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Encyclopædia Britannica has had the pleasure of publishing some of the most famous
mountaineers in history. Counted among our contributors are Tenzing Norgay, the Tibetan
Sherpa who accompanied Sir Edmund Hillary on their
historic ascent of Mount Everest in 1953; John Hunt, leader of the
1953 expedition, and Wilfrid Noyce, also a member
of the
1953 team; Barry Bishop, of the first
American
expedition to Everest in 1963; and, most recently, Stephen Venables, who
conquered
Everest without the aid of supplemental oxygen in 1988.
Britannica's new coverage of Mount Everest details this rich history, but it also covers
such
topics as:
• The background on some
of the most celebrated and daring
climbs in Everest history
• Biographies of renowned mountaineers
such as Edmund Hillary and Reinhold
Messner• The history behind the many names of Everest
• The geological processes
involved in
creating Everest and the Himalayas
• The controversy over
calculating the exact height of Mount Everest
• The medical conditions that
affect
climbers at high altitude
• The reason Sherpas historically refused to
climb
Everest
• The commercialization of
climbing Everest
and the damage caused to its environment
• The fate of famed climber George
Mallory,
who disappeared on Everest in 1924
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In 2003, in commemoration of the 50th
anniversary of Tenzing and Hillary's historic ascent, second-generation summiteers- the sons of
Hillary and Barry Bishop-scaled Mount Everest. A telling sign of just how much the world had changed was
the phone call that the younger Hillary made to his father in New Zealand from the summit of Everest via
satellite phone. Tenzing's son, Jamling Norgay, also participated in the expedition but did not make the
final summit climb.
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