Everest climbing tech then and now

It's been 59 years since Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first confirmed ascent to the summit of Mount Everest. While the reason people climb Everest hasn't changed, the technology they use certainly has. National Geographic compares Hillary and Norgay's gear with that of Hilaree O'Neill who is part of a team attempting the summit in the coming weeks. "Everest Climbing Gear—Then and Now"

• [Grey Devil]

  Link to the article is not working ]:

  • [David Pescovitz]

    Fixed, thanks!

• [Ethan]

  (I googled it).  When did National Geographic start shilling for North Face and Apple?

  • [morcheeba]

    Since forever… sponsors have long been a source of funding for expeditions, whether from the King or from a company.  The World Book Encyclopaedia wanted a scoop on the Yeti, and sponsored Hillary’s trip. http://tinyurl.com/dyt9e53 (original URL is malformed and doesn’t work with disqus)

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      Neither does that one.

      • [morcheeba]

        whoops, sorry. The URL has a long dash character in it (not the usual ‘-’). Try the first result here:
        http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=himalayan+club+hillary+yeti&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
        not the greatest article; I didn’t search too hard. But it has a yeti in it!

• [ironix]

  For those who get a blank page when clicking on the link.

  http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/everest/gear-edmund-hillary-hilaree-oneill/

• [buenoben]

  They sure looked a lot more awesome back in the days with their inferior gear though. The photos from that digital point and shoot will probably not be as nice as those old 35mm still either ;)

  • [bcsizemo]

    I like film as much as the next person, but after owning an S95 it’s a damn nice point and shoot.  My only concern would be the cold.

    I think if I was going to lug an iPad up the mountain I’d trade it in for a DSLR or 35mm SLR.

• [Jay Converse]

  I haven’t seen that many product placements since the last NASCAR race.

• [xzzy]

  Would have been nice to have side by side photos of old gear by the new gear. 

  I expected more out of National Geographic than a 20 page advertisement I have to click through for each individual piece of gear. 

• [Ito Kagehisa]

  I’d take Hillary’s ice axe (shown in the picture – forged steel by Claudius Simond of Chamonix, France, with a long European ash wood handle) over the 2012 version any day.

  The new one is a mass produced ultra-light weight skeletonized stainless head on a twenty inch hollow aluminium haft.  There’s no way that’s going to be sufficient for dealing with Elder Things.

• [shadowfirebird]

  I wonder how much of the information about the Hilary expedition is accurate.  

  Partly I wonder because this would appear to be an advert for North Face.  But:

  Partly I wonder because I have in fact worked for two seperate manufacturers who have claimed to provide the longjohns for the Hilary expedition, and I never did get to the bottom (sic) of that.

  • [Katrina van Malksvig]

    uhm, there was more than one guy on the expedition. perhaps they had different underwear preferences?

  • [Daniel Ewing]

     I was reading recently about the earlier, Mallory expeditions, and during those each participant received a clothing stipend. I suspect that in 1953 you would see at least as many manufacturers as nations represented by the climbers on any given expedition.

• [philipb]

  Not that I’m capable of performing the feat, but I think Krakauer pretty much de-bunked the myths around climbing Everest in modern times.

  Hillary & Tensing was a whole different scale of talent, risk and adventure.

• [george_kaplan]

  FYI, that’s George Lowe on the left, the only other New Zealander on the expedition.