A travel agent.

An astronaut. I still do.

I dreamed of being an artistic skater. And a nursery nurse.

I wanted my own ice-cream van and to be a lollipop lady.

I think motivation is the single most important factor in any sort of success. Physical fitness is important, technical skill is important, and maybe even the desire for money is important in some respects. But a sort of basic motivation, the desire to succeed, to stretch yourself to the utmost is the most important factor. Certainly in the field of exploration and activity, it’s the thing that makes the difference between someone who does really well and someone who doesn’t.

The press and the public have created an image of Ed Hillary, hero and explorer which simply doesn’t exist. They’ve painted a picture of me as a heroic type, full of enormous courage, tremendous strength, undying enthusiasm and all the rest of it. But it’s all really just a story, that’s been written up in the newspapers. I’m a person, as I’ve said, of modest abilities, with a good deal of determination, and I do quite a lot of planning ahead. With careful planning and good motivation, I think you can often achieve things that other much more talented people would probably do much more easily.

Well my memory for names is absolutely appalling, but I know I did pass through a phase of books like King Solomon’s Mines. H. Rider Haggard was the author, and he wrote these great romantic adventure stories. I used to enjoy Georgette Heyer, in which the hero was usually a rather middle-aged gentleman, a very good sword fighter, with a beautiful young lady and all the rest of it. Great sword fighting and all highly romantic, adventurous activity. I used to find these things quite entertaining. I even passed through a phase when I quite enjoyed Western stories. Nowadays, I find them a little on the naive side but, for a period, I found the Western stories quite entertaining light reading. They are very romanticized, as we all know. Later on, I became much more interested in reading biographies, particularly about people who had made their mark in the community. I still enjoy reading books of that nature.

I had one experience on the ice-fall with Tenzing. We were actually descending after having been further up the mountain, and it was getting close towards dark so we wanted to get through the ice-fall before darkness fell. We were roped together, but I was rushing down ahead in the lead. About halfway down there was a narrow crevasse. I guess it was about four feet wide, but just a bit too wide to step across. On the lower lip was a great chunk of ice stuck against the ice wall, and we’d used that as sort of a stepping stone to get over the gap. I came rushing down the hill without thinking too carefully. I just leapt in the air and landed on the chunk of ice, whereupon the chunk of ice broke off and dropped into the crevasse with me on top of it. It was interesting how everything seemed to start going slowly, even though I was free-falling into the crevasse. My mind, obviously, was working very quickly indeed. The great chunk of ice started tipping over and I realized, if I wasn’t careful, I’d be crushed between the ice and the wall of the crevasse. So I just sort of bent my knees and leapt in the air. I was still falling, but now I was a couple of feet clear of the chunk of ice. Time really seemed to pass even though I was falling clear, and I realized that unless the rope came tight fairly soon, I would come to a rather sticky end on the bottom of the crevasse. Up top, Tenzing had acted very quickly. He had thrust his ice axe into the snow, whipped the rope around it, and the rope came tight with a twang, and I was stopped and swung in against the ice wall. The great chunk of ice just carried on and smashed to smithereens at the bottom of the crevasse. Then really the rest was what I would have called a routine mountaineering matter. I had my ice axe and my crampons on my feet, so I chipped steps in the side. I was able to bridge the crevasse, and I worked my way up to the top and got safely out. I wouldn’t have said at any stage, because it all happened so quickly, fear really didn’t have much opportunity to emerge. My only idea was to get safely out of this unfortunate predicament. And of course, without Tenzing’s very competent mountaineer’s response, I certainly wouldn’t have made it. But once he had stopped me, then I was able to, using the techniques of mountaineering, to get myself safely to the top again.

I’ve been very fortunate in that respect. In the early days I liked to be the bomb of the expedition, and rush on ahead and do things faster than anybody else. Those days merged very pleasantly into periods when I organized and inspired expeditions and selected these younger people who were then the bombs of the operation. And then it drifted into this involvement with the people of the area, still loving the mountains, but finding the people just as important too. And on and on it’s gone. As I get older and less physically capable, I find other challenges have grown up and become just as important to me.

I did have — definitely — one heroic figure who impressed me very much indeed, and that was the great Antarctic explorer, Shackleton. Shackleton I always admired because he was a tough man and a very good leader. And whenever he was in difficult circumstances, which he frequently was, he seemed to have the great ability to inspire his men and lead his party safely out of those conditions. So certainly Shackleton, I would have said, more than anything, was a role model for me.