Words of Warning From Man Who Conquered Everest

Sir Edmund Hillary is appropriately impressive, a mountain of a man with a shock of white hair, a somewhat craggy brow and a wizened demeanor. At 73, he still looks the part of a bigger than life, death-defying, conquering hero.

Perhaps that is why dozens of people at a reception in his honor queued up to shake hands and have their picture taken with the man who in 1953, with his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay, was the first to scale Mt. Everest.

It was, after all, a chance to connect with an era of bare-knuckled adventuring that has almost vanished: Hillary is one of the last of the “Earth folklore people,” as a colleague said of those who delved headlong into uncharted territory. After Hillary, he noted, there was space.

But if Hillary’s address Thursday before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council lauded the spirit of adventure, it also held a cautionary note: Even the most remote of Earth’s corners now bear the crude earmarks of civilization, and we as individuals and nations must learn to better respect nature.

“Time is getting short--maybe it is too late already--but all of us must try at least to protect our beautiful world from devastation and despair,” Hillary told about 300 people attending the forum at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.

It is a lesson that has not been learned even by his fellow mountaineers, the New Zealander lamented.

“One of the most unfortunate results of the vast number of expeditions to Mt. Everest has resulted in making it the world’s highest garbage dump,” he said. “I was talking recently to an experienced Japanese climber who had just been on the south column of Everest at 26,000 feet. He said that in this remote area he saw 50 to 100 empty oxygen tanks, empty food cans, torn tents, plastic food wrappings, human waste and at times even a few dead bodies.”

Hillary expressed disappointment in the “lack of full involvement” of the United States government at last June’s Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro. But he said he was cheered that Vice President-elect Al Gore appears to be a “proven environmentalist” and he urged energetic support for Gore’s efforts.

In an interview before the forum, Hillary spoke thoughtfully about the troublesome consequences of his own and other’s quests: Vast stretches of the Himalayas have been deforested to pave the way for roads, many of them unneeded, Hillary said. The people of the Himalayas also have been changed by their contact with Westerners, “introduced to possessions and money that I don’t think they had a use for before.”

But for Hillary the quest for adventure still holds value.

“A child who hasn’t had the opportunity to explore is a child who has not had everything in life.”