Parade marks 50th anniversary of Everest conquest
Edmund Hillary and a Sherpa from his 1953 Everest expedition led a colourful procession through the Nepalese capital today to celebrate the 50th anniversary of their conquest of the world’s tallest mountain.
Gyalzen Sherpa, 85, one of three surviving Sherpa from the first expedition, climbed into a horse-drawn carriage with 83-year-old Sir Edmund and his wife June, and placed yellow scarves around their necks.
They set off at the head of a parade of carriages bearing other famous Everest mountaineers, while a Gurkha army band played bagpipes and drums. Children waved flags and signs saying the mountaineers were symbols of courage.
“It is an honour bestowed on my father and Hillary,” said Jamlin Norgay, son of the late Tenzing Norgay, who with Hillary was the first to reach the 29,035ft summit of Everest on May 29, 1953.
“It was a historic moment for Nepal. And I feel it’s being done in the right way,” said Norgay, who reached the summit in 1996. He rode in the second carriage, with Junko Tabei from Japan, the first woman to climb Everest.
“More women have got to climb Everest now,” Tabei said, adding that only 5% of the 1,200 to have climbed Everest have been women. “Many young people should climb,” she said.
The procession paused in Kathmandu’s central Durbar Square, where the Nepal Mountaineering Association and city officials handed scarves, books, wooden carvings and photographs to the famous climbers, also including Reinhold Messner, the first person to climb Everest without bottled oxygen.
“Today has been a fantastic celebration of the warmth of the people of Nepal,” Hillary told a cheering crowd that filled the square and the steps of several surrounding temples.
He said he spoke on behalf of all the mountaineers ”who have climbed the great Everest”.
The climbers were also due to be honoured by Nepal’s King Gyanendra and Prime Minister Lokendra Bahadur Chand on Thursday’s 50th anniversary.
Dinners, seminars, exhibitions and street festivals were also scheduled.
Two-thirds of those who have climbed Everest in the last 50 years are believed to be still alive, but only about 100 have come to Nepal’s week-long celebration.
Some were on the mountain, meeting old friends, or trying to make new climbs. A Sherpa named Appa, 42, made a record 13th climb yesterday, and more than 110 climbers and their Sherpas have reached the summit during the anniversary climbing season, which ends May 31.
“In the 1950s, it was very hard to get to the summit. These days everybody climbs. I thought the mountain may have become lower than it was before,” Gyalzen Sherpa said.
He wore a cowboy hat and a medal issued by the Queen for those who participated in the first successful expedition. He said he had received the medal from Tenzing Norgay at the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute where he taught mountain climbing, before his death in 1986.
Other mountaineers have set new records this season.
A 70-year-old Japanese ski instructor, Yuichiro Miura, became the oldest climber to reach the summit, while a 15-year-old Sherpa girl became the youngest.
Lakpa Gyelu, 35, raced from the 17,380ft base camp to the summit in a record 10 hours and 56 minutes.
