Hillary and Norgay conquer Everest!

For years they dreamed of it, for weeks they climbed: On 29 May 1953 at 11.30 a.m., the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reach their ambitious goal: they are the very first to stand on the summit of Mount Everest!

Since the beginning of May, a British expedition has been preparing for the summit attempt on the highest mountain on earth. A dozen experienced climbers, 35 guides and 350 porters with 18 tonnes of equipment have been on their way from Kathmandu to the foot of Everest since spring. A first assault on the summit will take place on 26 May. But the climbers Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans fail due to a defective oxygen device: Shortly before reaching their goal, the two have to turn back.

This is the moment for Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, who wait for their chance at base camp. They are the second team to begin the dangerous ascent. On 28 May, they spend an icy night at an altitude of 8500 metres. The next morning at 4 a.m. they start their last stage: 350 metres of altitude and a vertical rock step still lie ahead of them – hardly manageable at this altitude. But at 11.30 a.m. the two have actually made it: they are standing on the highest point on earth, the world is at their feet! Tenzing wraps his arms around Hillary. The New Zealander pulls out his camera to capture the situation: The “third pole” has been reached! After 15 minutes on the summit, the two heroes start the dangerous descent.

For a long time, the 8848-metre-high Mount Everest was considered impregnable. Many expeditions have failed on this notorious giant in the Himalayas over the past decades. The British George Mallory and Andrew Irvine might even have made it before Hillary and Tenzing. However, they died on the descent and remained lost. To this day, no one knows whether they actually stood on the “mountain of mountains”.

The stormy night before the summit storm

Before Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of Everest, they spent a terrible, freezing night. Hillary described their incredible ordeal like this:

“The night was terrible. An icy storm swept over the highest peak on earth. Tenzing called it the roar of a thousand tigers. Incessantly and mercilessly the storm swept over us, howling and shrieking, with such force that the canvas of our pyramid tent rattled like rifle volleys. We were on the South Col, a godforsaken place between the peaks of Everest and Lhotse. Instead of abating, the storm was still gathering force, and I was beginning to fear that our flapping and creaking shelter might be torn from its moorings and leave us defenceless against the elements. To save weight, we had left the inserts of our sleeping bags behind, which now proved to be a grave mistake. Although I was wearing all my down clothing, the icy cold penetrated to my bones. A feeling of extreme fear and loneliness overcame me. What was the point of it all? You had to be crazy to do such a thing to yourself!”

After surviving the stormy night, the summit attempt was imminent: “We had no time to lose. I hit steps again and gradually kept a somewhat anxious lookout for the summit. It seemed to go on forever, and we were tired and already moving more slowly. In the distance, the bare plateau of Tibet spread out. I looked up to the right and saw a snowy bulge. That had to be the summit! We moved closer together as Tenzing tightened the rope between us. Again I hit a step in the ice. And the next moment I had arrived on a snowy expanse with nothing but air – in every direction. Tenzing quickly followed me and we looked around in amazement. With immense satisfaction we realised that we were standing on the highest point on earth. It was 11.30 a.m. on 29 May 1953.”

High mountains and low mountains

The Feldberg in the Black Forest is particularly popular with winter sports enthusiasts. Because of its height of 1493 metres, it is a good place to ski. But the Black Forest, although it has high mountains, belongs to the German low mountain ranges. The Alps, on the other hand, are high mountains. But what is actually the difference between low and high mountains?

The simplest answer is obvious: they are distinguished by their altitude. High mountains start at 1500 – some say 2000 – metres above sea level. They are therefore mountains whose peaks rise far above the tree line. Another typical feature of high mountains is that they are formed by glaciers and have steep mountain faces.

Low mountain ranges, on the other hand, have neither glaciers nor steep flanks. Their landscape is rather hilly and rounded. This is because their formation goes back much further than that of the Alps. Originally, they too were piled up into high mountains – more than 300 million years ago. But unlike the Alps, the low mountain ranges have not been uplifted for a long time. They are only being eroded, their shapes ground round. Some of them have already been weathered and eroded to such an extent that only the hull remains of the former high mountains: the hull mountains. The Erzgebirge and the Fichtelgebirge, for example, belong to them.

During their long history, the low mountain ranges were constantly reshaped. Even the uplift of the Alps did not leave them unscathed. The forces of the colliding plates put the old hulls of the low mountain ranges under considerable pressure. Because of their great age, however, the rock had become so solid and rigid that it could not be folded any further. Instead, like a gigantic sheet of ice, it broke into huge floes. Some sank into the depths, others began to rise. Sinking floes became deep trenches, rising floes developed into plateaus. The landscape that emerged from this are fractured clod mountains like the Harz Mountains. Its highest mountain, the Brocken, is 1141 metres high. This is not enough to make it a high mountain range, so the Harz clearly belongs to the low mountain range.

Mountains on the move

Mighty and rigid mountains rise up into the sky. It seems as if nothing and no one can move them from the spot. But this is not true: mountains are constantly moving – but so slowly that we cannot see the change with the naked eye.

The reason for this: the plates of the earth’s crust move. And when two of these plates collide, the rock is compressed, pushed and piled up. Similar to a car accident, mountains fold up at the edges of the plates when they collide. Mountains and valleys are therefore a “crumple zone” of the colliding plates. However, this does not happen abruptly like in a car accident, but much more slowly than in slow motion. The result is folded mountains like the Andes in South America. There, the oceanic Nazca plate slides under the South American plate and squeezes the rock together with incredible force. In the process, the elongated mountains of the Andes pile up, stretching over a distance of 7500 kilometres. This makes the Andes the longest mountain range above ground in the world.

However, there are also huge mountains below sea level. They run through the middle of the oceans. They, too, owe their existence to the moving plates. Where two plates move away from each other at the bottom of the ocean, magma from the mantle seeps through the oceanic crust. The hot rock cools on the seabed and piles up into mountains thousands of metres long: the mid-ocean ridges. Where the lava reaches sea level and rises above it, islands like Iceland are formed. These mountains, born in the sea, are the longest on earth. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge runs from north to south through the entire Antlantic – about 20,000 kilometres long.

Where plates collide

When two vehicles collide, their sheet metal is crumpled together. Something similar happens when two plates of the earth’s crust collide. Then their rock is pushed together and very slowly folded into enormous creases – this is how fold mountains are formed. What the crumple zone is in a car accident, the mountain range is in a plate collision – except that a car accident takes place in a fraction of a second, whereas a plate collision takes many millions of years.

In such a crash, the rock of the lighter plate pushes upwards, the heavier one sinks into the depths. This process is called subduction, and the area where the plate dives is called a subduction zone. Along these zones there are often deep gullies, which is why they are easy to recognise. The deepest of these is the Mariana Trench in the Pacific Ocean. This deep ocean channel is located where the Pacific Plate dips below the Philippine Plate.

The further the earth’s crustal plate disappears into the earth’s interior, the hotter it gets. The rock melts and magma forms in the depths. The growing pressure can force it upwards again. Where it reaches the earth’s surface, volcanoes spew lava and ash. There are whole chains of such volcanoes around the Pacific Plate, for example in Indonesia. Because one volcano follows another here, this plate boundary is also called the “Pacific Ring of Fire”.

Folded and reshaped – the formation of the Alps

Every year, Munich and Venice come half a centimetre closer to each other. That’s not much, but it is measurable. The fact that the German and Italian cities are very slowly moving closer together has to do with the formation of the Alps.

Compared to other mountains, the Alps are relatively young. Their history “only” began around 250 million years ago when a shallow sea formed between the continents of Eurasia and Africa: the Tethys. Rock debris and remains of living creatures settle on the seabed over a long period of time and become limestone.

About 100 million years ago, the African plate set off on its journey: It drifted northwards and pushed hard against the Eurasian continent. The pressure compresses the rock, causing it to fold up in waves. The individual folds can be as small as a few millimetres or as large as hundreds of metres. In some places, the folded layers push over each other like roof tiles and form so-called rock ceilings. Finally, magma also rises; namely at the moment when the African plate dives under the Eurasian plate. The rock is melted in the earth’s interior and rises upwards, but still cools below the earth’s surface. For this reason, the Central Alps consist, among other things, of the magmatic rock granite – in contrast to the limestone of the Northern and Southern Alps.

The folded area eventually rises above sea level under the great pressure. At first, the folded ridges still appear as elongated islands in the sea. But the archipelago is pushed further upwards and slowly rises to form a high mountain range into which the rivers cut deep valleys. Large amounts of erosion debris are piled up in the Alpine foreland. During the cold periods, huge glaciers carve deep trough valleys and steep mountain flanks into the rock. Only now does the typical high mountain landscape of the Alps form, which attracts us to hiking or climbing in summer and skiing in winter.

Until today, the African Plate is drifting northwards. That’s why the Alps are still being vigorously uplifted and compressed. This compression is the reason why Venice and the whole area beyond the Alps move a tiny bit closer to us every year.

A constant race: Uplift versus erosion

The Matterhorn or Mont Blanc would actually be over 12,000 metres high today – if wind and weather hadn’t constantly been at their heels. Because while the mountains are lifted by forces in the earth’s interior, they also shrink again at the same time: their rock is washed away and abraded by water, wind and frost. In the case of the Alps, uplift and erosion are currently in balance. They remain about the same height.

But there are also mountains where the folding is over – they are only shrinking. These mountains were formed over 300 million years ago, so they are much older than the Alps or the Himalayas. Many of our low mountain ranges belong to them, for example the Rhenish Slate Mountains or the Bavarian Forest. They were abraded over millions of years and are lower than 2000 metres today.

Breathtaking: Mount Everest conquered without oxygen equipment

No sensible person would have thought it possible: Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler have climbed the highest mountain on earth without oxygen equipment. Completely exhausted but happy, the two extreme mountaineers arrived at base camp yesterday.

Their summit attempt on Everest begins on 8 May, at half past five in the morning, after an icy night in the tent. They have been on their way up from base camp since 6 May. The warnings of many doctors do not scare them: they want to climb the roof of the world without artificial oxygen. One failed attempt is already behind them. They are now making another attempt from an altitude of almost 8,000 metres. The climb in the thin high-altitude air is an ordeal, every step is torture. But the two are in top shape, and they have experience.

At noon they reach an altitude of 8,800 metres. Their legs are heavy as lead, the fatigue hard to describe. But they overcome their pain and trudge on, as if in a trance. Finally they achieve the seemingly impossible: they stand on the summit of Everest. A world record! From exhaustion, they let themselves fall into the snow. After a long break, Messner takes his camera out of his backpack and films. Back in the tent, they radio the base camp: they have made it!

During the night Messner is tormented by terrible eye pain: he is snow-blind. Habeler is injured in the ankle. Nevertheless, on 10 May the two of them manage the descent to base camp. Only now do they realise their success, a sense of triumph fills them. The sensation is perfect: Peter Habeler and Reinhold Messner have proved that Mount Everest can be climbed without oxygen equipment.

In the death zone

Doctors had warned Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler that moving around at 8,000 metres without artificial oxygen was extremely dangerous to one’s health. Brain cells could die and controlled thinking could cease, and there was also a risk of unconsciousness. “You will come back as idiots,” they said briefly and drastically.

In fact, altitude sickness is not to be trifled with. Starting at about 2,000 metres, the thinning air can make itself felt through shortness of breath, dizziness, headaches or vomiting. With increasing altitude, the lungs absorb less and less oxygen, and the body is undersupplied. Above 7,000 metres – in the death zone – most people become unconscious if they do not receive supplementary oxygen. In the worst case, the extreme altitude leads to death. This fact has already cost many mountaineers their lives. The fact that Habeler and Messner climbed the summit without breathing apparatus really borders on a miracle. It can only be explained with the most precise planning, fabulous physical fitness and an iron will.