Mountaineering
Tenzing got his first opportunity to join an Everest expedition when he was employed by Eric Shipton, leader of the reconnaissance expedition in 1935. As a young 20 year old his chance came when two of the others failed their medical test. As a friend of Angtharkay he was quickly pushed forward and his attractive smile caught the eye of Shipton who decided to take him on.
Tenzing took part as a high-altitude porter in three official British attempts to climb Everest from the northern Tibetan side in the 1930s. He also took part in other climbs in various parts of the Indian subcontinent. For a time in the early 1940s he lived in the Princely State of Chitral (that later became a part of Pakistan on partition of India) as batman to a Major Chapman. His first wife died during his tenure there and was buried there. He returned to Darjeeling with his two daughters during the Indian partition of 1947 and he managed to cross India by train without a ticket and without being challenged by wearing one of Major Chapman's old uniforms.
In 1947, he took part in an unsuccessful summit attempt of Everest. Canadian-born Earl Denman, Ange Dawa Sherpa, and Tenzing entered Tibet illegally to attempt the mountain; the attempt ended when a strong storm at 22,000 ft (6,700 m) pounded them. Denman admitted defeat and all three turned around and safely returned. In 1947 he became a sirdar of a Swiss expedition for the first time following a magnificent performance in the rescue of Sirdar Wangdi Norbu who had fallen and been seriously injured. The same year he climbed Kedarnath peak in the western Garhwal Himalaya – the first ascent of the peak.
In 1952, he took part in the two Swiss expeditions led by Edouard Wyss-Dunant (spring) and Gabriel Chevalley (autumn), the first serious attempts to climb Everest from the southern (Nepalese) side, after two previous US and British reconnaissance expeditions in 1950 and 1951. The expedition opened up a new route on Everest that would be successfully climbed the next year. Tenzing Norgay and Raymond Lambert reached on 28 May the then-record height of 8,600 metres (28,200 ft), and this expedition, during which Tenzing was for the first time considered a full expedition member ("the greatest honour that had ever been paid me") forged a lasting friendship between Tenzing Norgay and his Swiss friends, in particular Raymond Lambert. During the autumn expedition, the team was stopped by bad weather after reaching an altitude of 8,100 metres.
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