The Highest of Highs
On July 20, 1919, Mt. Everest’s nemesis was born: famed mountain climber Edmund Hillary of Aukland, New Zealand. Hillary’s first job was beekeeper, the income from which funded his early mountain-climbing excursions — in New Zealand, the Alps, and finally the Himalayas, where he scaled 11 peaks exceeding 20,000 feet in elevation. Between 1920 and 1952, seven major expeditions to conquer Mt. Everest had failed. That changed on May 29, 1953. Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepalese sherpa, outlasted the...Read More