Sir Edmund Hillary Success Story
Sir Edmund Hillary was determined to climb Mount Everest but it appears that he did have some self-doubt that he went on to overcome. The night
Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons
before he attempted to climb Everest, which is something no one had done at that time, he was camped at 25,800 feet, just 3228 feet from its peak. The story is told that his tent was pounded by wind so hard that it sounded like the roar of 1000 tigers according to one aide. He needed supplemental oxygen just to breathe at that height and sometime during the night his air mattress deflated and his hip froze to the ground where it touched. He stated that he couldn’t sleep even though he was exhausted and that he was lonely and afraid that night. He was filled with self-doubt and torment asking himself, “what is the sense in trying to climb Mount Everest”. After all, this was his second attempt at climbing Everest because he had failed the year earlier.
Hillary pulled himself together both physically and mentally and reached the summit of Mount Everest on May 29, 1953 which marks the first man atop Mount Everest. Hillary is famously quoted in saying that in making the climb it wasn’t the struggles of the mountain that he conquered but it was the internal struggles within himself that were conquered.
