From the moment the flight to Nepal's Khumbu region touches down on the unnervingly short runway at Lukla, high on a Himalayan mountainside, the results of the enterprise of Sir Ed Hillary are there, right before your eyes.

Welcome to Tenzing-Hillary Airport, altitude 2774 metres, its runway sloping at 12 degrees towards what seems an unimaginably deep chasm. The runway was built by 100 Sherpas - using kukri knives to slash the scrub, and mattocks to dig and level the ground - working under the direction of Sir Ed and his Himalayan Trust.

Today the runway is sealed. But when construction took place in 1964, Hillary caviled at the softness of the gravel surface. So, in a typical display of Kiwi ingenuity, he organised 50 men to link arms and walk along it, stamping their feet in a form of Sherpa line-dancing, having first fortified them with the local ale called chang.

PHIL REID/Dominion Post A LEGEND: Sir Ed in Antarctica in 2004.

The airport, described as one of the most extreme on the planet, is just the beginning of what visiting trekkers see of the Hillary legacy.

A short distance out of Lukla, along the trail to Everest Base Camp, a so-called Hillary school, Chaunrikharka, stands, sturdy and brightly painted, across the other side of the milky-green Dudh Kosi river. And so it continues: on the 10-day ascent through the villages of the Khumbu to the tent township of base camp, the fruits of his endeavours are everywhere. Schools, health facilities, water pipelines, bridges and refurbished monasteries.

The Sherpas, descendants of Tibetans who migrated to the Khumbu about 400 years ago, have benefited considerably from the work of development agencies, including the Himalayan Trust. Many such agencies are championed by famous mountaineers who feel, one imagines, an obligation to the people without whose help they might not have scaled the world's highest peaks.

But it is only Ed Hillary who rivals the local legend, Tenzing Norgay.

At a trekkers' lodge on the base camp trail we're greeted by the owner, hands pressed together as he performs Namaste.

"Where are you from?" he inquires.

"New Zealand."

"Ah, New Zealand - Sir Edmund Hillary," the owner says, his gentle, wrinkled features breaking into a broad smile.

And so a form of word association game - involving both Sherpas, and fellow trekkers of many nationalities - continues as we trek Everest-wards in the great man's footsteps. New Zealand. Ed Hillary. New Zealand. Ed Hillary. It is enough to get you wondering: Do we really appreciate the prestige of the man?

Ed Hillary is indisputably, surely, the most illustrious Kiwi who ever lived. So today, July 20, Sir Ed's 92nd birthday anniversary, it is perhaps time to start re- evaluating whether we do enough to honour the deeds and the memory of our colossus - the first conqueror, along with Sherpa Tenzing, of the world's highest mountain; explorer; humanitarian; a man of extraordinary beneficence.

For many abroad, he personifies the image they have of New Zealand, a place of outdoors- loving people who get out and enjoy the mountains, bush and waters that are its distinguishing features.

But to the people of the Khumbu he is more than that. The New Zealander who teamed with their hero Tenzing to climb Everest is a one-man foreign aid phenomenon, the person most responsible for the transformation in their lives over the past 50 years. They have schools for their children, health services, airstrips and clean water supplies for their villages - amenities that are a pipedream in many Third World nations.

In New Zealand there have been, at best, scattered efforts to give him his due. Hillary's image adorns the $5 note. Some schools and streets are named after him. And there are organisations and awards - and perhaps, soon, a ridge on Aoraki-Mt Cook - that bear his name. There is the Sir Edmund Hillary Outdoor Pursuits Centre at Tongariro.

But it's hard to escape the feeling that it's all a bit underwhelming. The rift in the Hillary family over the Rolex watches, Peter Hillary's bustup with the Himalayan Trust, the squabbling over, and near-destruction of, Sir Ed's old Auckland house before it finally got relocated - none of this should be allowed to diminish the standing of our hero. We need to do something on a grander scale.

So what exactly? Let's bounce around a few ideas. Make today, his birthday, a national holiday, with nationwide activities that salute what he stood for. Rename New Zealand's highest mountain Aoraki-Hillary. Name our highest civil honour after him. Make foreign aid synonymous with his name with a multi-party parliamentary agreement on the "Hillary Steps" that will be taken to achieve the goal of 0.7 per cent of gross national income for aid by 2015.

In the meantime, happy birthday, Sir Ed.

Mike Munro is a Wellington tramper.