Adventure and politics on the slopes of Everest

Nearly three decades ago I was privileged to spend a few days with John Hunt. We were skiing, and he was as graceful, brave and strong on the slopes as he had been on the great mountains of the world. He was the most impressive human being I have ever come across, and I would gladly have entrusted my life to him, just as the climbers on his expeditions did. And one evening he told me this story.

In the early hours of May 29, 1953, Ed Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had set off from their tiny camp above the south col of Everest to make their summit bid. They reached the top at about 11.30am: they shook hands, and Hillary took some pictures, including one of the most famous colour photographs of the last century, of Tenzing on the summit holding his ice axe aloft with the flags of Britain, the UN, Nepal, and India unfurled. More prosaically, he took a quick leak, and then the pair set off, making good time back down to the south col where they stayed overnight at Camp VIII.

The next day, May 30, Hunt emerged from his tent at Camp IV in the Western Cwm to see in the far distance two tiny figures plodding down the hill. As he moved towards them his spirits sank. Their heads were down and they were moving slowly: Hunt knew that if his top team, Hillary and Tenzing, had failed, this massive expedition, involving hundreds of people and years of planning,  would have failed too. Hunt would have been next to make the summit bid, and, he told me, he knew he was not strong enough. He climbed up to console the climbers, but as he got close to Hillary the New Zealander suddenly lifted his face, his eyes blazing with happiness, and pointed his axe back to the summit of the mountain. "We did it," he said, and the two men fell into each other's arms, laughing and crying with joy. It had worked after all.

Hillary lifted his face, eyes blazing with happiness, and pointed to the summit

What had happened was that the BBC cameraman, Tom Stobart, had formed a cunning plan. Realizing that the pre-arranged signal for a successful ascent, crossed sleeping bags in the snow on the south col, could not be seen in the mist, he climbed up early that day and asked Hillary to give the impression he had failed as he approached Hunt. Stobart then climbed up to the side of the cwm to start shooting this epic reunion. And an extraordinary piece of film it is, to this day. Hunt of course didn't mind. His great adventure had succeeded, and he, Hillary and Tenzing would soon become three of the most famous men in the world.

I was reminded of this story when reading a vast new book, Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes (Yale UP, £25), by two American history professors, Maurice Isserman and Stewart Weaver. As the subtitle suggests, with its nod to Hobsbawm, the book doesn't look  that kindly on the British adventures in their old  mountain colonies. That's not entirely surprising: mountaineering lends itself to propagandists with a message to peddle. Even the ascent of Everest, however multi-racial and collaborative Hillary and Tenzing made it, was used to gild the coronation of the young Elizabeth. To have conquered the tallest mountain on earth was obviously the herald of a Golden Age – and an affirmation of Britain's place at the head of the Commonwealth.

Nonsense, of course, but the question remains: why would anyone want to climb a big mountain like Everest? What could be a worthwhile reward for something so cold and dangerous? In 1923, when an American journalist asked George Mallory the same question, he replied enigmatically, "Because it's there." The truth is that there are as many reasons to climb a mountain as there are people who do it. They climb to impress their friends or to impress themselves, they climb because they like the thrill or because they like the peace. Some just love being in wild spaces. For a few, climbing is an escape from a tough background. It's one of those sports where you've got to be rich enough to afford it, and poor enough to cope with its hardships, which explains the rise of the uber-tough eastern European mountaineers in the last three decades.

The other curious thing about mountain climbing is that it happens in private. Hundreds of millions of people saw Lewis Hamilton clinch his world championship in Brazil; only two men witnessed the conquest of Everest, Tenzing and Hillary. It is a sport whose public profile is almost entirely mediated. You hardly ever get to watch a great mountaineering feat as it happens. You only get to read about it afterwards.

The dead bodies and piles of trash speak to a wider fear of environmental collapse

Which suits the propagandists. Mallory himself disliked the imperial subtext which the organisers of early expeditions on Everest tried to give their efforts. And in the 1930s, Nazi spinmeisters saw mountaineering as another handhold in its quest for the summit of European domination. Some German and Austrian climbers went along with this, not least because climbing in the Himalayas can be a very expensive business.

In the modern era, business tycoons and wealthy sportsmen  burnishing their resumes have paid to be led up Everest, while professional adventurers use the new media to force their images and their names on an increasingly jaded public. What is there left to say about any of it?

Actually, a great deal. Because, quietly and beyond the glib judgments of the media, a few of the very best climbers just get on with it, taking the mountains at their face value, rather than the value placed on them by those with something to sell or a point to prove. Maybe that's the biggest appeal of mountain climbing. What it tells those who do it about themselves, a kind of litmus test for what they hold most dear. Like John Hunt and his passion for the mountain, and his friends.

Ironically, despite the headlines and periodic 'killer storms', Everest has got safer. Fewer people die on it proportionally than they did 20 or even 10 years ago. But today's coverage is often one of disaster and degradation, and so the notion of an ideal Everest being corrupted is what sticks in the public imagination. The presence of dead bodies and piles of trash speaks to a wider fear of environmental collapse, of Eden despoiled. What's forgotten, of course, is that the Sherpas led lives of grinding poverty before tourism arrived. Many young men from the Everest region left home to find work in the Raj boomtown of Darjeeling. Mountaineering allowed them to return. Now other tribes work their farms, while they send their kids to the best schools. Everest and the Himalayas still have the power to change lives for the better.

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