Happy Birthday, Tenzing.

Tenzing Norgay is thought to have been born on this date in 1914.


At 3:30 AM the two men began to brew up liquids for their summit push. First light allowed Tenzing to point out to Hillary the glowing Thyangboche Monastery in the valley far below and by 6:30 the pair had slung on their oxygen gear and set off up the ridge with Tenzing in the lead. On surpassing Tenzing and Lambert’s high point from the year before they began to encounter unconsolidated snow on the ridge. At 9 AM they reached the South Summit and were able to discard their empty twenty pound oxygen tanks and start on fresh cylinders. From here they found good snow conditions and continued toward the summit, stopping occasionally to clear ice from each others breathing tubes. Just below the summit they encountered a forty foot vertical section of rock. Hillary took the lead and through superhuman effort was able to labor up a chimney created between the rock and a vertical cornice of snow. Continuing on and carefully belaying each other one at a time they labored up the ridge. One hump of snow led to another and finally there was nothing beyond but the plains of Tibet fading toward the curved violet horizon. They were on the summit!

Hillary offered a congratulatory handshake to Tenzing but that was not sufficient. Tenzing threw himself at Hillary and gave him a hearty Sherpa hug. Hillary took some photos while Tenzing knelt down and buried a small pencil (given to him by his daughter Nima) and an offering of sweets in the summit snow, then he said a short prayer.

Standing up, Tenzing thought of Irvine and Mallory back in 1924 and scanned the summit for evidence of their attempt. Nothing. A gentle breeze caressed the climbers. On his head Tenzing wore the balaclava given to him by the crazy Earl Denman, around his neck was a scarf belonging to his great friend Raymond Lambert. His Swiss reindeer skin boots were on their third expedition and the wool socks that he wore were hand-knitted by his wife Ang Lahmu. He owed the entire sum of his expedition salary to friends back in Darjeeling.

Tenzing gazed down at his Solo Khumbu Valley where he had spent his childhood wondering at the far away summit on which he now stood. He marveled over the high pastures where he had grazed his father’s yaks as a child and knew that the Wheel had come full circle. For Tenzing Norgay it had been the shortest of distances, but a long journey indeed.

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