These are the famous words of Sir Edmund Hillary after he returned from conquering Mt. Everest. It would be great to be that non-chalant after becoming the first person (along with Tenzing Norgay) to climb the highest mountain on earth. I've always appreciated Hillary's understated modesty. For some one in a field for of braggarts along the lines of Rienhold Messner, Hillary is refreshingly different.

Hillary is back in Nepal celebrating 50 years since the great expedition.

Click on the more link for the full story from the Associated Press

Hillary returns to Mount Everest 50 years later
By Steve McMorran, Associated Press Writer

WELLINGTON, New Zealand -- A half-century ago, Mount Everest was both known and unknown, an international symbol for the mysterious and insurmountable.

To the native Sherpas, the lower slopes, ridges, ice walls and crevasses of the mountain they call "Sagarmatha" had a familiar geography. But its highest reaches were beyond the scope of legend.

When Englishman George Mallory was drawn to its slopes and was asked to explain the mountain's magnetism, he explained, in an immortal phrase, that he would climb it "because it's there." He died on the mountain's northeast ridge in 1924.

Another 29 years passed before the mountain finally surrendered its summit and gave up its secrets to the most unlikely of invaders.

On May 29, 1953, 33-year-old New Zealand beekeeper Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide and companion, Tenzing Norgay, became the first men to stand atop Everest.

They were the final emissaries of a British mission formed in concert by the joint Himalayan Committee, the Alpine Club of Great Britain and the Royal Geographical Society, led by Sir John Hunt.

The memories of that moment are still vivid for Hillary, now 83 but in good health as he prepares for anniversary celebrations of the climb.

The duo surmounted the final obstacle of a sheer, 40-foot ice wall -- now known as the "Hillary Step" -- and dragged themselves up a narrow snow ridge to the summit.

They were close to exhaustion after their final, laborious ascent. As they climbed over each humped ridge with difficulty, another sloping ridge came into view.

Hillary, who was knighted in the year of his climb, said they began the final climb that morning with "zest." But as the effort of each step increased with the lack of oxygen, they settled into "a grim struggle."

Then, Hillary realized that the ridge they were climbing -- he in front and Tenzing close behind -- no longer sloped upward and now dropped rapidly away. With a few final swings of his ax he stood at the summit and drew Tenzing to his side.

"I remember the relief and I remember the view," he said in a telephone interview. "We did think of Mallory and the others. It was a very quiet moment, and I think more than anything there was relief that we'd succeeded where others had failed."

A quiet man, almost unprepared for the fame that came with the achievement, he said he held out a congratulatory hand to Tenzing. His companion, less reserved, grabbed the tall New Zealander in an ebullient hug.

Hillary could look down on the North Col of Everest, the Rongbuk Glacier and, farther off, Everest's neighbor, Makalu, which was then still unclimbed. He recalls mentally tracing a route to Makalu's summit, one he was to explore successfully years later.

This man who had learned to love the mountains as a young boy on day treks outside his native Auckland had become the world's consummate mountaineer.

He carried a camera, loaded with color film, within the folds of his shirt to keep it from freezing, and brought it out to record the scene. Tenzing had never used a camera, and Hillary didn't have time to teach him.

So there are no photographs of Hillary at the summit. "But you can take my word for it: I was there," he said, his humor still roguish.

The images from the peak are of Tenzing -- high-booted and heavily dressed -- holding aloft his ice ax on which he has unfurled the Union Jack and the flag of Nepal.

Hillary said he had removed his oxygen gear to take the photographs, and after about 10 minutes, he realized his movements were becoming clumsy from a lack of oxygen. He put on his tanks and mask again.

Tenzing, he recalled, made a small hole in the snow and left his offerings to the gods: a bar of chocolate, a few cookies and some candy. Hillary took out a crucifix that Hunt had given him on the South Col a few days earlier and planted it, tenderly, next to Tenzing's Buddhist offering.

The pair spent only 15 minutes on the summit, much of it in quiet reflection. Hillary looked briefly for signs that Mallory's expedition might have succeeded almost 30 years before, but found none.

"It was time to move on," he said.

Tired and with oxygen supplies dwindling, the pair began a rapid descent down the treacherous ridges, sustained by occasional sips of sweetened lemonade. They hastened to reach two reserve cylinders of oxygen cached above the final camp they had left hours before.

Tenzing led the way down toward the larger camp on the South Col, where other expedition members waited. As they approached the huddled tents, a figure came toward them, and Hillary recognized George Lowe, a fellow New Zealander. Lowe, no longer able to keep vigil with the others, carried soup and emergency oxygen. He also was eager for news.

Hillary said he drew himself up as Lowe got close and said: "Well, George, we knocked the bastard off."

He could think of no more to say. Fifty years later, he remembered his regret that his mother might have disapproved of his language.

Tenzing died in 1986. For many of those years, Hillary kept silent on the question of whether he or Tenzing had reached the summit first. Only recently has he said that he took the lead and stepped on the peak moments before his Nepalese guide.

It was of no significance, he said. Neither one could have done it without the other.

They were an odd pair, the New Zealander and the Sherpa. Hillary was tall, spare, long-faced and taciturn. He climbed with the natural grace of a giraffe and with a "demonic" energy, expedition member James Morris said.

Tenzing was small, compact and catlike. Yet they had been close from their first meeting and they remained so, despite the separation of distance, for more than 30 years.

Hillary had not been surprised to be chosen by Hunt to make the final assault on the summit, nor was he surprised that Tenzing was selected to accompany him. He said he was the fittest of the expedition members and he knew that, if chosen, he would go beyond physical endurance to succeed.

But he hadn't imagined the aftermath.

News of the British expedition's success reached England on the day of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. But jubilation spread far beyond the British empire, making Hillary a citizen of the world in a reaction similar to that which greeted the feats of astronauts.

"We had no supposition that the response would be as great as it was," Hillary said. "We had always had it in our minds that if we succeeded, that success would have some significance in the mountaineering world. But it had never occurred to us, and we must have been very naive in hindsight, that it would be so much more widely significant. It had never crossed my mind."

More than 1,200 people have since followed Hillary to the mountaintop. As Nepal and the world prepare to celebrate his achievement there are 25 expeditions on Everest attempting to repeat his climb. Among them was a 70-year-old Japanese man who became the oldest to conquer Everest.

Hillary views the commercialization of Everest with mild concern and regret.

"We were the lucky ones," he said. "There have been many people who have followed in our footsteps, but we were privileged to have made those footsteps."