His death was announced by Prime Minister Helen Clark of New Zealand.

In the annals of great heroic exploits, the conquest of Mount Everest by Sir Edmund and Norgay ranks with the first trek to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen in 1911 and the first nonstop trans-Atlantic flight by Charles A Lindbergh in 1927.

By 1953, nearly a century after British surveyors had established that the Himalayan peak on the Nepal-Tibet border was the highest point on Earth, many climbers considered the mountain all but unconquerable. The summit was 5 1/2 vertical miles above sea level — an otherworldly place of yawning crevasses and 100-mile-an-hour winds, of perpetual cold and air so thin that the human brain and lungs do not function properly in it.

Numerous Everest expeditions had failed, and dozens of experienced mountaineers, including many Sherpas, the Nepalese people famed as climbers, had been killed — buried in avalanches or lost and frozen in sudden storms that roared over the dizzying escarpments. One who vanished, in 1924, was George Leigh Mallory, known for snapping when asked why climb Everest, “Because it is there”. His body was found in the ice 75 years later, in 1999, about 2,000 feet below the summit.

Sir Edmund and Norgay were part of a Royal Geographical Society-Alpine Club expedition, led by Col Henry Cecil John Hunt, a siege group that included a dozen climbers, 35 Sherpa guides and 350 porters carrying 18 tons of food and equipment. Their route was the treacherous South Tor, facing Nepal.

After a series of climbs by coordinated teams to establish ever-higher camps on the icy slopes and perilous rock ledges, Tom Bourdillon and Dr Charles Evans were the first team to attempt the summit, but gave up at 28,720 feet — 315 feet from the top — beaten back by exhaustion, a storm that shrouded them in ice and oxygen-tank failures.

Sir Edmund, then 33, and Norgay, 39, made the next assault. They first established a bivouac at 27,900 feet on a rock ledge 6 feet wide and canted at a 30-degree angle. There, holding their tent against a howling gale as the temperatures plunged to 30 degrees below zero, they spent the night.

At 6.30 am on May 29, 1953, cheered by clearing skies, they began the final attack. Carrying enough oxygen for seven hours and counting on picking up two partly filled tanks left by Evans and Bourdillon, they moved out. Roped together, cutting toe-holds with their ice axes, first one man leading and then the other, they inched up a steep, knife-edged ridge southeast of the summit.

Farther up, they encountered what was later named the Hillary Step — a sheer face of rock and ice 40 feet high that Sir Edmund called “the most formidable obstacle on the ridge”. But they found a vertical crack and managed to climb it.

“As I chipped steps, I wondered how long we could keep it up,” Sir Edmund said. “Then I realised that the ridge now dropped sharply away. I looked upward to see a narrow ridge running up to a sharp point. A few more whacks of the ice axe and we stood on the summit.”

There was a modest celebration. “We shook hands and then, we thumped each other on the back until forced to stop from lack of breath,” Sir Edmund remembered.

They took photographs and left a crucifix for Hunt, the expedition leader. Norgay, a Buddhist, buried biscuits and chocolate as an offering to the gods of Everest.

Worldwide heroes overnight, they were greeted by huge crowds in India and London. A controversy over whether Sir Edmund or Norgay had been first to stand on the summit threatened briefly to mar the celebrations, but Hunt declared, “They reached it together, as a team.”

Sir Edmund continued his life of adventure, climbing mountains and once crossing the Antarctic continent, lecturing and making public appearances, and serving as New Zealand’s high commissioner, or ambassador, to India, Bangladesh and Nepal from 1985 to 1988.

Friends, fans remember Hillary as a ‘great giant’ of a man

Helen Clark

New Zealand Prime Minister

“Sir Edmund described himself as an average New Zealander with modest abilities. In reality, he was a colossus. He was a heroic figure who not only ‘knocked off’ Everest but lived a life of determination, humility, and generosity.”

Julia Gillard

Australia’s acting Prime Minister

Hillary’s name would forever “be synonymous with adventure, with achievement, with dreaming and then making those dreams come true. It was obviously a long life well lived.”

Bhoomi Lama

Nepal Mountaineering Association

“He was a hero and our leader. He did a lot for the people of the region around Everest and will always remain in our hearts.”

Gordon Brown

British Prime Minister

He “was a truly a great hero who captured the imagination of the world, a towering figure who will always be remembered as a pioneer explorer and leader.”

Graeme Dingle

New Zealand climber

“I’m incredibly upset, I thought I was ready but I wasn’t. I feel particularly honoured to have been close to him. He recently said to someone that he was quite flexible when it came to changing his plans. I think he was most inflexible - to the point of extreme doggedness... That was the great thing about him. Once he built up some momentum, it was hard to stop him.”

The difficult steps

• Khumbu Glacier: Most technically demanding section on the route.

It’s a two-and-a-half mile long river of cracking ice.

• Western Cwm: Cwm is a Welsh term for valley of ice with crevasses more than eighty feet wide and several hundreds feet deep.

• Geneva Spur: An anvil-shaped black rib of rock fixed with ropes

• South Col: Known as Camp IV, this football field size rock-strewn wind-swept saddle is between Everest and Lhotse.

• Balcony: On this platform, the climbers rest and admire the dawn light illuminating the peaks to the east and south.

• Hillary Step: A 40-foot spur of snow and ice, is the last obstacle barring access to the gently angled summit slopes.

Air pressure(How it matters)

DEATH ZONE

At Mt Everest, air pressure is only 30% that at sea level — so climbers take in only 30% as many oxygen molecules. That’s why above 26,000 feet body begins a final breakdown. Heart pounds, even at rest.

NO CIVILISATION

No permanent settlements above this level on the earth. Lungs expel more carbon dioxide, disrupting the blood’s pH balance.

THIN AIR

Everyone feels the impact of thin air. By this altitude respiration speeds and deepens as the body senses less oxygen in the blood.

EASY LIFE

Maximum oxygen level.

THE PATH THOUSANDS FOLLOWED

First Ascent

May 29, 1953: Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay climbed the highest peak in 1953 through southwest face.

The first

Oxygenless ascent:

Reinhold Messner of Italy and Peter Habeler of Austria, on May 8, 1978. Messner favours alpine-style climbs, using minimal equipment, and describes expedition style climbs as “sieges”.

Solo Ascent: Aug 20, 1980, Reinhold Messner

Woman climber: J Tabei of Japan, on May 16, 1975

Youngest Person: Temba Tsheri of Nepal, at 15 years, on May 22, 2001

Oldest Person: Sherman Bull, at 64 years, on May 25, 2001

One-day Record

Largest Number to reach summit on a day:40 people, on May 10, 1993

Indian Challenge

A.S. Cheema and Sherpa Nawang Gomu ascend the SE ridge, on May 20, 1965, as part of the Third Indian Expedition. Other notable Indians who have made it to the top: Sonam Gyatso, Sonam Wangyal, C P Vohra, Ang Kami, H P S Ahluwalia, H C S Rawat, and Phu Dorje Woman climber: Bachendri Pal, on May 17, 1984