Sir Edmund Hillary's ashes

| No Comments
Sir Edmund Hillary was the first western person to successfully climb Mt. Everest. He was accompanied by his friend and Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay for the 1953 climb. From the BBC:
Sherpas cancel plan to spread Hillary ashes on Everest
A plan to scatter some of the ashes of explorer Sir Edmund Hillary at the peak of Mount Everest has been called off.

Buddhist lamas had warned it would bring bad luck, so the Sherpas behind the plan said the ashes instead would be kept at a monastery near Everest.

The world's highest mountain is considered sacred to the Buddhist Sherpas who live in the region.

Sir Edmund climbed Everest in 1953 and after his death in 2008 most of his ashes were spread in Auckland harbour.

The rest were given to the Sherpa community.

Possible precedent
Apa Sherpa, who has scaled Everest a record 19 times - and is planning a 20th attempt - had wanted to honour the New Zealander by spreading his ashes at the summit.

The organisers of Apa's expedition said they decided against the plan after a committee of Sherpas, including Buddhist lamas, advised against it.

"The old lamas said that it would be inauspicious to take the ashes to a holy place," said expedition organiser Dawa Steven Sherpa.

"There were also concerns that placing Hillary's ashes on the summit could set a precedent, with other people wanting their ashes also to be scattered there," he told AFP news agency.

Sir Edmund's ashes will remain at a monastery near Everest where they have been kept since being transferred to Nepal.

There are plans to scatter them in a park that is being built to commemorate the mountaineer.
My bet? His ashes will be up on the summit this summer if they aren't there already. In addition, there will be an anonymous and somewhat larger than usual cash donation to the old lamas retirement home and everyone will be happy. Hillary was incredibly good to the Sherpas -- loved them:
He and the Nepalese Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first to reach the the 8,847m (29,028ft) peak of Everest and the New Zealander kept strong ties with the Sherpa community.

He opened a charitable foundation to help the people in the Solukhumbu region at the base of the mountain.

Apa, 50, said he had met Sir Edmund many times and would pray for him at the summit.

"Without him we would have no clinics and we would have no schools," he said
It would have been so easy for Sir Edmund Hillary to hog all the glory but he did not -- he was the kind of man that you sadly do not find very often these days...

Leave a comment

October 2022

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
            1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31          

Environment and Climate
AccuWeather
Cliff Mass Weather Blog
Climate Depot
Ice Age Now
ICECAP
Jennifer Marohasy
Solar Cycle 24
Space Weather
Watts Up With That?


Science and Medicine
Junk Science
Life in the Fast Lane
Luboš Motl
Medgadget
Next Big Future
PhysOrg.com


Geek Stuff
Ars Technica
Boing Boing
Don Lancaster's Guru's Lair
Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories
FAIL Blog
Hack a Day
Kevin Kelly - Cool Tools
Neatorama
Slashdot: News for nerds
The Register
The Daily WTF


Comics
Achewood
The Argyle Sweater
Chip Bok
Broadside Cartoons
Day by Day
Dilbert
Medium Large
Michael Ramirez
Prickly City
Tundra
User Friendly
Vexarr
What The Duck
Wondermark
xkcd


NO WAI! WTF?¿?¿
Awkward Family Photos
Cake Wrecks
Not Always Right
Sober in a Nightclub
You Drive What?


Business and Economics
The Austrian Economists
Carpe Diem
Coyote Blog


Photography and Art
Digital Photography Review
DIYPhotography
James Gurney
Joe McNally's Blog
PetaPixel
photo.net
Shorpy
Strobist
The Online Photographer


Blogrolling
A Western Heart
AMCGLTD.COM
American Digest
The AnarchAngel
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler
Babalu Blog
Belmont Club
Bayou Renaissance Man
Classical Values
Cobb
Cold Fury
David Limbaugh
Defense Technology
Doug Ross @ Journal
Grouchy Old Cripple
Instapundit
iowahawk
Irons in the Fire
James Lileks
Lowering the Bar
Maggie's Farm
Marginal Revolution
Michael J. Totten
Mostly Cajun
Neanderpundit
neo-neocon
Power Line
ProfessorBainbridge.com
Questions and Observations
Rachel Lucas
Roger L. Simon
Samizdata.net
Sense of Events
Sound Politics
The Strata-Sphere
The Smallest Minority
The Volokh Conspiracy
Tim Blair
Velociworld
Weasel Zippers
WILLisms.com
Wizbang


Gone but not Forgotten...
A Coyote at the Dog Show
Bad Eagle
Steven DenBeste
democrats give conservatives indigestion
Allah
BigPictureSmallOffice
Cox and Forkum
The Diplomad
Priorities & Frivolities
Gut Rumbles
Mean Mr. Mustard 2.0
MegaPundit
Masamune
Neptunus Lex
Other Side of Kim
Publicola
Ramblings' Journal
Sgt. Stryker
shining full plate and a good broadsword
A Physicist's Perspective
The Daily Demarche
Wayne's Online Newsletter

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on April 10, 2010 9:07 PM.

Yikes - central America getting to be a bad place to live was the previous entry in this blog.

Cool technology for earthquake detection and measurement is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Monthly Archives

Pages

OpenID accepted here Learn more about OpenID
Powered by Movable Type 5.2.9