The late Sir Edmund Hillary became famous as the first person to stand on the summit of Mount Everest, but as a New Zealander his more important feat was to rescue an entire country from dreary obscurity (exports: mutton and lamb) before again gratefully subsiding into relative anonymity, writes Brendan Glacken.
Although Sir Edmund, a former bee-keeper whose paternal grandmother was Irish, became famous for his post-Everest comment in 1953, "We knocked the bastard off", the last time I looked the mountain was standing - though by all account its summit can often be rather crowded these years. However, it is well known that Hillary was a very modest man, and certainly not a braggart.
What is hard to understand, then, is the aggressive language used by mountaineers and other so-called self-styled adventurers - terms such as "conquering" and "final assault" as they psych themselves upwards or onwards against harmless, peaceful, law-abiding natural phenomena ("because they are there").
Like Woody Allen, I am "two with nature", so perhaps I cannot understand this macho culture. Certainly, the title of the recent South Pole expedition, "Beyond Endurance", was quite ludicrous, dreamed up as it was no doubt in the comfort of home. And after all, any "endurance" would be self-inflicted. Masochism, then. So where is the heroism? Anyway, the trip was more like "Beyond Strolling", given that it benefited from lovely weather and balmy conditions, oodles of provisions and full back-up support. There was film footage of members in their shirt-sleeves. And the route is entirely flat. Endurance? More like the Wicklow Way in the Antarctic. Had the expedition members arrived back a little earlier, they might have considered making an assault on the post-Christmas sales, perhaps on the Northside col - sorry, shopping centre. That would certainly be endurance. As for their free trip home by private jet, they might well have called it "Beyond Indulgence".
Nevertheless, most self-styled adventurers appear to be mild-mannered people, though they indulge their infamous obsession with imaginary lines or poles, favour unnatural fibres and despise cotton. Now and again they are spotted going up and down department store escalators just for the mad fun of it, a rather endearing habit. They also have a delightfully non-PC humour, describing those colleagues who have got to both north and south poles being "bi-polar", and they like to joke about a difficult situation as "a Nepalling state of affairs".
Indeed, it seems such a situation currently exists on the summit of Mount Everest, littered as it is with sweet papers, Styrofoam cups, greasy burger wrappings, Leica-bedecked Japanese tourists, gawpers and backpackers - not to mention that strange frozen tableau, an icy installation of failed Irish stand-up comedians built into a snow wall. It's where they go to die, it seems.
Sir Edmund himself was Nepalled - sorry, appalled - when on one day in 1992, 32 people reached the summit. "Visiting Everest now," he commented, "is like taking a bus tour of South Wales". As for the South Pole, its position is marked rather appropriately with a hat-stand.
Incidentally, Hillary participated in the 1960 search for the abominable snowman, or yeti, which concluded the animal was a myth derived from rare sightings of the Tibetan blue bear. One, presumably apocryphal, story was that it had been seen carrying a bunch of brown envelopes, suggesting it was trained as a "bagman" for local corrupt party officials.
The strangest chapter in Irish adventuring lore involved the visionary 1957 Irish trip, "Beyond Belief", the unique expedition to the West Pole. (The East Pole expedition, "Beyond Kinnegad", a result of The Split, crashed and burned following the celebratory late-night pub party to announce the trip. Inevitably, free drink was involved.)
"Beyond Belief" was the brain-child of the legendary Irish explorer from the foothills of Mount Mangerton, Krakatoa McDonnell, who was long weary of talk of north and south poles, and whose dream was to eventually hit on True West. He and his intrepid team - Mary, Kate and Joe - decided initially not to head to the Equator, as Kate feared sunstroke, and Joe, who was only 37, was not allowed by his mother near the Tropic of Cancer, for obvious fear of contracting "the Big C" as it was called in those days. Nevertheless, the expedition successfully made its way west to New York, where Mary and Kate bought new frocks in Bloomingdales in honour of the occasion, while Joe and Krakatoa checked out the Irish bars on Second Avenue.
The four lingered on in the city, as one does, but inevitably, two young and feisty red-haired Irishwomen were quickly noticed around the hot-spots of Manhattan, and they were married within six months to a couple of New York's finest, setting up home in the Bronx and the Fordham Road. Joe then lost some of his natural adventuring spirit in favour of a promising job on Wall Street, and by all accounts he became a hugely successful bond trader.
The West Pole expedition was now a one-man quest, falling to Krakatoa alone. But he was equal to the task, never once losing his focus on his shimmering goal, namely True West. Over the years he was sighted in the Ukraine, the Ivory Coast, and at various points below and along the Equator. Though Krakatoa remained true to his quest, he married a beautiful six-foot-tall Icelandic woman named Hekla, in the Westmann Islands, and a year later they had a little girl, Etna.
Krakatoa's quest is an uplifting story, an inspiring tale of true Irish grit and determination. The most modest of men, all the man from Mount Mangerton would ever say about his feat was "Sure 'twas beyont the beyont".