Like their famous fathers Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, Jamling and Peter are friends and would also be a good rope team. Both followed in the footsteps of their fathers: Jamling Tenzing Norgay (in 1996) and Peter Hillary (in 1990 and 2002) also reached the summit of Mount Everest. Both are continuing the work of their fathers for the benefit of the Sherpas and keep the memory of the two Everest pioneers alive. „My father climbed the mountain and came back down the mountain as a simple man. He lived the rest of his life very humble and simple just like Edmund Hillary”, Jamling said when we met during the Everest Diamond Jubilee Celebrations at the Royal Geographical Society in London. „No two people could have climbed Everest first than Hillary and my father.” Peter Hillary is also proud of the performance of his father and Tenzing Norgay: „For us 60 years later the key thing is what it stands for: Someone does something new. They actually open the door to everyone who follows. These things are very liberating and as a consequence very important.”

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Ask the first man or woman you meet on any street in Europe after the name of a famous mountaineer and you will very likely get the response: „Reinhold Messner“. Although he did his pioneering ascents in the Himalayas andKarakorum more than a quarter of a century ago, the 68-year-old South Tyrolean is still very present in public awareness. Messner has been contributing his part by writing book after book, givings lectures and interviews – and polarizing with his statements. In my interview with him on the occasion of the upcoming 60th anniversary of the first ascent of Everest Reinhold Messner again had clear positions. Don’t wonder why I didn’t ask him about the recent incident on Everest. We met before.

Reinhold Messner, we first look back on the 29th May 1953, when the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first men to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Would you say that this was an outstanding achievement of two courageous mountaineers or rather a team performance?

It was primarily a British team performance because the British have brought the know-how and the money and made huge preparatory works.

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This May Stephen Venables can celebrate a double Everest jubilee: the 60th birthday of the first ascent – and his more personal anniversary: On 12th May 25 years ago Venables was the first Briton to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen. A milestone. „I was lucky enough in 1988 to help write a new chapter in the mountain’s history, when I climbed a new route up the Kangshung Face with Robert Anderson, Paul Teare and Ed Webster”, Stephen wrote to me after I had asked him for his thoughts on Everest on occasion of the 60th anniversary of the first ascent. “Thanks to those fine American/Canadian climbers and a magnificent base camp support team, I enjoyed some of the greatest days of my life of Everest, living for over two months in the beautiful Kama valley.” But his life was hanging by a thread then. 

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Ang Tshering’s biography can be assumed to be symbolic of the success story of the Sherpas in the past six decades. He was born in 1953, half a year after the first ascent of Mount Everest. In his home village Khumjung, on 3780 metres near the highest mountain of the world, Ang Tshering attended the school that was founded by Sir Edmund Hillary. The English skills which he had aquired there enabled him to work as a porter and interpreter for expeditions. In 1982 Ang Tshering founded „Asian Trekking”, today one of the leading agencies for expeditions and trekkings in Nepal. He married a Belgian woman, his son Dawa Steven studied in Scotland. Ang Tshering was and is not only a successful businessman with best worldwide contacts but has always been engaging for mountaineers. Since 1990 he is a member of the executive board of the Nepal Mountaineering Association, for nine years he was the president of the organization. In addition the 59-year-old Nepalese is the Immediate Past President of the Union of Asian Alpine Associations (UAAA) and Honorary Member of the International Mountaineering and Climbing Federation (UIAA). „Everest has put Nepal on the map as an ultimate (adventure) tourism destination”, Ang Tshering wrote to me after I had asked him for his thoughts about Everest on occasion of the 60-year-jubilee of the first ascent.

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In fact she was the second but in a way the first too. Helga Hengge summited Mount Everest on 27th May 1999. As second German woman after Hannelore Schmatz. But Hengge also survived the descent – in contrast to Schmatz who died from exhaustion on 8300 meters on the south side of the mountain on 2nd October 1979. For years climbers passed the corpse called „The German woman” which was sitting in the snow. Later the storm blew it into the depth. Almost twenty years after Schmatz Helga Hengge reached the highest point on 8850 metres after she had climbed up from the Tibetan north side. „I felt like a goddess”, Helga later said, „as if I could float.” Hengge was 32 years old when she stood on top of the world. Today Mount Everest sometimes gives her a nightmare, Helga, aged 46 now, wrote to me after I had asked her for her thoughts on occasion of the 60th anniversary of the first ascent.

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Will Apa Sherpa feel melancholy these days? Climbers from all over the world are arriving at Everest basecamp on the south side of the mountain. Meanwhile the so called „Ice Doctors” have prepared the route through the dangerous Khumbu icefall up to Camp 2 on 6600 metres. The climbing season on the highest mountain of the world is ready to start. For more than two decades Everest was an integral part of Apa’s life. Nobody has reached the top of the world as often as this 1.63 metre tall man: He reached the summit 21 times and became a living legend. In 2011 Apa finished his Everest career. Now he is about 53 years old. He doesn’t know for sure because in the 1960s no birth certificates were issued for Sherpas in his home village Thame in the Everest region.

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Ralf Dujmovits is up to every Himalayan trick. For the last 25 years Germany’s most successful high altitude climber has been on the way on the highest mountains of the world. For him Mount Everest (the first ascent of the mountain 60 years ago will be celebrated in May) is an old acquaintance. In 1992 Ralf stood on the summit, 8850 meters high, in bad weather conditions. Above the South Col he used supplementary oxygen. It was the only one of the fourteen 8000-meter-peaks Ralf climbed with an oxygen-mask. The mountaineer from Bühl in the south of Germany feels this fact as a flaw that he wants to eliminate. In 2005, 2010 and 2012 Ralf tried to climb Everest without supplementary oxygen, three times he failed. But still he is flirting with another attempt. So it’s not surprising that Ralf talked about climbing „by fair means” – when I asked him for his statements for my Everest-60-pinboards (you can read and hear his words on the right side of the blog). 

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