Hare-brained History Vol. 98: The 1953 Ascent of Mount Everest

Aidan Alan

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Hare-brained History Vol. 98: The 1953 Ascent of Mount Everest<br>I am on a two-week hiatus, and this is the first of the two editions prewritten for that time. I hope you enjoy.

Aidan Alan<br>May 29, 2026

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Welcome to the 98th installment of Hare-brained History, a blog in which your intrepid host will treat you with absurdities, follies, mind-fucks, and everything in between from the world of history. Today, we are inspired by an excellent quote. Why do we, as people, do the things we do? It’s an interesting question, as George Mallory famously said when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest: “Because it’s there.” There is some debate over whether he actually said it, but like that New York Times reporter, we won’t let facts get in the way of a good quote.<br>The pioneering English mountaineer took part in the first three expeditions to the mountain known in Nepali as “Goddess of the Sky.” On the last, in 1924, Mallory and his climbing partner Sandy Irvine were spotted roughly 800 vertical feet from the summit before vanishing, never to be seen alive again. Twenty-nine years later, on the ninth major attempt to conquer the tallest mountain on Earth, humanity finally succeeded. So today, because it’s there, join me on a journey to the summit of Mount Everest as we explore the first successful ascent of the world’s highest peak.

Mount Everest is the peak of the Himalayas, the Asian mountain range separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. Mount Everest is unfathomably tall. Standing at 29,032 feet (8,849 meters), it reaches nearly into the cruising altitude of commercial jets, around 35,000 feet. Everest actually grows a little taller every year due to how it was formed.<br>Talking tectonics now: the Indian Plate moves northward while the Eurasian Plate pushes southward. About 50 million years ago, this collision crumpled Earth’s crust, forming Everest and the entire Himalayas, which continue to rise as the plates keep colliding. Marine fossils have been found high in the Himalayas. Not much else for me to say about that. Pretty cool.<br>Being the highest point on Earth, conditions are not ideal, to put it mildly. At the summit, temperatures range from around -2°F (-19°C) in summer to -40° in winter, which is so cold it reaches the point where Celsius and Fahrenheit finally agree. Wind chill makes it even colder. But temperature is nowhere close to being the main problem. Because the mountain rises so high into the atmosphere, Everest encounters hurricane-force winds, sudden snowstorms, avalanches, and icefalls.<br>The biggest problem, though, is lack of oxygen. Air pressure at the summit is about one-third of sea level, meaning every breath gives you far less oxygen. The area above 26,000 feet is known as the “death zone,” and a whole lot of dead climbers can attest to why. With so little oxygen, the body begins shutting down. Brains swell. Lungs fail. Not a good time.<br>So why would anyone ever want to climb it?<br>Before we get to that, while no one lives on Mount Everest, people have lived in its shadow for centuries. Long before any white people decided they wanted to climb it, that’s just the reality, the mountain was culturally important to numerous peoples. As touched on earlier, in Nepali the mountain is Sagarmatha, “Goddess of the Sky,” while in Tibetan it is Chomolungma, “Goddess Mother of the World.” Natural landmarks have been sacred to people across the world, and the sheer size of Everest made it especially significant to the alpine peoples who lived around it.<br>For centuries, Tibetans lived to the north and Nepali peoples to the south. According to Tibetan Buddhists, the goddess Miyolangsangma lives atop Everest, the mountain serving as her playground. Though she is the goddess of inexhaustible giving, those who attempt to climb her palace are not granted inexhaustible patience. The southern region around Everest is also regarded as one of the “hidden valleys” of refuge described by the 9th-century Buddhist saint Padmasambhava.<br>On Everest’s northern side sits Rongbuk Monastery, a Nyingma Tibetan Buddhist monastery roughly 16,340 feet above sea level near the mountain’s base. Founded in 1902, the area had long been filled with meditation caves and huts for pilgrims who came to pray near the sacred mountain. The monastery’s founder, Rongbuk Lama, blessed many who passed through, even climbers he viewed as heretical for scaling a holy mountain in pursuit of glory.<br>Rongbuk Lama also bestowed a young boy named Namgyal Wangdi with a new name: Tenzing Norgay, meaning “wealthy, fortunate follower of religion.” That young boy, obviously important to this story, was a Sherpa.<br>In the West, many people think “Sherpa” is a profession, but it is actually an ethnic group. The Sherpas are descended from Tibetans who migrated into Nepal during the 13th and 14th centuries, according to oral...