Profiting from the Swiss experience the previous year, Hunt’s men worked their way up the Khumbu glacier, through its fearsome icefall and across the western Cwm to the foot of the Lhotse face. They scaled the face, traversed the steep ice slope above and finally reached the wind-blasted South Col. From a camp here, two attempts were made on the summit. The second, by Hillary and Tenzing, put them on top of the world at 11.30am on 29 May, 1953. Mighty Everest had been tamed at last.

Photograph: Stephen D Harper/Getty Images/Flickr RF