Hillary: A View from the Top - The Early Years

Everybody in the valley was talking about my attempt, and everybody thought that by this time I’d be well and truly dead.

– Ed Hillary on skeptics’ opinions of his weekend ascent of Mount Tapue-o-Uenuku

I plunged on through the cloud until I could plunge on no further and I realised that I’d reached the summit of the mountain.

– Ed Hillary, on climbing Tapue-o-Uenuku

For me it was a very exciting moment. I’d dreamed about things, I’d read exciting books, but I hadn’t actually done anything, and now for the first time I really felt that I’d done something.

– Ed Hillary, on climbing Mount Ollivier

By the end of the first week I was much more friendly with the ants than I was with any of my student friends.

– Ed Hillary on eating lunch on his own at Auckland Grammar

I returned home in a glow of fiery enthusiasm for the sun and the cold and the snow – especially the snow.

– Sir Ed on the impact of a school trip to Ruapehu, from his 1955 book High Adventure