Beyond the Edge Page #3

---

jockeying for position,

but I think our two New Zealanders,

Hillary and Lowe,

were perhaps rather

more straightforward

in wanting to get

as high as possible,

They were the sort of colonials

that would make good

and we were perhaps

a little bit more inhibited -

the public school type that

wouldn't push our way forward

unless Hunt had said,

"Look, you're the chap to do it,"

I'd always hoped

that George Lowe and I

would be the final summit pair,

but there was no time

that John Hunt, our leader,

wanted to have two New Zealanders

stand on top of Mount Everest,

So I had to look around

and find someone

who was as fit as I was

and who could do a good job,

Tenzing was that person,

Nobody alive had more

experience of Everest,

He really understood the value of it

and how it could change his life,

Tenzing had been very, very poor,

He had struggled,

He wanted his children

to go to good schools,

He wanted more for them

than he'd had,

Tenzing understood

what climbing Everest meant,

My father was a bit of an anomaly

as far as a Sherpa goes

because he always

wanted to climb Everest,

That's very unusual

for a poor kid from Tibet,

So unlike many other Sherpas who

actually climb just to make a living,

he was a mountaineer at heart,

His drive was to go to the top

just like Ed Hillary,

As we walked on into

the coomb, the crevasses grew fewer

and we realised that

the coomb itself was open to us,

We are now

established at Base Camp

and the first problem

is to get our supplies

up to Camp 4 high up

in the Western Cwm,

Owing to the climbing

difficulties in the icefall,

laden porters require

three days to reach Camp 4,

There was

this idea in those days

of laying siege to a mountain,

This meant you would do it

in a very systematic way -

you would set up a camp

and you would set up another camp

and get higher and higher,

You build up

this pyramid of camps

to get enough tents, food,

cooking fuel, oxygen -

to get enough of those supplies

where you can rest

before going up to the next stage,

And to do that, people have

got to go up and down the mountain,

Ideally, people go up to a camp

and then go back down again

'cause if everyone goes up to a camp

and then stays there

they then consume

all the food they've carried up,

People tried

to come up with solutions

which would help the team

to get to the top,

people from around the world

sending in madcap

suggestions on inventions,

Somebody had an ingenious device

which was a type of harpoon

with an incendiary device

on the end of it,

The idea was that it would

burn its way into the ice

and give a secure holding

so people could haul themselves up,

Most of them were

completely crazy ideas,

My method

involves the use of a hand cable

laid in advance by aircraft...

With my relay warmth

personal heating apparatus,

air could be passed through

a heating chamber

and pumped via rubber tube

to the hands, feet and head...

May I mention a Wonder Gun

for driving steel bolts

into concrete...

I suggest

that a woollen suit

be wired in much the same way

as an electric blanket...

It should be possible

to ascend the mountain

using a large helium-filled balloon.

A significant amount of helium

would be required.

Nearly all

of the technological innovations

that were used on the 1953 expedition

arose from things

developed by the military

during the Second World War,

They tested the windproof equipment

they were going to be wearing

in the wind tunnel

at Farnborough Aircraft Factory,

30 different firms, UK firms,

were involved

in designing the boots alone,

The ascent of Everest in '53 had

become a question of national pride,

When World War II ended,

Britain was completely bankrupt

and because of the austerity,

the postwar austerity in Britain,

the really awful days

that had past...

..it was the last

great colonial project,

the last hurrah

of the British Empire,

My father and Tenzing

kept volunteering to help

in different situations

to demonstrate their competency

as being one of the summit teams,

Dad could see that there were

a whole lot of reasons

why this could be

a great combination for success,

They were very at home

in this alpine environment,

They were hungry,

They wanted the top,

There's a point

where they were partnered together

and they were racing down

the Khumbu Icefall,

trying to prove that

they could do it quickly,

But as a sort of product

of his over-exuberance, really,

he's racing through it

and something goes wrong,

Tenzing and I

headed back down to Base Camp,

When we were about

halfway down the icefall

we came to one of the crevasses,

On one side of it

there was a great chunk of ice

and we had used this

as a stepping stone

to reach the other side,

It was slightly ironic

that it was Ed Hillary,

who was such a good climber,

that it should happen to him,

People have often said to me,

"You must've been very thankful,

"Tenzing having saved

your life like that,"

but I don't think I was,

You know, I'd have been very annoyed

if he hadn't saved my life,

Camp 4

has now been established

and we have successfully carried

the three tons of supplies up here,

You don't

conquer a mountain,

If you're lucky enough,

the mountain gives you a chance

to stand on the top,

You 're trying to overcome

your own weaknesses,

Ed Hillary,

he was so kind of gung-ho

and he always

wanted to be out front,

he always wanted to be in the lead,

He wasn't brash, He was a quieter,

sort of more reserved, character,

Dad was

quite a complicated person,

I think my father

had quite a few demons

born out of being a perfectionist,

but also the sense of inferiority -

nothing is ever quite good enough,

I think it came out of a very

complicated family background,

My father

really wasn't very interested

in adventurous activities,

He was a man of very strong beliefs,

The climbing of mountains he probably

regarded as a bit of a waste of time,

I fought with my father,

And I would usually end up

being taken over to the woodshed

and being given a good thumping,

I'm rather proud of the fact

that I never actually

admitted I was wrong...

..even if I had been,

Well, of course it was

of tremendous interest to all of us

who would be chosen

for the final push,

In those days,

the leader's word was absolute...

..particularly for men who had

all been in the armed forces,

Hunt had to make the decision,

He would say who were

going to be the lucky ones

who were going to have

a crack at the summit,

It was at our Base Camp

and John Hunt got everybody round

and outlined his plans

for the rest of the expedition,

The crucial thing, of course,

was the attempts for the summit,

At that meeting,

that extraordinary

meeting with this team

totally isolated

from the rest of the world,

thousands of miles from home...

..those men, each thinking,

"Oh, wouldn't it be wonderful

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes