Tenzing: Apple’s Next Original Film Gives Tenzing Norgay’s Legacy The Limelight It Deserves

On the morning of 29 May 1953, two men woke before dawn in a tent almost 8,500 metres above sea level. There was very little room for comfort, even less for error. Outside, the vast, snow-capped summit of Mount Everest stretched as far as the eye could see. For almost three decades since the first British attempt in 1921, the mountain known as Sagarmatha (the Nepalese name of Everest meaning “Forehead of the Sky”) and Chomolungma (the Tibetan name which translates to “Mother Goddess of the World”) had defied every expedition that had tried to reach its summit. The two men were Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the Sherpa climber who had already come closer to the top than anyone alive. They had one day, a dwindling supply of oxygen, and a route with one final obstacle between them and the highest point on Earth. By 11:30 that morning, they were standing on the summit.

The Road To Mt. Everest

Norgay and Hillary’s achievement was not the result of one spectacular push. It was the end of a carefully planned and executed expedition involving hundreds of people, tonnes of cutting-edge equipment at the time, weeks of reconnaissance and acclimatisation, and the collective knowledge of the many climbers who had failed before them — including those who perished on the way.

By 1953, Everest had earned a notorious reputation as the ultimate challenge in mountaineering. British expeditions had been attempting to summit the mountain since 1921. Some said the mountain hid ‘beyul’ or sacred lands within its peaks and valleys, giving rise to the myth of the hidden Kingdom of Shangri-La. Others spoke of the abominable snowman known as the ‘yeti’ that stalked its highlands. The disappearance of George Mallory and Andrew ‘Sandy’ Irvine on the Northeast Ridge in 1924 only added to its aura of danger and mystery.

The Expedition Takes Shape

The first crucial breakthrough came from the south. In 1950, the Kingdom of Nepal opened its borders to foreign expeditions, making a new approach to Everest possible. The following year, a British reconnaissance team identified a viable route through the Khumbu Icefall and Western Cwm towards the mountain’s summit. The 1952 Swiss expedition pushed this route much further, reaching the South Col and taking Tenzing Norgay and Raymond Lambert to around 8,600 metres on the Southeast Ridge.

The British returned in 1953 with Colonel John Hunt in command. The expedition was massive by modern standards: roughly 350 porters and 20 Sherpas supported a relatively small climbing team, carrying food, tents, oxygen and climbing equipment, and other supplies to the mountain.

Among the climbers was 33-year-old Edmund Hillary, a New Zealand beekeeper and mountaineer whose experience on the glaciers of his native country had prepared him for the Himalayas. Tenzing, meanwhile, was already one of the world’s most experienced Everest climbers. Before 1953, he had taken part in several expeditions to the mountain, including the Swiss attempt that had carried him higher than any previous climber. Their partnership would ultimately decide the fate of the expedition.

Seven Weeks To Summit

The expedition reached the Everest Base Camp on 12 April 1953, at approximately 5,455 metres (17,900 feet) beside the Khumbu Glacier. From there, the team began building a chain of camps towards the summit, repeatedly moving loads of food, oxygen and equipment up and down the mountain.

The first major obstacle on their path was the Khumbu Icefall: an unstable maze of enormous blocks of ice and deep crevasses. Above it lay the Western Cwm and the steep Lhotse Face. Progress was slow and painstaking, with climbers repeatedly carrying loads upward before retreating to lower camps to recover and acclimatise.

By 21 May, Wilfrid Noyce and Annullu had reached the South Col, the high saddle between Everest and Lhotse that would become the launching point for the summit attempt. But the expedition had taken longer than planned, raising fears that the approaching monsoon could close the mountain before the British could finish. As a result, the team’s first attempt at summitting Everest became a race against time as much as altitude.

One More Failure

On 26 May, Tom Bourdillon and Charles Evans left for the summit. They reached the South Summit at approximately 8,748 metres, astonishingly close to the top, but the climb had taken too much out of them. Technical problems with Evans’s oxygen gear had also caused difficulties. Continuing would have risked leaving them without enough oxygen for the descent, so they turned around. The expedition’s first attempt to summit Everest failed. Three days later, Hillary and Tenzing would try again.

The Final Ascent

On 28 May, with George Lowe, Alfred Gregory, and Ang Nyima supporting them, Hillary and Tenzing established Camp IX at 8,503 metres (27,900 feet). Their companions then descended, leaving the two climbers alone for the night to rest and acclimatise. Above them stood the final section of the Southeast Ridge.

The night was bitterly cold. Before beginning the climb, Hillary discovered that his boots had frozen because he had failed to keep them inside his sleeping bag. He thawed them over a stove. At around 6:30 a.m. on 29 May, he and Tenzing finally left their tent, carrying oxygen equipment and climbing into a clear Himalayan morning. They climbed steadily until they reached the South Summit at about 9 a.m. But from there, the undefeated mountain could still stop them.

The ridge dropped away before rising again towards a steep rock-and-ice obstacle roughly 12 metres high. Hillary searched for a way through it and found a narrow chimney between the rock and an adjacent wall of ice. He worked his way upward, hauling himself through the gap. Tenzing followed. This gap would later become known as the Hillary Step.

Beyond it lay only the slow, exhausting progression toward the summit. Every metre was a struggle: against the altitude, the climate, the weather, time, and the climbers’ own bodies and minds. At 11:30 a.m. on Friday, 29 May 1953, Hillary and Tenzing reached the summit of Mount Everest. For the first time, human beings stepped on the highest point on Earth.

Fifteen Minutes On Top Of The World

Hillary and Tenzing stayed at the summit for only about 15 minutes. Hillary photographed Tenzing holding his ice axe with the flags of Britain, Nepal, India, and the United Nations. Tenzing offered a prayer to Chomolungma and placed offerings in the snow; Hillary left a small cross. They looked out across the ridges, and Hillary searched in vain for any trace of Mallory and Irvine, whose fate had remained one of Everest’s great unanswered questions until Mallory’s body was found in 1999. Then they turned around.

The descent was as important as the ascent: reaching the summit counted for little if they could not return alive. They eventually encountered George Lowe, one of the teammates waiting lower down. Hillary’s famously understated greeting was: ‘Well, George, we knocked the bastard off!’

Who Got There First?

The achievement almost immediately became mired in a question neither climber initially wanted to answer: who had stepped onto the summit first?

It was a question of political significance. After the ascent, there was considerable interest in whether the first person atop Everest had been Hillary, a Western climber, or Tenzing, a local Sherpa who grew up in the Himalayan foothills. Hillary, Tenzing, and Hunt made a pact not to disclose who had led the final steps. For years, they presented the ascent as a collective achievement for all of humanity.

The question was finally answered by Norgay in his 1955 autobiography ‘Tiger of the Snows’. He admitted that Hillary had reached the summit seconds before him and pulled him up.

Back To The screen

More than seven decades later, their ascent returns to the screen with ‘Tenzing’, Apple Original Films’ new feature directed by Jennifer Peedom. Genden Phuntsok, Samdrup Dorje Lama, and Tenzin Dalha play Tenzing Norgay at different ages, with Tom Hiddleston as Edmund Hillary and Willem Dafoe as John Hunt. Working closely with Norgay’s son Norbu Tenzing, the film places Tenzing’s experience at the centre of the expedition, including his relationship with his wife Dawa and the tensions of class, empire, ambition, and competing understandings of the mountain.

‘Tenzing’, starring Genden Phuntsok and Tom Hiddleston, opens in select theatres on 9 October 2026 and premieres globally on Apple TV on October 16, 2026.

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