain, India, Nepal and the United Nations, and snapping the views from the top of the world. The sherpa dug a hole in the snow and buried sweets and biscuits as a Buddhist offering.

"Well, we had nothing with us that would remain there indefinitely," Hillary told the BBC in 1953. "It was impossible to make a cairn (a pile of rocks to mark the highest point on the mountain) because the rocks were some 30, 40ft below the summit. Tenzing left a few little bits of food as offerings to the Buddhist gods and we left the four flags on a string on top too, but I shouldn't think they will last very long."

The pair also searched for evidence of the missing climbers George Mallory and Andrew "Sandy" Irvine, who had disappeared on the mountain in June 1924. It was Mallory who had made the famous retort "because it's there" when questioned by a journalist why he wanted to climb Everest. But they found no sign. Mallory's body was eventually found in 1999 while his partner Irvine's partial remains were revealed by melting ice on a glacier in 2024.

Tenzing and Hillary stayed just 15 minutes on the summit. "The oxygen was running short so we were very keen to turn round and get down again," said Hillary. Feeling they had conquered Everest as a team, the two men made a pact with each other not to say who had stepped onto the peak first. In his 1955 autobiography, Tiger of the Snows, Tenzing would eventually end the press speculation saying that Hillary had preceded him.

As they descended, exhausted, back to their base camp, they met Hillary's fellow New Zealander and climber George Lowe. "Well, George, we knocked the bastard off," Hillary said by way of a greeting. The news of their achievement would not reach the outside world until 2 June, the eve of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen knighted  Edmund Hillary and Col Hunt, while Tenzing was awarded the George Medal, sparking controversy as to why he wasn't honoured equally.

In the years since, increasing numbers of adventurers have tried to match their feat, and climbing the mountain has become a key source of income for Nepal's government. Around 800 people attempt to reach the summit every year but it remains a dangerous endeavour. Nine people died or went missing in 2024 and 18 perished the year before, according to Nepal's tourism department. More than 330 mountain climbing deaths have been recorded in the Everest region since records began a century ago. Many of these frozen bodies have remained on the mountain for years but due to global warming causing the ice sheet and glaciers to melt, these corpses are now becoming exposed.

In 2019, the Nepalese government launched the clean-up campaign to remove the dead bodies of climbers. And last year for the first time, rescuers risked their own lives to venture in and retrieve five bodies from the mountain's hazardous death zone.

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