Peter Edmund Hillary (born 26 December 1954) is a New Zealand mountaineer and philanthropist, He is the son of Sir Edmund Hillary, who, along with mountaineer Tenzing Norgay, completed the first successful ascent of Mount Everest.[1] When Peter Hillary summited Everest in 1990, he and his father were the first father/son duo to achieve the feat. Hillary has achieved two summits of Everest, an 84-day trek across Antarctica to the South Pole, and an expedition guiding astronaut Neil Armstrong to land a small aircraft at the North Pole. He has climbed many of the world's major peaks, and on 19 June 2008, completed the Seven Summits, reaching the top of the highest mountains on all seven continents, when he summited Denali in Alaska.[2]
Peter Hillary, as an infant, with his parents, Louise and Edmund, 1955
Peter Edmund Hillary was born in Auckland, New Zealand on 26 December 1954. He had two younger sisters, Sarah Louise and Belinda Mary, and was the eldest of the three children of Sir Edmund Hillary and his first wife, Louise Mary Rose.[3] Peter Hillary received his education at King's College, Auckland and at Auckland University.[4]
As a child, Hillary travelled the world extensively. In 1962, when he was seven, his family travelled all over the United States and Canada while Sir Edmund was on an extended lecture tour. On the way back to New Zealand, the Hillary family capped off their year abroad in Nepal for a visit with Tenzing Norgay. Additional travels included trips to the United Kingdom; drives in the deserts of Australia; learning to ski on New Zealand's South Island; climbing New Zealand's highest peak, Aoraki / Mount Cook; and sitting around campfires in the Himalayas.[5] At age eleven, his father took him to climb Mount Everest.[6]
On 31 March 1975, after having spent a year in Nepal, Hillary's mother and youngest sister, sixteen-year-old Belinda, were killed when their plane crashed shortly after taking off from a Kathmandu airfield.[3] Hillary, then twenty, was in Assam, India, visiting a friend, when he received the news that there were no survivors in the crash.[7] He described Lady Hillary and Belinda as 'the glue that bonded the family together'.[8]
Hillary's climbing friend, Australian Mark Moorhead, died on 15 October 1983 attempting to ascend Makalu, a Himalayan mountain that is the fifth-highest in the world.[citation needed] When Hillary went to pay his respects to the family, he met Moorhead's sister Ann, whom he would later marry. They separated in 1993 when Hillary began talking about resuming his mountaineering career after a three-year hiatus, and were subsequently divorced.[9]:57 Hillary later married Yvonne Oomen, with whom he has two children, Alexander and Lily; he also has two children, Amelia and George, from his first marriage.[10]
On 11 January 2008, Hillary was in Lisbon, Portugal, at a dinner with some clients when he was informed his father had died of a sudden heart attack at Auckland Hospital.[7] Sir Edmund lay in state at the Auckland Cathedral of the Holy Trinity and his funeral on 22 January 2008 at Auckland's St. Mary's Church was televised live throughout New Zealand.[11] Hillary delivered a eulogy for his father in which he said, recalling his childhood, 'Growing up in the Hillary family, was quite an adventure... Adventure was compulsory'.[12] On 29 February 2008, Hillary, his sister Sarah, and Sir Edmund's widow, Lady Hillary (formerly June Anderson Mulgrew) scattered most of his ashes, in a private ceremony held on Auckland's Hauraki Gulf, from the youth sail training ship Spirit of New Zealand.[13]Apa Sherpa, who at the time had summited Everest more than anyone else, proposed a small portion of Sir Edmund's ashes should be held in reserve to be scattered on the summit of Mount Everest, and Hillary transferred them to a nearby Nepalese monastery. However, in 2010, a committee of Sherpas decided against it, concerned that it could set a precedent.[14]
After Sir Edmund's death, there was an immediate clash between his son and his widow over the future of the Himalayan Trust that Sir Edmund had established to assist the people of Nepal, resulting in Hillary not being appointed to its board of directors.[15] In 2010, Hillary and his sister had to get an injunction to stop Lady Hillary from having their father's watches sold through a Swiss auction house, including one that was presented to him after his Everest triumph. Hillary said he and his sister owned the watches as per their father's will. It was ruled that, under New Zealand's heritage laws, the Everest watch should never have left the country and was a violation of the Protected Objects Act. Lady Hillary had to withdraw the items from auction.[16] Hillary then spent a year in mediation attempting to establish ownership of the watches and other items that were of great significance to the family, as Lady Hillary had given away an additional 17 items of sentimental value without consulting the family.[17] When the courts awarded ownership of the watches to Sir Edmund's children, Hillary donated them to the Auckland War Memorial Museum.[18] Finally, in October 2011, Lady Hillary resigned as the head of the Himalayan Trust, with five additional board members going with her.[19]
Mount Everest
Hillary has been to Everest five times, once reaching 8,300 metres on the West Ridge and twice reaching the summit by the South Col route. With his first summit of Mount Everest in 1990, he and Sir Edmund became the first father and son to achieve the feat.[20] The 1990 expedition was led by veteran Everest climber Pete Athans, who holds the record for the most summits of Everest by a Western climber.
His second ascent in May 2003[21] was part of a National Geographic Society expedition to mark the 50th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's historic first ascent in 1953. The anniversary expedition brought together Peter Hillary, Jamling Norgay and Brent Bishop, the sons of Sir Edmund, Tenzing Norgay, and Barry Bishop, a member of the first successful American team to reach the summit in 1963.
Philanthropy
Peter Hillary now devotes most of his time to fundraising in support of his father's Himalayan Trust, which was established in 1960 to fund capital projects in the Khumbu Valley region of Nepal. He is also a director of the Australian Himalayan Foundation.[22]
Hillary is also the patron for the Everest Rescue Trust, a non-profit, independent trust set up to operate and manage a self-funding rescue helicopter service for the high altitude regions of Nepal.[23]
Since 2017, Hillary has also been the Patron of the Kea Conservation Trust, a Charitable Trust set up in 2006 to support conservation and research into New Zealand's Alpine parrot, the Kea. [24]
Media
Peter Hillary has written and co-written several books, including: A Sunny Day in the Himalayas (1980);[25]First Across the Roof of the World: The First-ever Traverse of the Himalayas, 5,000 Kilometres from Sikkim to Pakistan (with Graham Dingle, 1982);[26]Two Generations (with his father, Sir Edmund Hillary, 1984);[27]Ascent: Two Lives Explored – The Autobiographies of Sir Edmund and Peter Hillary (also with his father, 1986);[28]Rimo: Mountain on the Silk Road (1992);[29]Bridgit was Bored (a children's book written with his first wife, Ann Moorhead, 1992);[30] and In the Ghost Country: A Lifetime Spent on the Edge (with John Elder, 2003).[31]
Hillary wrote the afterword for the book Letters from Everest: A First-hand Account from the Epic First Ascent by George Lowe, who was Sir Edmund Hillary's best friend and accompanied him on the 1953 Everest expedition.[32] In the wake of the 1996 Mount Everest disaster, Hillary wrote an article for The New York Times Magazine entitled "Everest is Mighty, We are Fragile".[33] He also wrote an article called "In the Name of the Father", describing what it was like on K2 in August 1995 when the mountain claimed the lives of seven summiters, leaving him as one of three survivors of that expedition.[34]
Mount Everest is Earth's highest mountain above sea level, located in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas. The China–Nepal border runs across its summit point. Its elevation of 8,848.86 m was most recently established in 2020 by the Chinese and Nepali authorities.
Sir Edmund Percival Hillary was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer, and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953, Hillary and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest. They were part of the ninth British expedition to Everest, led by John Hunt. From 1985 to 1988 he served as New Zealand's High Commissioner to India and Bangladesh and concurrently as Ambassador to Nepal.
Tenzing Norgay, born Namgyal Wangdi, and also referred to as Sherpa Tenzing, was a Nepalese-Indian Sherpa mountaineer. He was one of the first two people known to certainly reach the summit of Mount Everest, which he accomplished with Edmund Hillary on 29 May 1953. Time named Norgay one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
Raymond Lambert was a Swiss mountaineer who together with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached an altitude of 8611 metres of Mount Everest, as part of a Swiss Expedition in May 1952. At the time it was the highest point that a climber had ever reached. There was a second Swiss expedition in autumn 1952, but a party including Lambert and Tenzing was forced to turn back at a slightly lower point. The following year Tenzing returned with Edmund Hillary to reach the summit on 29 May 1953.
Jamling Tenzing Norgay is an Indian Sherpa mountaineer.
George Christopher Band was an English mountaineer. He was the youngest climber on the 1953 British expedition to Mount Everest on which Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first ascent of the mountain. In 1955, he and Joe Brown were the first climbers to ascend Kangchenjunga, the third highest mountain in the world.
The Hillary Step was a nearly vertical rock face with a height of around 12 metres (40 ft) located near the summit of Mount Everest, about 8,790 metres (28,839 ft) above sea level. Located on the southeast ridge, halfway between the "South Summit" and the true summit, the Hillary Step was the most technically difficult part of the typical Nepal-side Everest climb and the last real challenge before reaching the top of the mountain. The rock face was destroyed by an earthquake that struck the region in 2015.
Captain Mohan Singh Kohli is an internationally renowned Indian mountaineer. An officer in the Indian Navy, who later joined the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, he led the 1965 Indian expedition which put nine men on the summit of Everest, a world record which lasted for 17 years.
Lopsang Tshering Bhutia was an Indian Sherpa mountaineer who died on Mount Everest and the nephew of Tenzing Norgay. His death made international headlines because he died on the 40th anniversary expedition of his uncle's summiting. His uncle, Tenzing Norgay, had died at home of natural causes in 1986 at the age of 72. Tenzing Norgay was the first person to summit Mount Everest in 1953 along with Sir Edmund Hillary.
Wallace George Lowe, known as George Lowe, was a New Zealand-born mountaineer, explorer, film director and educator. He was the last surviving member of the 1953 British Mount Everest Expedition, during which his friend Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first known people to summit the world's highest peak. Sir Edmund was his fellow Briton and served as his mentor.
The 1952 Swiss Mount Everest expedition was an attempt to summit Mount Everest. Led by, Edouard Wyss-Dunant, the expedition, which included Tenzing Norgay, reached a height of 8,595 metres (28,199 ft) on the southeast ridge, setting a new climbing altitude record and opening up a new route to Mount Everest and paving the way for further successes by other expeditions. Norgay successfully summited the mountain the following year with Sir Edmund Hillary, the first successful expedition.
The 1953 British Mount Everest expedition was the ninth mountaineering expedition to attempt the first ascent of Mount Everest, and the first confirmed to have succeeded when Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary reached the summit on 29 May 1953. Led by Colonel John Hunt, it was organised and financed by the Joint Himalayan Committee. News of the expedition's success reached London in time to be released on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, on 2 June that year.
Beyond the Edge is a 2013 New Zealand 3D docudrama about Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary's historical ascent of Mount Everest in 1953. As well as featuring dramatised recreations shot on location on Everest and in New Zealand, the film includes original footage and photographs from what was then the ninth British expedition to the mountain. It also includes audio from interviews with Hillary and recorded narration by expedition leader John Hunt.
Tenzing Peak is the name which has been proposed by the Government of Nepal for a 7,916-metre (25,971 ft) peak in the Himalayas in honour of Tenzing Norgay, who made the first ascent of Everest with Edmund Hillary in 1953. It is also known variously as Ngojumba Kang, Ngozumpa Kang and Ngojumba Ri.
Hillary Peak is the name which has been proposed by the Government of Nepal for a 7,681 metres (25,200 ft) peak in the Himalayas in honour of Edmund Hillary, who made the first ascent of Everest with Tenzing Norgay in 1953.
The Sir Edmund Hillary Mountain Legacy Medal is awarded every one or two years to an individual "for remarkable service in the conservation of culture and nature in mountainous regions." The medal both recognizes the service of Sir Edmund Hillary on behalf of mountain people and their environment and also encourages the continuing emulation of his example. The Hillary Medal is a project of Mountain Legacy, a Nepalese non-governmental organization ; the president is biologist Kumar P. Mainali. The Hillary Medal was personally authorized by Sir Edmund in 2002, and ratified by the Namche Consensus, the declaration resulting from the 2003 Namche Conference: "People, Park, and Mountain Ecotourism."
The Tenzing Montes are a range of icy mountains on Pluto, bordering the southwest region of Sputnik Planitia and the nearby Hillary Montes and Wright Mons. With peaks reaching 6.2 km in height, they are the highest mountain range on Pluto, and also the steepest, with a mean slope of 19.2 degrees.
The South Summit is a subsidiary peak of Mount Everest in the Himalayas between the South Col and the main summit above sea level. Although the South Summit's elevation of 8,749 metres (28,704 ft) is higher than the second-highest mountain on Earth, it is not considered a separate mountain as its topographic prominence is only 11 meters.
Norman David Hardie was a New Zealand climber who was one of the climbers on the 1955 British Kangchenjunga expedition who first reached the summit of the 8,586-metre (28,169 ft) mountain, the third-highest mountain in the world.
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