Sir Edmund Hillary Dies
Posted by Slobokan @ 18:43 · 176 words · print
Sir Edmund Hillary, the unassuming beekeeper who conquered Mount Everest to win renown as one of the 20th century's greatest adventurers, has died, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark announced Friday. He was 88.
The gangling New Zealander devoted much of his life to aiding the mountain people of Nepal and took his fame in stride, preferring to be called "Ed" and considering himself just an ordinary beekeeper.
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Throughout his life Hillary remembered his first mountain he climbed, the 9,645-foot Mount Tapuaenuku — "Tappy" as he called it — in Marlborough on New Zealand's South Island. He scaled it solo over three days in 1944, while in training camp with the Royal New Zealand Air Force during World War II. "Tapuaenuku" in Maori means "footsteps of the Rainbow God".
"I'd climbed a decent mountain at last," he said later.
Like all good mountaineers before him, Hillary had no special insight into that quintessential question: Why climb?
"I can't give you any fresh answers to why a man climbs mountains. The majority still go just to climb them."
Posted In: Obituaries
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