Author(s): Pat Booth

Mountaineering | Biography

"...When the 20th century lists its achievers, the name of Sir Edmund Hillary will be among them, ranked with the greatest adventurers of this and many other centuries.
Like astronauts who have looked back on their world from space, or walked the surface of the moon, Ed Hillary, after levering himself to the top of the world's highest mountain, was all at once the same and yet never the same again.
It was as if he had glimpsed more than simply the vast snow profiles of the Himalayas but had seen beyond to man's real place on the planet as caretaker in trust.
Through his unfailing support and nurturing of the Sherpa population, building schools and hospitals, repaying not only his own debt but also those of other humans to other communities, he set an example of caring to the world.
Hillary's efforts are more than simply for mankind. Through his worldwide travels in support of environmental causes, he has come to epitomise the modern adventurer who not only travels but defends, who not only saw for himself but who brough the message home to hundreds of millions more.
Forty years after those moments shared by a shy Sherpa and a young beekeeper handpicked by fate to be the trailblazers, the time is right to celebrate a great life. This book is that celebration..."