After Everest by Paul Little

Author:Paul Little
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO023000, book
ISBN: 9781742698625
Publisher: Allen & Unwin Pty Ltd
Published: 2012-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON

If Peter Hillary were anyone else’s son, he would almost certainly be regarded as one of the world’s great adventurers. Firsts include the first ski descent of Mt Aspiring; and the first high-altitude traverse of the Himalayas—a 50,000-kilometre trek from Kanchenjunga to K2, with Graeme Dingle. He has climbed the seven summits—the highest peaks on each continent—including Everest twice, in 1990 and 2002. He came close to death on K2; and survived a hellish journey on foot to the South Pole.

Charismatic and passionate, he is a compelling speaker and an engaging writer with six books to his credit. He has a pilot’s licence and, in his mid fifties, still acts as a mountaineering guide from time to time on peaks as challenging as Mt Cook. And he is a mainstay of the Himalayan Trust, continuing Ed’s work in Nepal.

And yet . . . there hovers about Peter the impression that he has spent his life trying, and failing, to measure up to his giant of a father. And no matter what Peter did, Ed appeared to remain unimpressed. The father was always polite in acknowledging his son’s achievements—just not very enthusiastic.

There was a rare nod of approval for the record late in Ed’s life, when Peter made his second summit of Everest. ‘I think I felt more excited at that moment, and Peter felt more excited,’ Ed told the New Zealand Herald, ‘than I did when we made the first ascent of Everest nearly 50 years before. Peter climbed it for the second time. I’ve only done it once, I’m sorry to say. It was a good moment to have one’s son doing even better than I had before.’ Ed was 82 then and such effusive public praise—‘a good moment’—had been a long time coming.

Peter grew up both proud of his father’s fame and burdened by the legacy. The youth he describes in Two Generations, the book of which he and his father each wrote half, was a serious child, not a loner but lonely; not given to boisterous social activities; and unfulfilled by the usual adolescent distractions. This boy grew into a stroppy adolescent who, like many intelligent teenagers, had little tolerance for school subjects that did not interest him—giving him a reputation as an adequate but not exceptional student.

There is much in Peter’s description of himself that could equally apply to the young Ed—solitary and thoughtful. One notable difference is that Ed, unlike his son, was an enthusiastic participant in team sport.

His father expected Peter to be self-reliant from an early age, although he was sometimes thwarted by Sherpas. Once, camping in Nepal, Peter was with his sisters in a tent that collapsed when Belinda tripped over a pole. Ed yelled to eleven-year-old Peter to get up and fix it. Before he could do so, Mingma Tsering had seen to it.

But Ed was not careless of Peter’s personal safety, as one might expect of someone given to high-risk pursuits himself. When their son wanted

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