On 29 May 1953 Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary conquered Everest.Before it had claimed the lives of dozens of climbers, including George Leigh Mallory in 1924. Norgay, the descendant of generations of yak herders, was destined to become a Lama, but his love for the mountains was that much stronger and he ran away from his Buddhist monastery. He had but one dream despite the deaths of many mountaineers: to conquer Everest. For thirty years expeditions had been struggling to scale its fiendishly difficult icy slopes until he and Hillary finally succeeded. His memoir is a unique and eloquent tribute to Zen and the art of mountain climbing.