Tenzing Norgay

Mountaineer

• Born: May 29, 1914
• Birthplace: Tshechu, China
• Died: May 9, 1986
• Place of death: Darjeeling, India

Tenzing Norgay was a Nepalese mountaineer and Sherpa who, along with Sir Edmund Hillary, was the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest in 1953. As a teenager, Norgay ran away to Darjeeling, India, in the hopes of joining one of the British expeditions to Everest. He eventually found work as a porter and in time became an official member of expeditions. On his seventh attempt to reach the summit of Mount Everest, when he was thirty-nine years old, Norgay accomplished his lifetime goal. He became a hero among his people and received many honors, including the United Kingdom's George Medal.

Early Life

Norgay was born Namgyal Wangdi in Tsa-chu, Nepal, on May 15, 1914. One of thirteen children, he was raised in Thami, Nepal, in the Solo Khumbu Valley, near Mount Everest. Norgay's parents were Buddhists of humble origins. When Norgay was born, his parents took him to Rongbuk Monastery in Tibet and brought him before a lama (a Tibetan term for guru or spiritual teacher). The lama predicted that Norgay would live a great life and insisted that his parents change his name to Tenzing Norgay, which means "wealthy fortunate follower of religion" in Tibetan.

Like most young Sherpas, Norgay spent his youth herding his father's yaks and running errands for his family. He was fascinated by the stories he heard from Sherpas who had traveled to Darjeeling to work on tea plantations and as porters for expeditions to Chomolungma, which is the Tibetan name for Mount Everest. Bored with his life in the Solo Khumbu Valley, Norgay dreamed of faraway places. In 1933, when he was a teenager, he ran away to Darjeeling after hearing that another expedition to Mount Everest was being organized.

Mountaineering Career

To Norgay's dismay, the 1933 British Everest expedition went on without him. For the next two years, he found work tending cows and repairing damage that had been caused in a recent earthquake. In early 1935, Norgay married a Sherpa woman named Dawa Phuti. Shortly after the wedding, he interviewed with a British team that was planning an exploratory expedition to Mount Everest and got a job as a porter on the trip. However, the team made no serious attempts to reach the summit.

In 1935, after his first son was born, Norgay was hired to join an expedition in northern Sikkim. He spent that winter working odd jobs to support his family, and in the spring of 1936, he was invited on another a British expedition to Everest. Norgay was one of sixty porters hired for the expedition, which was the largest Everest expedition that had ever been launched. However, the expedition was called off midway because of severe weather conditions. That fall, Norgay went on an expedition to the Nanda Devi region. In between expeditions, he supported his family by guiding tourists on treks throughout the Darjeeling region.

In the spring of 1938, Norgay went on another British expedition to Everest, led by Harold William Tilman, and reached higher than he ever had before. The British made two summit attempts on the expedition but were forced to return because of deep snow and bad weather. Due to his efforts, in May 1939, Norgay was among the first group of Sherpas to receive the Tiger's Badge, a bronze medal awarded to Sherpas by the Himalayan Club in recognition of extraordinary accomplishments.

After the Tilman expedition, Norgay was exhilarated and wanted to try again immediately. However, for the next nine years, World War II put his dreams and those of other mountaineers on hold. Instead, Norgay worked as a ski instructor for the Indian Army in Chitral. He and his wife, Phuti, had two children, a son and a daughter; while Norgay was away, however, his four-year-old son died. After that, he decided to move his family with him to Chitral. Norgay and Phuti had another daughter, but soon after, in 1944, Phuti fell ill and died. Norgay remarried a year later to another Sherpa woman, Ang Lahmu. During this time, he took part in smaller expeditions throughout Nepal, India and Pakistan.

Postwar Darjeeling was fraught with poverty and unemployment as tea plantations shut down and the British government withdrew. When a Canadian-born self-proclaimed explorer named Earl Denman arrived in Darjeeling on a whim to climb Everest, Norgay and his friend Ange Dawa set off with him in the last week of March 1947. The trio illegally crossed the Tibetan border in order to make the attempt. Five weeks after their departure, they were back in Darjeeling; lacking the equipment and clothing necessary for the climb, they had not make it very far.

Upon his return, Norgay was invited on a small Swiss expedition to the Garhwal Himalaya range in northern India, led by André Roch. The team made first ascents on six different peaks, including Kedarnath and Kedarnath Dome; notably, it was the first time Norgay had reached a Himalayan summit. Also during this expedition, the sirdar, or lead Sherpa, was injured, and Norgay was promoted to take his place.

After the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950, Nepal began opening its doors to foreigners. Tilman invited Norgay on an expedition to Kathmandu and Nepal's interior, and he accepted. Over the next few years, Norgay participated in three tragic expeditions that lost several team members.

The British had previously monopolized expeditions to Mt. Everest, but in the spring of 1952, the Swiss were granted a permit. Following his success on the Roch expedition, Norgay was invited to participate as a full expedition member and once again take on the role of sirdar. During the first Swiss expedition, led by expert mountaineer E. Wyss-Dunant, Norgay formed a close friendship with Raymond Lambert, one of the Swiss climbers. Lambert and Norgay attempted to reach the summit together and made it to 8,611 meters (28,251 feet)—just 237 meters (778 feet) shy of their goal—before they were forced to turn around due to bad weather. Norgay and Lambert tried again that fall, during the last Swiss expedition of the year, but again had to retreat because of extreme weather. Both men were disappointed that they could not reach the summit together. The next year's permit for Mount Everest expeditions would go to the British.

Upon his return to Kathmandu, Norgay came down with malaria and was sent to a hospital in northern India for treatment. While weak in bed, Norgay received a letter from Major Charles Wylie of England, who asked him to join his expedition as a climber. Norgay spent the early part of 1953 recuperating his strength and pondering his latest invitation. He was reluctant at first, being thirty-nine years old and already weakened from malaria, but ultimately decided that he could not pass up the opportunity to achieve his dream of reaching Everest's summit.

In the spring of 1953, Norgay returned to Everest for the seventh time in his life and the third time in the space of a year. During the expedition, which was led by Colonel John Hunt, Norgay and a climber from New Zealand named Edmund Hillary discovered that they worked well as a team. On the morning of May 29, 1953, the two set out for the summit from a camp they had set up at 27,900 feet on the Southeast Ridge. Just below the summit, Norgay and Hillary belayed each other one at a time. They reached the summit at 11:30 a.m. Norgay spent fifteen minutes at the summit to take photographs, eat cake, leave an offering in the snow, and say a short prayer.

After accomplishing their feat, Norgay and Hillary became international celebrities. Norgay traveled the world and received many honors, including Britain's George Medal and the Star of Nepal (Nepal Tara). He became an Indian citizen and settled in Darjeeling, where he served as field training director for the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, established by the Indian government in 1954. He would remain with the institute until his death.

Norgay spoke seven languages but could not read or write; thus, he dictated his autobiography, Tiger of the Snows (1955). He was married for a third time in 1964, to a woman named Daku. In 1978, he founded a trekking tour agency called Tenzing Norgay Adventures.

Norgay passed away on May 9, 1986, at the age of seventy-two. The line of people at his funeral procession was more than one kilometer long.

One of Norgay's sons with his third wife, Jamling Tenzing Norgay, became a climber himself, reaching the summit of Mount Everest in 1996. In 2002, he and Peter Hillary, son of Edmund Hillary, climbed Everest together to commemorate their fathers' historical ascent.

Bibliography

Douglas, Ed. Tenzing: Hero of Everest. Washington: Natl. Geographic, 2003. Print.

Isserman, Maurice, and Stewart Weaver. Fallen Giants: A History of Himalayan Mountaineering from the Age of Empire to the Age of Extremes. New Haven: Yale UP, 2008. Print.

Lhatoo, Dorjee. "Climbing Sherpas of Darjeeling." Himalayan Journal 35 (1979): n. pag. Himalayan Club. Web. 24 Dec. 2014.

Tenzing, Tashi, and Judy Tenzing. Tenzing Norgay and the Sherpas of Everest. Fwd. Edmund Hillary and the Dalai Lama. Camden: Ragged Mountain, 2001. Print.