The Tallest Man on Earth has died

[jim stone]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080110/ap_ ... nd_hillary

[FJohnSharp]

Once again, Tenzing Norgay is showing him the way.

[jim stone]

What a wonderful life he had!

I was trekking in Nepal--the monsoon started early
and we walked in rain for days. One morning I came out
of the place we spent the night and the sky had
cleared. There was a spire of ice that went up
and up in the blue sky, impossibly, obscenely high. It was
Annapurna.

[Walden]

When I was in junior high we were on a class trip, and were climbing one of the world's shortest volcanoes, and I'd gotten an exemption ahead of time from going all the way to the top. One of the teachers was a New Zealander and I recall him telling me about the time he met Sir Edmund Hillary. Truly he was an inspiration to so many and will be missed.

[chas]

I just heard about this this morning. They had a quote that summed him up pretty well. I can't find the exact quote, but it went something like this:

If you set out on an adventure entirely confident that you will succeed, you might as well not start.

[jim stone]

As the stories say, Hillary dedicated much of his life
to helping the Sherpa people--numerous schools
and medical clinics, even rebuilding a buddhist
monastery that was destroyed in a fire.

A man of extraordinary humility and decency.
Never thought he was a great climber.
Once allowed "I'm pretty good on ice.'

[FJohnSharp]

There were no pre-hung ropes or ladders fastened on steps that now bear his name. There was just he and Norgay and the mountain.

[jim stone]

From tenzing norgay's autobiography:
'Tiger of the Snows.'

On the morning of their summit day, Tenzing and Hillary left their camp and proceeded up the southeast ridge toward the summit. Tenzing later wrote: "On the top of the rock cliff we rested again. Certainly, after the climb up the gap we were both a bit breathless, but after some slow pulls at the oxygen I am feeling fine. I look up; the top is very close now; and my heart thumps with excitement and joy. Then we are on our way again. Climbing again. There are still the cornices on our right and the precipice on our left, but the ridge is now less steep. It is only a row of snowy humps, one beyond the other, one higher than the other. But we are still afraid of the cornices and, instead of following the ridge all the way, cut over to the left, where there is now a long snow slope above the precipice. About a hundred feet below the top we come to the highest bare rocks. There is enough almost level space here for two tents, and I wonder if men will ever camp in this place, so near the summit of the earth. I pick up two small stones and put them in my pocket to bring back to the world below."

"We are back among the snowy humps. They are curving off to the right, and each time we pass one I wonder, "Is the next the last one? Is the next the last?" Finally we reach a place where we can see past the humps, and beyond them is the great open sky and brown plains. We are looking down the far side of the mountain upon Tibet. Ahead of us now is only one more hump—the last hump. It is not a pinnacle. The way to it is an easy slope, wide enough for two men to go side by side. About thirty feet away we stop for a minute and look up. Then we go on...."

"...around us on every side, were the great Himalayas, stretching away through Nepal and Tibet. For the closer peaks—giants like Lhotse, Nuptse, and Makalu—you now had to look sharply downward to see their summits. And farther away, the whole sweep of the greatest range on earth—even Kangchenjunga itself—seemed only like little bumps under the spreading sky. It was such a sight as I had never seen before and would never see again: wild, wonderful and terrible. But terror was not what I felt. I loved the mountains too well for that. I loved Everest too well. At that great moment for which I had waited all my life my mountain did not seem to me a lifeless thing of rock and ice, but warm and friendly and living."

[falkbeer]

Hillary could never give a good answer to the fundamental question of why he had to climb mountains.

I think Jerry Seinfeld is closest to the truth when he says in one of his monologues: "Men really don´t want to climb mountains, constuct bridges or go to the moon, but we have to, to impress women."

[Jack]

He was six-feet two inches tall.

[jim stone]

He was six-feet two inches tall.

Plus 29,028 feet.

wiki has a wonderful entry on everest, with photos.

[Ronbo]

Well said, Jim.

[Sandy McLeod]

He and Tenzing were not the tallest but they were the first.

Sandy

[Lambchop]

He was six-feet two inches tall.

Plus 29,028 feet.

Also, he was a "tall man" because he was a good man and humble. He was a "big person," as opposed to a "small person."

A double meaning, so to speak. If he had been a disreputable rat, it is unlikely anyone would have spoken of his lofty height. At least, not for long.

[mutepointe]

My wife and I had both assumed that Sir Edmund Hillary had been dead forever and had climbed Mount Everett at the height of the British Empire. Who knew?