Sad news

[chickenfeet]

Sir Edmund Hillary has died. I haven't felt this sad about the death of a climber since we lost Pete Boardman.

Comments

[owlfish]

Sad - but very unexpected to go to the page you linked to and find that, thanks to timezone differences, he died tomorrow.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

He always was a speedy bugger

[commodorified.livejournal.com]

Well, Hell.

[coughingbear]

Damn, just woke up to that news myself. I always admired him, and was really pleased to be able to hear him speak once, at the Hay Festival. An amazing man.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

They had Brian Blessed on BBC Breakfast this morning, talking about how he met Hillary (and went on to correspond with him for several years), the Everest ascent, and Hillary's work in Burma. Blessed made a point of also talking about the achievements of the whole Everest team - not only Tenzing, but the people who had managed to pitch the camp high enough to make the final ascent possible, and so on, and I was pleased that he did. Not only because it was a team effort, and that should be acknowledged, but because obituaries often seem to leave their subject rather isolated, and I think that's rather diminishing, in a backwards sort of way.

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

Have you read The Ascent of Rum Doodle?

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

No. Should I?

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Sorry: that was a little abrupt. I meant "I know of it but know very little about it (and the 'official web site' doesn't help) - would you recommend it?"

[chickenfeet2003.livejournal.com]

It's very silly but fun. It's a parody of books like Sir John Hunt's The Ascent of Everest in which all the 'chaps' are 'splendid' (and not at all gay) and the Sherpas are also 'splendid' but not, of course, really 'chaps' (but not at all gay either). On Rum Doodle our splendid chaps are invariably suffering from some form of 'lassitude' or busy calculating that precisely 112,341 porters will be required to carry food to Base Camp for the 7,546 Sherpas who will carry loads to Camp 1. And so on.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Thanks - I'll look out for it.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Have just realised I typed 'Burma' when I meant 'Nepal'. I think I was reading something about Burma just before I read your post, hence the confusion.