Peter Hillary

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Peter Hillary is the son of Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to stand on top of the world. Peter Hillary is arguably New Zealand’s greatest adventurer, having spent much of his adult life challenging and conquering frontiers at the very limit of human endurance.

Peter Hillary was born in 1954 to a life of extraordinary adventure and challenge. Now in his early fifties, Peter Hillary’s biography includes a double summit of Mt Everest, an 84-day trek across Antarctica to the South Pole and an expedition guiding astronaut Neil Armstrong to the North Pole. He has climbed many of the world’s highest peaks, surviving where others have not – largely through skill, determination and his own sixth sense.

Peter Hillary began climbing at age 10 when, roped to his father Sir Edmund Hillary, he scaled Mount Fog in New Zealand's Southern Alps. He has subsequently taken leading roles in dozens of climbing expeditions to mountains in the Asia-Pacific region. He has traversed the Himalayan Range at high altitude and almost lost his life in a storm descending Pakistan's K2, the world’s second-highest mountain. In 1977, three years after his mother and sister were killed in a plane crash in Nepal, Peter Hillary accompanied his father on a jet-boat expedition up the famous Ganges River from the Bay of Bengal to its source in the Himalayas. The journey included scaling two previously unclimbed mountains.

In complete contrast, Peter Hillary also completed an 84-day trek that established a new overland route to the South Pole. But Peter's most significant achievements have been at Mt Everest. He has been on the mountain five times in all, once reaching 8,300 metres on the West Ridge and twice reaching the summit by the West Col route. Peter Hillary once described Mt Everest as an old friend.

"I have great respect for this mountain. I fear it, too. To me it remains one of the ultimates on Earth.”

With his first summit of Mt Everest in 1990 he and Sir Edmund became the first father and son to achieve the feat. Peter Hillary’s second ascent in 1992 was part of a National Geographic Council expedition to mark the 50th anniversary of Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay's historic 1953 climb. The anniversary expedition brought Peter Hillary, Jamling Norgay and Brent Bishop together - the sons of Sir Edmund, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and Dr Barry Bishop, a member of the first successful American team to reach the summit in 1963. The 1990 expedition was led by veteran Everest climber Pete Athans who continues to hold the record for the most summits by a Western climber.

Since 1953 more than 2,250 climbers have made it to the summit of Everest, many helped significantly by professional guides and Sherpas. During Hillary’s last ascent an estimated 40 climbers had lined up at the summit ridge waiting for their few minutes at the top of the world. Peter Hillary, like his father Sir Edmund, has often voiced his concern at the way climbing has developed at Everest. There have been husband-and-wife ascents, climbs by siblings, climbs by the blind and disabled. There have also been snowboarders and skiers set off from the summit.

Commenting on recent developments at Mt Everest, Peter Hillary recently told a Canadian magazine that many summits of Mt Everest today lacked the challenge and integrity of previous expeditions.

“You simply cannot compare [Reinhold] Messner and [Erhard] Loretan to many of the recent guided climbers. (Messner was the first to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen and Loretan has climbed 14 of the world's peaks above 8,000m.) And yet they have all climbed to the summit. Except that, using a skyscraper as an analogy, Messner and Loretan climbed the outside skin of the building, following grooves in the concrete and glass; the guided climbers took the elevator."

[edit] Philanthropy

Like many successful adventurers, Peter Hillary has made a career as a professional public speaker, writer and designer of specialty outdoor equipment. He has also worked as an adventure travel operator and guide, specialising in the Himalayas and Antarctica. He once guided Qantas CEO James Strong on Mt Vinson in Antarctica and led entrepreneur Dick Smith up the Carstenz Pyramid in Irian Jaya. He holds a commercial pilot’s license for fixed wing aircraft. Peter Hillary now devotes most of his time to fundraising in support of his father’s Himalayan Trust; established in 1961 to fund capital projects in the Khumbu Valley region of Nepal.

The trust has financed and built dozens of village schools, a hospital and medical clinics and taken a lead in developing conservation programs to protect and nurture that natural Himalayan environment.

Peter has spoken to more than 300 high-profile organisations. He has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman and with Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America via satellite live from Antarctica. He has been published in the New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, Melbourne’s The Age, and other high profile daily newspapers and magazines. He is the author of a number of bestselling books.

Peter Hillary is also the patron for the Everest Rescue Trust, a a non-profit and an independent trust set up to operate and manage a self-funding rescue helicopter service for the high altitude regions of Nepal.

[edit] Notable Achievements from Peter Hillary’s Lifetime of Adventure

• Over 38 mountaineering expeditions including Everest West Ridge, Makalu West Pillar, Mt Vinson, Aconcagua, Lhotse, Amadablam and Carstenz Pyramid.
• Surviving the storm on K2: In 1995 Peter Hillary turned his back on a climb of the world’s second highest mountain, the notorious K2. He was just a few hundred metres from the summit. He survived, but the storm claimed the lives of seven others he’d been climbing with.
• Landing small aircraft at the North Pole with Sir Edmund and astronaut Neil Armstrong.
• The first ski descent of Mt Aspiring: the Matterhorn of the Southern Hemisphere.
• The first high-altitude traverse of the Himalayan Range in 1981: a 3,000 mile/5,000 kms route from Mt Kanchenjunga in Sikkim through Nepal and India to K2 in Pakistan.
• From the ‘Ocean to the Sky’: jetboating up the sacred Ganges river with his father in 1977, from the Sundarbunds in the Bay of Bengal to high in the Himalayas near Badrinath, where they made first ascents of Mount Nar Parbat and Mount Akash Parbat.
• Shark frenzies in the Coral Sea: feeding and filming sharks with Ron and Valerie Taylor at the Osprey Reef 200km off the north Queensland coast.

[edit] Personal Life

Peter Hillary was born in Auckland in 1954 to Sir Edmund Hillary and Lady Louise Hillary.

Hillary married Australian Ann Moorhead, daughter of the Nathan family. A leading Australian family who owned the Maples chain of furniture stores in Melbourne and many historical estates acrposs Australia including Rippon Lea. With Moorhead he had two children, Amelia Rose and George Maurice and lived in Melbourne and one of the family's country estates in the Macedon Ragnes, country Victoria.

In 1995 Hillary and Moorhead seperated and later that year was reunited with his high school sweetheart Dutch born, Yvonne Oomen. Hillary married Oomen in a highly profiled event in his father, Sir Edmund Hillary's garden in Auckland, New Zealand one year later. Shortly after the couples first child Alexander Edmund was born.

In 1999 Hillary moved with his wife and son, Alexander, back to Auckland, New Zealand. And in 2002 Hillary's fourth child, Lily Louise was born.

All his children's second names are names in honour of past family members. Including his parents, grandparents and Moorhead's father.

In 2003 Hillary travelled with his two eldest children around the USA on the Suriving Everest:National Geographic tour, celebrating the 50th Anniversary Tour of his father's Ascent of Mount Everest.

With his eldest duaghter, Amelia Hillary, he accompanied Sir Edmund on a world tour to celebrate the anniversary including celebrations at the Narayanhity Royal Palace, Kathamndu with the Nepalese Royal Family, celebratory dinner at the Royal Geographical Society London, events with the British Royal Family whom the Hillary's are said to be close personal friends with including a private dinner held in Windsor Palace.

Hillary and his duaghter have worked together on many occasions mainly with National Geographic including leading a group to Everest Base Camp through the foothills of Tibet.

Hillary presently lives in his family home in Epsom, Auckland, with his wife and two youngest children.