PRESENTATION OUTLINE
He was born on the
20th of July, 1919, Auckland in New Zealand. When he went on a school ski trip to Mt Ruapehu in 1935 and that gave him his first experience of mountains.
That year his family moved to Remuera in Auckland. After leaving school Edmund spent two unsuccessful years at Auckland University College. Then in 1938 he joined his father and brother as a full-time beekeeper.
He started RNZAF training camps in Blenheim and New Plymouth provided him with opportunities to climb Mt Tapuae-o-Uenuku and Mt Taranaki. Hillary qualified as a navigator and then he went to 1945 to Fiji and then the Solomon Islands, where he was badly burnt in a boating accident.
After a fast recovery, and the end of the war, he returned to New Zealand and climbed his first 3,000-metre peaks – Mts Malte Brun and Hamilton in the Southern Alps. Now Hillary has great fitness but Edmund still lacked technical mountaineering.
In 1946 he met Harry Ayres and over the next three summers the two friends climbed several mountains including New Zealand’s three highest mountains Aoraki, Mt Cook, Mt Tasman and Mt Dampier. Now Hillary became one of the country’s best climber.
Hillary and Ayres’s then climbed the South Ridge of Aoraki and Mt Cook, its last major unclimbed ridge and they climbed it with Mick Sullivan and Ruth Adams in 1948. Three days later the four friends were nearing the summit of nearby Mt La Perouse when a rope snapped and Ruth Adams fell he badly injuring herself.
He died on January 11, 2008
His major achievements were that he was the first to climb Mt Everest and he explored all the mountains around the world. When he climbed Mt Everest he didn't back down and stopped at half way up the mountain.
