Peter Hillary - Everest, Aspiring, and Kea

Peter Hillary is a mountaineer, author, and adventurer. The son of Sir Edmund Hillary, Peter has forged his own remarkable path — from summiting Everest and crossing Antarctica to dedicating his life to exploration, storytelling, and conservation.
 
In this episode of The Tramping Life, Peter reflects on a lifetime spent outdoors — from his first climb at age ten with his father and Mingma Tsering, to sleeping sixteen years of his life under canvas.
 
We talk about the lessons of risk and resilience on mountains like K2, the changes he’s witnessed on Everest and in the polar regions, and the joy of sharing adventures with his own children. Peter also discusses his passion for conservation, his memories of New Zealand’s huts and valleys, and why spending time in wild places remains one of life’s greatest teachers.
 
A thoughtful conversation with one of New Zealand’s great adventurers — about family, legacy, and the enduring power of the outdoors.

https://www.peterhillary.com/

Transcript

Peter 0:00

I've calculated, I've spent about 16 years of my life sleeping in the out of doors in a tent. Or in Little Mountain Hus,

Speaker 0:16

Kiro and welcome to the Tramping Life, a podcast about hiking in outro New Zealand, or as we call it here, tramping. I'm jt, and in each episode I chat with people who share passion for exploring this incredible country. We'll hear about the tracks they love, the huts they return to, the lessons they've learned, and what keeps them heading back into the bush.

Jonty 0:36

My guest today is Peter Hillary Mountaineer, author, and adventurer. Peter has forwarded his own remarkable path, summiting Everest multiple times, crossing Antarctica, and dedicating his life to exploration and humanitarian work. I'm delighted to welcome him to the podcast, What are your earliest memories of being outdoors?

Peter 0:56

I really can't remember not being outdoors. Growing up in the Ed and Louise Hillary household, that was pretty much what we did. We'd go down to the south island. We had a little section down in Al Alberton and we just camped. We cooked over the fire. Lived very simply, lots of friends around. It was just the most marvelous introduction to outdoor activities. I remember going out from Maki, Toki Valley so many times. We were friends of the astronauts. We'd visit them over in the East Maki. I got, to know Chris Aspen all well, and we used to go off on many adventures, but I remember when my father. Ed Hillary had his Sherpa soda, Mingma Seing visiting us and my father took me as just a 10-year-old and we climbed Mount Fog from out of the Maki. And as a child, this was an amazing experience. I just, I feel I was so excited. I thought I'm with. My father and Mingma, we were gonna have this unbelievable adventure. And I was in the best of hands and I just remember heading across that great snow face that you used to always be able to see from Monica. And I was on the rope. Periodically I'd slip out of the. Deep boot prints of my father out in front and rock it off down the slope. And they were just bungee me back up again into the footprints and on we'd go. And an incredible introduction. And so I really grew up loving the outer doors, and loving the people of the outer doors. Both of those, were an incredible attraction for me.

Jonty 2:37

Did you ever think early days about what your career could be?

Peter 2:41

Oh, look, dad always thought, go and do something useful, like becoming an engineer. And I thought maybe that's what I should do. And I went to university. But I found myself looking back at my father and going, I'd rather do what you do, which is. Organize expeditions and write books and make films and work for the people in Nepal. And I quickly realized that wasn't necessarily in itself a career path. You had to make ways of. funding these journeys. And so I learned to do that as well, getting sponsorships, working with different companies where there was perhaps a promotional aspect that was of benefit to them. I guess I did follow what I saw in my father in quite a few ways.

Jonty 3:29

As is often the way you probably went overseas to make your name or was there opportunities back in New Zealand then?

Peter 3:35

I think for my father it was both. I just grew up knowing that he was this incredibly famous person because they had broken through one of these invisible barriers. What is human capacity? Could Everest be climbed? Was it too high? Was it too difficult? Was it a combination of all of these things? And when he and Tenzing made the first descent of Everest, they showed that it could be done. And, that actually is the key. It's not just the physical climbing it's the extension of our human capability. And we saw that in Neil Armstrong stepping out. Onto the moon. We've seen it technologically with our little cell phones and what we can do with them and all the bad things that happen with them too. But they're, they break boundaries and they extend capacity. And what I saw in my, life as a young person was, how acknowledged and how famous my father was. Whether we were in Los Angeles or going out to Auckland Airport, there'd be lines of people wanting autographs and photographs and just to have a moment with the man who made the first ascend of Everest, along with his climbing partner, Tenzing Norge. And that was normal life. Look for me. Obviously life is quite different. I have certainly been very involved in outdoor activities'cause I had the ultimate introductions to it and I, I just loved it. But obviously when I walked down the road, I'm not exactly accosted by strangers. That was very much an experience my father had.

Speaker 3 5:14

That must be difficult as a child

Jonty 5:15

because you're sharing. the time and attention is shared amongst so many people, with an affinity for your father.

Peter 5:22

Yeah. Look, it's, that's an interesting topic, but I think it's often a little bit seen through a negative lens. You often hear the term, so what was it like growing up in the shadow of Hillary and you go, it's not a very uplifting or positive statement. The assumption is that, the whole thing was a struggle. And the reality is it wasn't. I was immensely proud of him and what he did, he included us in the things that he did, took us as children to the Himalayas included me on many of his later expeditions. Frankly, it was a wonderful experience and I've really started. Responding to questions of that vein was actually, I was brought up in the light of Ed Hillary. It was an incredible privilege. It was very exciting. There were always this amazing group of people involved in his life, whether it was on the charitable side or on the expeditionary side, I just loved being involved in it.

Jonty 6:23

And then your sons, maybe we'll get a taster of that. I know they're also quite keen on the outdoors.

Peter 6:29

All the kids are, keen on the outdoors. I've got two daughters and two sons. the boys have certainly got into some good alpinism. They climbed arm and de Blum, which is the sort of Matterhorn of the Himalayas. just before the pandemic. They all just like being out in the mountains. I think it has a lot to offer. when you're spending time together, it's really powerful time. in fact, my son Alexandra and I went and climbed Mount Aspiring, in March just to have that time, three or four days up there at Cole and Todd climbing the mountain then. Extracting ourselves when the weather went pretty nasty. back out over Bev and was really good intensive father and son time. you don't often get that time, when you're going about your ordinary lives with work and other distractions. I think that is one of the important things that outdoor activities offers us.

Speaker 3 7:27

I assume

Jonty 7:27

you would've first climbed mountain, aspiring some time ago. Had you noticed much change with, say, climate change or other impacts?

Peter 7:34

Look, it was March, so it's really the tail end of summer. And certainly aspiring does lose a lot of its snow. But, my first climb on the mountain, I just had my 17th birthday. And my climbing partner, Nigel Lewis, and I went up and surprised ourselves by climbing the Northwest ridge via the ramp. And this was in December. And the ramps often more difficult by then these days. And then we really surprised ourselves and went off and climbed the Southwest Ridge. And by then we thought, we know everything about Alpinism. We were two 17 year olds who thought we, completely understood the game and how we survived that period. I honestly dunno, but yes, think the mountain has changed. I think climate change is very evident. They weren't great thickness of snow and ice in actual fact, in March, Alexandra and I, we used lightweight alpine boots and crampons to get to the very beginning of the extended northwest ridge. So it was a very long rock climb. And then we put on trail shoes and went all the way up the ridge up around that buttress onto the northwest ridge and up to the top of the mountain. There was only a little bit of ice up near the summit, which we managed to skirt around. I think that was almost unthinkable when I first started climbing on the mountain, just nearly 55

Speaker 3 8:55

years ago. Because you recently went back

Jonty 8:57

to the North Pole, 40 years on with New Armstrong's Sun again, looking at the changes that have happened over that time.

Peter 9:04

Yes. I was very fortunate 14 years ago, and this was an example of, growing up with my father, ed Hillary and the sort of opportunities that came along, but dad brought me along on this aviation expedition with Neil Armstrong back in 1985, where we flew up into the islands north of Canada, SME Island. we were on small ski equipped Twin Otter aircraft and we flew out, refueling here and there out over the Arctic Ocean, eventually landing in. 90 degrees north now. It was in April and it was freezing cold. 30 40 below zero. The changes to now going up in July, and obviously midsummer were astonishing. The icebreaker largely was following open leads of water and the ice flows in July at the geographic North Pole at 90 North. I just covered in turquoise pools of water, the ice is rot. The T Thor is quite extraordinary. So I think by extrapolation, we hear scientists saying, that it's not that far off that there will be summer events where there is virtually or perhaps no ice whatsoever. I find that quite easy to imagine because that's what we saw. There was extensive ice and we walked around a great deal on it, but we had rubber boots up to our knees and frequently we were up to our ankles or even deeper in water on these ice flows. The ice was just rotten. And the flying visits by ski equipped airplanes, certainly had become more common after our trip 40 years ago. Haven't been possible for quite a few years now because of the condition of the ice the reality that planes might through.

Jonty 10:53

So how did that expedition come about? and I guess your other expeditions as well, how much are they driven by yourself or do your approach by others?

Peter 11:01

Most of my mountaineering expeditions were expeditions that I organized or that I went on with my father. The westridge of Mount Everest, I got a permit. We put a team together and we went there, or to K two or to any of the other expeditions that I climbed on. And then there were collaborations with other people. For example, Rob Hall and Gary Ball, I climbed alongside on a number of expeditions and, we decided, let's collaborate In 1990, none of the three of us had reached the summit of Everest on our, different attempts. And we collaborated on that one. And it was a textbook expedition. It was a very happy expedition. Our progress was, just as planned. It couldn't have gone any better and we were very successful. It was great to finally get up there. And so that was, really a collaboration. Other expeditions. have had their genesis and their funding from very different origins. I went back and climbed Everest again on a National Geographic filming expedition. And of course, there were big logistics, big budgets, and high aspirations in terms of what we would achieve and the sort of footage that we wanna get in telling the story. So I've been on a wide variety of expeditions. I've, Calculated that I've been on over 50 climbing and, skiing and different sorts of expeditions during, my career. I've also calculated, I've spent about 16 years of my life sleeping in the out of doors in a tent. Or in Little Mountain Hus, for example, Graham Dingle, UNG Tachi, and I did the first continuous traverse of the Himalayas at high elevation. And for most of that expedition, we just slept out. We slept under bivy rocks that we'd find, maybe put a little tent fly up against a rock to get a little bit of shelter. But we found, sleeping rough, eating whatever the locals ate. And, moving super light is the way to go. Even in high alpine situations, if you know what you're doing and you make good decisions, it means you carry packs that actually weighed about 12 kilos most of the time. and that 12 kilos would include about a week of food. So it was a very lightweight way of getting around. It means that you don't have the gear. We didn't have stove, we didn't have a headlamp, we didn't have a tent. We didn't have any of those things because actually you can do it without,

Jonty 13:40

now you've done a number of firsts in your career, in your life. I speaking to Lydia Brady about how much a first is a motivator for doing things.

Peter 13:49

you're really putting yourself up against the um, unknown. And I also think, every challenge that you undertake. It's gonna be a first for you. And I see a lot of negatives about, maybe all the people who are going to climb Mount Everest, many of them on commercial expeditions these days. It's still a great experience for people and I think. I want to see a change of attitude in this that people bang for, close the mountains, police them, control it. Actually, I think the other way around, encourage people to go to the outdoors because these experiences change you forever. Whether it's a multi-day wintertime, traverse of the y techies. Up here on the edge of Auckland or whether it's, a high alpine journey down in the Southern Alps or a major journey in the Himalayas, it doesn't matter. They have a really big impact on you. And my cousin's daughter recently did the trail and, this was a huge undertaking for her a lot of the time she was on her own. It has a huge impact on you. And my sister Sarah and I joined her for the rou section, which was just fantastic. Such beautiful steep terrain, old growth forest, and I think old growth forest. It just about doesn't get any better than that. Moving in terrain like that. I absolutely love it. You're seeing a little bit of our primeval past as you travel through that and just to up the ante. The weather changed. I got COVID-19 and gave it to my sister and to Young Meredith, and we struggled our way out of the. Tara Ru after an amazing adventure.

Jonty 15:44

So what other, adventures in New Zealand spring to mind when you think of some of the great kind of tracks you've done or up on the tops?

Peter 15:52

I've done a lot, but most of it's been associated with mountaineering objectives Heading up the Maki Valley, but always with a mountaineering objective. I think just immersing yourself in nature is incredibly important and I think we're progressively moving into a time. Everywhere in the world we are, urban dwellers. Even farmers are urban dwellers these days. They're in air conditioned cabs, they've got little computers and we're all connected. And a lot of that's good. I'm not against that. but it underscores the importance of going to the wild places, going tramping, hiking, trekking, climbing. Immersing yourself in nature, because you learn a lot of things there. You learn about nature, you learn about yourself, you learn about gravity and consequence. The decisions you make, am I gonna cross over from the Hooker Valley, over onto the west side of the divide? Is the weather okay? These are critical decisions and it's all part of a great adventure. But it's all about learning to make the right decisions in the right time. So I think we've never lived in a tide when going to the outer doors is more important. It's connection, with nature and with ourselves. And we really need to encourage, particularly all young people, but I think anyone to keep doing that and it's certainly one of the great loves of my life. Going to the mountains, whether it's at a ski resort or whether it's at one of our remote valleys or going back to Nepal, to visit some of our schools and hospitals as I do in two weeks time. I just love being up there. The chance to climb up onto the ridge line above Kdi Hospital at about 4,000 meters and watch the sunrise. Over Mount Everest. And if you're lucky, you might get to see, some Himalayan tar, the great mountain goats of the Himalayas and even the possibility of a snow Leo. I've seen two of them there. You've got to go if you want to know and have that experience. And there's only one way to do it. Make the effort and you'll always be. given fantastic experiences

Jonty 18:11

I was recently reading Everest Inc. Which is fascinating about history of commercial guiding on Everest. And it was quite heartening to see how localized it's become now. So how the Nepalese companies and the Nepalese guides are now able to run these businesses at a level where the Western operators are actually reducing in numbers, and it's becoming much more owned and run by the Nepalese.

Peter 18:34

Yeah, look, there's some very good developments there and there's some very good operators. And of course the changes from my Father's Day, or if you even go back into the 1920s where sheers and people of Tibetan origin were strong and enthusiastic, but they didn't have, a lot of mountaineering experience. The reality is. Compared to the best operators of today, the best climbers of the twenties or even the fifties, were not really hugely experienced skilled climbers the way we have people now. But that's all good. those are developments that have happened over time. And now we've got, shepa and Nepali Mountain Guides, U-I-A-G-M qualified. Who are expert mountaineers, they have, huge experience in high altitude climbing, and they're doing incredibly well. The whole process is not without some drawbacks. there are other, operators that are not as good and so there is certainly more to be done. We're starting to see evidence of changes occurring with the rising of salaries and wages in mountaineering in Nepal, where they're starting to use drones and helicopters, to move equipment and people, in places in the Himalayas because the costs Of wages have gone up. And of course there are high risks and you can obviate some of those. So look, it's all a matter of, moving with the times and taking advantage of a lot of the opportunities I think, using drones or I must say a couple of climbing friends and I even talked about a rope cable way, like some sort of nutcracker. To get people's equipment and logistics up the Kubu ice fall would be perfectly valid. And I know some people might go, that's an absolute travesty, but when you think about it, most people, you go to climb mount, cook your helicopter into Plateau Hut, climb the mountain. Maybe you go out over Ciara or maybe you fly out, have you climbed the mountain? I remember having that conversation with Elizabeth Pauley and she maintained that it meant. You did not climb the mountain if you didn't do these things, climbing Mount Mont Blanc in France outta Chaman. The vast majority of people buy a ticket on the A de midi and traverse off that granite pinnacle. Or one of the other routes that you can take. I think we can take a purist approach and I think we can also, acknowledge that there are different ways of doing things and they're all okay. And I think in the case of the Himalayas, protecting the welfare and the danger of a lot of the people working on the expedition is a good thing to do. So if this new trend with drones, for example. end up removing the need to send up high altitude borders up and down the Icefall, which is a dangerous place. We all know that. and it's a numbers game. The more you are in there, the more you are exposed, and sooner or later something will happen. And, Everest history is just riddled with. Terrible things happening in the Icefall. I've spent a lot of time in the Icefall, the five expeditions I've been, on Everest. I've also been on, six seasons going up and down the Icefall on average, 10 times up and down. I've seen a lot of movement. I've been lucky. I remember coming down in, 1984, we've been on the West Ridge of Everest. And the whole region, about a hectare of the ice fort just started moving and restabilizing and toppling over and sinking down. And we are just dancing on our feet trying to stay upright, and then it just stops and we weren't crushed. And you just shrug your shoulders and go, gotta keep going.

Jonty 22:36

The closest. I read that you came to disaster was on K two. Was that the nearest miss you've had or the luckiest you've been in the mountains?

Peter 22:43

I've had a few, very challenging situations in the mountains and I think, if you're climbing on big difficult mountains on difficult route, that is always going to be a possibility. But the storm on K two was certainly one I was very lucky to get down and sadly I was the only one. Eight people on the summit pyramid of K two down the line. It was a lonely descent on my own. Two other members of our team had, descended earlier and were down at our cab two ledge on K two. And when I got down there in the dark nighttime, I was very relieved to get down. It was pretty miraculous. I survived the storm. Over a hundred knot winds blowing. If I hadn't got onto the fixed rope on the black pyramid, I think I would've just been blasted off the mountain like the other people further up.

Jonty 23:37

After experiences like that? How do you justify the risks?

Peter 23:41

Look, I think if, you do have to rationalize situations, you look at, I made a decision and of course at the time I didn't know it was so much the right decision. In fact, I was beginning to think that my decision was getting a bit late. The weather was deteriorating. The others wanted to carry on and but it didn't just deteriorate. It ended up becoming an absolute screaming storm that is just not survival. If I hadn't been on those ropes and I wouldn't have made it. I just followed them slowly and methodically, abseiling down the black pyramid. And, if I'd been off soloing as I had been coming off the shoulder of K two below the bottleneck, I wouldn't have survived. I would've been spat off the mountain just as they were

Jonty 24:29

can you tell me a bit about your involvement with the key conservation trust

Peter 24:33

I'm the patron of the KE conservation Trust. I think ke are unquestionably one of our most wonderful birds. One of the most intelligent birds in the world. I guess to humanize a peer mischievous, but really they're just curious. They're looking for an opportunity, and to me, the idea of the Southern Owl being up there on the high ridges. And not periodically hearing that wild, raucous sort of out there. Oh, it would be a very silent place. I would greatly miss their presence. Kia were badly damaged by the eradication efforts of the early 20th century. And we really do have to. Help the species by removing predators. We're talking stokes, feral cats are probably the worst, possums, rats, in the areas that they nest.'cause they nest and crevices and cliff faces and all of these sorts of places, accessible to the predators, such as those, where there is good predator control. I know there's a lot of people with a lot of strong feelings about poisoning, but we have to come up with a range of control methods. And it is a commercial opportunity because everywhere in the world there are issues with pests. Certainly rash, feral cats. And other species that have been introduced into different environments. So the people who produce, control systems, and I suspect, drones will be added to that armory at some point. There's a potential, to build a very successful commercial business'cause a lot of these creatures are out of control. And need to be controlled in environments for which they were never intended.

Jonty 26:25

So our numbers, are they increasing or at least stable?

Peter 26:29

No, it doesn't seem like that. There's a few pockets where the numbers have increased a little bit, but we're really talking tiny numbers. The population of care is something like five to 7,000 up and down from. The Nelson area all the way down the, so it, they're very thinly spread. Obviously they're great flyers, they move around. But it's a small population and it still has huge vulnerabilities. So I think the work by the Department of Conservation and by, peer Conservation Trust and their supporters is absolutely vital.

Jonty 27:06

Just to ask you a bit about huts, have you got any particularly favorite huts or memorable moments in huts?

Peter 27:13

I've been to a lot of the huts. I just, I love all of them. Whether it's, Colin Todd hut up there, I remember the original one, the new one, that I was at recently, in the mal aspiring area, pioneer or plateau in the Mount Cook area. But even some of those little shaking. Corrugated iron structures that you find off the beaten track in so many places. I was over at Big Bay using the Dock Hut there, and it's a very simple place, but just marvelous, to have a place to stay away from the airborne, attacks of, the sand flies. They're just very important parts. Of the mountain and outdoor experience in New Zealand and I want to see them maintain and possibly even extend it. It's a great thing for this country.

Jonty 28:04

And just to finish up with your bucket list of, trips within New Zealand and perhaps overseas that you're looking forward to doing.

Peter 28:11

there's a few things I'd still like to do. I'd like to do more. Interesting trips in the field and area. My son Alexander's, done quite a few. I did an absolutely marvelous one with Kim Logan and Jim Hughes. Kim came up with the itinerary and it had everything, Milford sound, a big bag paddled across Milford Sound just pushed our way up the Harrison Valley over a high, pretty difficult pass. and down into Johno, groats, the lakes down there, then over a ridge system, into the Kypo Valley, down the kypo round, the beautiful coastline. And we were blessed with amazing weather around to Martins Bay. A pretty questionable paddle across, the Lake Mc outlet river, which really goes straight out to sea these days. And then around the coast, it's a big bay where we were picked up by a fixed aircraft, low tide, and it was just an amazing adventure. So

Speaker 29:13

Thank you so much for listening to the Tramping life. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please follow the podcast in whatever app you use. Tell a friend about it and consider leaving a rating or a review. It really helps more people discover the show. you have any questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you. Drop me an email at the tramping life, one word@gmail.com.