Who reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1953 alongside Tenzing Norgay?

Edmund Hillary reached the summit of Mount Everest in 1953 alongside Tenzing Norgay. The two climbers made the first confirmed successful ascent on 29 May 1953 as members of a British expedition led by Colonel John Hunt.

Hillary was a New Zealand mountaineer who had already gained Himalayan experience, while Tenzing was a Nepalese-Indian Sherpa climber and an experienced Everest veteran. They formed the expedition’s second summit pair after Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans turned back near the South Summit because of exhaustion and problems with their oxygen equipment.

Hillary and Norgay climbed from the South Col route using open-circuit oxygen sets. They reached the summit at about 11:30 a.m. and spent roughly fifteen minutes there taking photographs and leaving small symbolic items in the snow. Hillary was later identified as having stepped onto the summit first, but the achievement is properly remembered as a joint ascent.

John Hunt was the expedition leader, not Hillary’s summit partner. George Mallory had disappeared during an earlier 1924 attempt, and Reinhold Messner made the first oxygen-free ascent decades later.