On 29 May 1953, the thirty-threeyear-old
beekeeper from Auckland
crawled out of his tent perched
on a rocky ledge high on Mount
Everest. A ferocious wind had
whipped the tent all night. Hillary
said it sounded like rifle fire. His
Nepali climbing companion, Sherpa
Tenzing Norgay, said it sounded like
the roar of a thousand tigers. With
temperatures at minus 27 degrees
Celsius, the men set off on the final
leg of their amazing climb. For five
hours, they tackled rock and ice
faces, some of them vertical, until,
at 11.30 a.m., there was nowhere
else to climb. They were standing
on the top of the world.