The first man to climb Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary, has passed away at the ripe old age of 88.  He passed away from a heart attack in a New Zealand hospital.

Hillary became the first human to conquer Mt. Everest on May 29, 1953.  He was the original extreme sport. It is 29,028 feet to the summit of Everest.

He was 33-years-old at the time he climbed to the top of  the  peak with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.

“Awe, wonder, humility, pride, exaltation — these surely ought to be the confused emotions of the first men to stand on the highest peak on Earth, after so many others had failed,” Hillary wrote of the conquest achieved by him and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay on May 29, 1953.

“But my dominant reactions were relief and surprise. Relief because the long grind was over and the unattainable had been attained. And surprise, because it had happened to me, old Ed Hillary, the beekeeper, once the star pupil of the Tuakau District School, but no great shakes at Auckland Grammar [high school] and a no-hoper at university.”

Queen Elizabeth II made Hillary a knight during the first week of her crowning on July 16, 1953.

He also was the first man to stand on both the North and South Poles along with Mt. Everest.

Hillary donated much of his time and resources to help the people of Nepal through the Himalayan  Trust he started in 1962.

He lost a daughter and his first wife to a plane crash in the Himalayan Mountains.  Sir Edmund returned often to the region and climbed to the top of most of the peaks around Everest.

Ole’ Ed Hillary will be missed but his adventuresome spirit will live on.