1953 British Mount Everest expedition
Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay make the first confirmed ascent of Everest
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A tent anchored to oxygen cylinders
On the night of 28 May 1953, Camp IX sat at 27,900 feet on Everest's southeast ridge, on a platform so awkward that one man sat while the other half-lay below him. With no useful rocks to hand, the pair anchored their tent ropes to oxygen cylinders.
In the morning Hillary read the thermometer at −27 °C. He and Tenzing Norgay left camp at about 6:30 a.m. on open-circuit oxygen equipment.
They had the attempt because Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans had reached the South Summit on 26 May and turned around.
Forty feet of rock and cornice
They reached the South Summit around 9:00 a.m. Ice had blocked Tenzing's oxygen outlet; Hillary stopped and cleared it before they went on.
Above lay a crack of roughly forty feet between rock and an overhanging ice cornice — the obstacle later named the Hillary Step. At 11:30 a.m. the two men stood on the summit.
Tenzing buried sweets and biscuits as a religious offering; Hillary left a crucifix given him by expedition leader John Hunt, and photographed Tenzing holding flags and the ridges around them.
Not yet Sir Edmund, and not a telegram
Hillary held no knighthood on 29 May; it was announced after the ascent. The famous summit photograph shows Tenzing, because Hillary was the one holding the camera.
The news did not go straight from Base Camp to London by telegram. Times correspondent James Morris sent a disguised coded report by runner and radio through Namche Bazaar and the British Embassy in Kathmandu; London published it on 2 June, the morning of Elizabeth II's coronation.
"First confirmed ascent" is the careful phrase: George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared high on Everest in 1924, and no conclusive evidence shows whether they reached the top.
Sources
Researched 24 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited
How this was checked
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What the sources leave uncertain
- The date and the pair’s successful ascent are exceptionally well documented.
- “First confirmed ascent” is more precise than an unqualified “first ascent” because George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared high on Everest in 1924 and there is no conclusive evidence showing whether they reached the summit.
- Accounts and the climbers themselves treated the achievement as a partnership. Hillary later acknowledged that he stepped onto the summit just before Tenzing, but arguments about which man was “first” obscure that they climbed and succeeded as a roped pair.