Sunday Times 2
All eyes on Everest
View(s):Nepal marks ‘Diamond Jubilee’ of summit victory
KATHMANDU (AFP)— Nepal on Wednesday marked 60 years since the first ascent of Everest, celebrating the pioneering climbers whose bravery spawned an industry that many mountaineers fear is now ruining the world’s highest peak. Four days of ceremonies dubbed the “Everest Diamond Jubilee” ended Wednesday with family members of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first summiteers, laying garlands on statues of the legendary pair.
Colourful: Tibetan Buddhist prayer flags on the summit of the peak honour the climbers who followed in the footsteps of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay
A host of famous mountaineers who followed in their footsteps were handed letters of appreciation at a gala dinner inside the grounds of Nepal’s former royal palace in Kathmandu. “On this day, late Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary created a milestone of being the first human beings on the pinnacle of earth, Mount Everest. ” Khilraj Regmi, Nepal’s Prime Minister, told the gathering.
“That historic success brought Nepal to the limelight of mountaineering tourism and opened a new era of adventure activities,” he said.
The British-funded trip to the peak, which is 8,848 metres (29,029 feet) above sea level, changed mountaineering forever and made the New Zealander and his Nepalese guide household names in many parts of the world.
“Hillary and Tenzing were rock stars of the 1950s and into the 1960s,” Hillary’s son Peter told AFP. “The biggest thing about 1953 is that they were going into the unknown.” But while their groundbreaking achievements were lauded, controversy over some contemporary climbers’ behaviour on Everest came under attack.
Legendary mountaineer Reinhold Messner, the first man to reach the summit of the world’s highest mountain without supplementary oxygen, criticised European climbers involved in a fight with Nepalese guides earlier this month. “Climbers who cross ladders set by Sherpas at the Khumbu Icefall, then go up without ropes and claim to be special are parasites,” Messner told a crowd at the British embassy in Kathmandu, in an apparent reference to Italian Simone Moro and Swiss Ueli Steck.
The Nepalese guides involved in the incident said that the Europeans had ignored a request to stay in base camp while ropes were fixed for commercial climbers.
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