Over 290 people in total did not survive their attempt to climb the highest mountain on earth, and the last known year without anyone dying has been over 40 years ago. Even with these facts and a mortality of 5% does Mount Everest still spark a fire in the hearts of every adventurer out there. Every year people risk their lives in order to follow their dreams and get their name added to the list of already more than 6000 people that reached the top.
On the top of Mount Everest at 8848 meters high, the air only contains about a third of the oxygen at sea level. Before the invention of bottled oxygen, it was impossible for humans to survive in this so-called 'death zone'. The freezing inhumane temperatures also provided an additional challenge to overcome.
George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine
The first people to try to reach the top with additional oxygen were George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine. At first Mallory considered the use of extra oxygen cheating, and in his opinion real climbers should not use it, but in after some time he admitted that he did not see how climbing Mount Everest was possible without bringing additional oxygen.
Their expedition had a tragic end. A member of their expedition saw them for the last time 275 meters away from the top. They would never return to their base and it's unsure if they succeeded on that day or not. In 1999 the remains of Mallory were found 700 meters from the highest point by a search expedition. They did not find the body of Irvine, or their camera, on which they hoped to find out what happened and if they were possibly even the first ones to reach the summit.
British Mount Everest expedition
Knowing everything about the story of Mallory and Irvine, and having read all about them, the New Zealander Edmund Hillary had much admiration and was inspired. He left with the British Mount Everest expedition on the 10th of March 1953 on the way to base camp. From there they planned their route and supplies were brought in by the local teams of Sherpas. In the next week, slowly the expedition got higher up the mountain, and on the way, they created 6 more camps. The first team that went for the last climb set out on 26 May. They had to return just 100 meters short because of equipment problems and exhaustion.
On the 27th of May Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the second party to take a shot at reaching the summit. Even though Hillary was never absolutely confident that they would be successful, they managed to reach the top at 11:30am 29th of May. They stayed some time admiring the view never before seen by another human being and eternalized it by taking pictures. Hillary his first words after returning to the camp to his fellow expedition member George Lowe were "Well, George, we knocked the bastard off".
Who was first?
The question that a lot of people were interested in was who reached the top first, Hillary or Norgay. The answer was always kept secret by the 2 men, or as Hillary put it "We shared the work, the risks and the success – it was a team effort and nothing else is important." Only after Tenzing died in 1986 did Hillary admit that he was the first one to reach the summit and he pulled Norgay in after him. Edmund Hillary died at the age of 88 in 2008.