On June 2, 1953, staff at Pen-Y-Gwryd hotel in Snowdonia woke guests in the early hours with champagne and celebration. A late-night telephone call had just confirmed that Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay had summited Mount Everest. The news had taken two days to travel from the Himalayas to London.
The hotel served as the British base camp for the 1953 expedition. The timing proved historic. News of the climb reached the hotel the same day Queen Elizabeth II was coronated, and both achievements dominated newspapers worldwide.
In subsequent decades, Tenzing Norgay's contribution was increasingly sidelined in the historical record, despite his essential role as a Sherpa guide on the expedition.