In an age of superficial celebrities, Sir Edmund Hillary remained as solid as a mountain to those who knew him well.
“Ed was one of the few people who remained unchanged with his worldwide fame, his popularity and his money,” said Dr. Charlie Houston, 95, a climber who arrived on the slopes of Mount Everest three years before Hillary. “He was a very great person, not spoiled by anything, who went on to do a lot of great things after Everest.”
Houston, who founded the Snake River, now Dillon, Community Health Care Service in Keystone, hiked several hundred miles in to Everest to scout possible climbing routes on the south side in 1950.
“We were the first to see the south side. The Swiss did the same in 1952, and Ed climbed it in 1953,” said Houston, who remained friends with Hillary until his death Thursday. Houston also pioneered research at the University of Colorado’s High Altitude Research Station.
“Great people who live through fame and fortune and remain totally unchanged are really, really rare. There was a lot more to Ed than just climbing.”
Another physician, Dr. Tom Hornbein, 77, of Estes Park, summitted Everest a decade after Hillary, reaching the top on May 22, 1963. The two first met just below base camp, and their lives intersected for decades after.
“What Hillary did after Everest is in some ways his greatest achievement,” Hornbein said. “He took his notoriety and turned it into helping the Sherpa people by building schools for them. His Himalayan Trust was a major gift to the people (Sherpas) who helped us so much.
“He was a big, lanky, ebullient, high-energy character who remained a fairly humble man.”
Michael Chessler, owner of Chessler Books in Evergreen, which specializes in mountaineering books, spoke with Hillary’s wife the day before he died.
“What he really liked to talk about was the world, the politics of the world and of New Zealand’s role,” Chessler said. “He didn’t really talk about mountaineering anymore.”
In 1981, Hillary accompanied a group from the American Alpine Club in Golden to Everest, said former president Louis Reichardt. The group wanted to go up the unclimbed east face but opted for the easier, more popular north-face route.
“Ed said if you do that it is a personal achievement, but it won’t be a mountaineering achievement. He thought even a partial effort on the east face was more of an achievement than a route that the world had already climbed,” Reichardt said.
Among the younger climbers, such as Jake Norton, 34, of Golden, who has been on Everest five times and summitted in 2002 and again in 2003, Hillary’s sense of humanity was his greatest attribute.
“To me, Hillary did great things but was very quick to recognize he couldn’t have done them without the help of the many people with him,” said Norton, a commercial mountain photographer. “I’ve always respected him for his recognition of the Sherpa community.”
Staff writers Tom McGhee and Steve Lipsher contributed to this report.
Mike McPhee: 303-954-1409 or mmcphee@denverpost.com
