WELLINGTON — New Zealander George Lowe, the last surviving climber from the expedition led by Sir Edmund Hillary that conquered Everest in 1953, has died aged 89.
Hillary’s son Peter said Lowe’s death in a nursing home in the British town of Ripley on Wednesday marked the end of an era in mountaineering.
“George was one of the great climbers on the 1953 Everest expedition,” he told Radio New Zealand.
“He was really one of my father’s closest friends, kept him laughing all the time. They had a long friendship and a tremendous mountaineering partnership.”
The expedition gained worldwide acclaim after Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of the world’s highest mountain on May 29, 1953 – a feat that had defied mountaineers for decades.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said Lowe was part of an expedition that was still a source of pride for the country.
“George Lowe, along with fellow Kiwi Sir Edmund Hillary, made New Zealand a household name when, along with the other members of the Everest expedition, (they) conquered the mountain in 1953,” he said.
“I was sad to hear of his death but remain very proud of these men’s achievements.”
Lowe helped Hillary and Norgay prepare for the final push to the summit and photographed the expedition’s last stages, using the material in an Oscar-nominated documentary “The Conquest of Everest”.
It was Lowe to whom Hillary addressed his laconic famous remark after he and Norgay made their descent after an achievement hailed as one the 20th century’s greatest feats of exploration – “Well, we knocked the bastard off.”
“You imagine them, they’ve come down off the southeast ridge and George has walked across the icy South Col up there at 8,000 metres and asked him ‘well Ed, how did it go?,” Peter Hillary said.
He said Lowe “slipped off the radar” in his final years but had recently completed a memoir to mark the 60th anniversary of the achievement.
British publisher Polarworld said the book, titled “Letters from Everest”, would still be released at the request of Lowe’s widow Mary.
“He was one of the lead climbers, forging the route up Everest’s Lhotse Face without oxygen and later cutting steps for his partners up the summit ridge,” publisher Kari Herbert said in a statement.
She said Lowe’s peers described his contribution to the expedition as “an epic achievement of tenacity and skill” but he remained modest about the feat.
“For his own part, George was just happy to be on the mountain, playing his part in something incredible, doing something he loved,” she said.
Hillary died in 2008 aged 88 and Norgay in 1986 at 71.