TheByte

Rob

Sir Edmund Hillary dies

The New Zealand born adventurer Sir Edmund Hillary has died at the age of 88 on January 11th.

Sir Ed was the first man to climb Everest with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953.

They never repeated the feat and in an interview with Reuters in early 2007, Sir Ed said the pair had discussed the possibility of climbing Everest again, but he felt there was little virtue in climbing it many times.

Hillary's health had been in decline since April, after he suffered a fall while in Nepal.

After Everest, Hillary led a number of expeditions to the South Pole and the Himalayas, and devoted his time to helping Nepal's Sherpa people who live in the shadow of Everest.

He also established the Himalayan Trust in the early 1960s and worked tirelessly throughout his life to raise funds and build schools and hospitals in the mountains. He personally helped build schools, hospitals, bridges, pipelines and even an airfield.

Sir Edmund Hillary, was an extremely humble man and is a national hero in New Zealand.

Bruce

Just read about this...Terrible news.

One hell of a man he was. May he rest in peace.

450SEL6.9

Great, great man. It's nice to hear the press talk about Sir Edmund Hilary's humility and how he waited until many years about his Sherpa guide's death to reveal who really first stood atop Everest. These days if some amateur adventurer climbed anything of note, he'd probably kick his climbing partner off the mountain to get a fat book deal out of it all.