DOTD For Friday, May 29, 2026

This Drink Is For The Ones Who Get REALLY High - Literally

Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is a Mountain Man cocktail inspired by Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay of Nepal becoming the first people confirmed to have reached the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth at 29,035 feet, which happened on May 29, 1953, at approximately 11:30 AM local time.

“It’s not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.”

Sir Edmund Hillary was born in 1919 and grew up in Auckland, New Zealand. It was in New Zealand that he became interested in mountain climbing. Although he made his living as a beekeeper, he climbed mountains in New Zealand, then in the Swiss Alps, and finally in the Himalayas, where he climbed 11 different peaks of over 20,000 feet. By this time, Hillary was ready to confront the world’s highest mountain.

Mt. Everest lies between Tibet and Nepal. Between 1920 and 1952, seven major expeditions had failed to reach the summit. In 1924, the famous mountaineer George Leigh-Mallory had perished in the attempt. In 1952, a team of Swiss climbers had been forced to turn back after reaching the south peak, only 1,000 feet from the summit.

May 29, 1953: Edmund Hillary took this photograph of Tenzing Norgay as they set foot on the summit of Mount Everest, the highest point on Earth. The ascent is acclaimed as the pinnacle of 20th-century athletic achievement.

Edmund Hillary joined in Mount Everest reconnaissance expeditions in 1951 and again in 1952. These exploits brought Hillary to the attention of Sir John Hunt, leader of an expedition sponsored by the Joint Himalayan Committee of the Alpine Club of Great Britain and the Royal Geographic Society to make the assault on Everest in 1953.

15 Ways to the Top of Mount Everest: 1953 British Expedition, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, via the Western Cwm and the South Col, May 29. The two climbers, Hillary from New Zealand and Norgay from Nepal, were part of a British climbing team. The team made their first camp below the Khumbu Ice Fall, a steep, rugged, and fast-moving section of the Khumbu Glacier. The dark lines that cut across the icefall resemble waves, hinting at the constant movement that opens deep crevasses and sends large chunks of ice tumbling freely down the mountain. After successfully crossing the Khumbu Icefall, the team walked up the Western Cwm. The glacial valley is smooth in this image, lacking the relief shown by the steep ridges around it. The Western Cwm leads to the south face of Lhotse and the South Col, a saddle between the pyramid-like peaks of Everest and Lhotse. At 7,920 m (26,000 ft), the South Col is typically the last camp on an Everest ascent, but Hillary and Norgay made their final camp an additional 610 meters (2,000 feet) above this point. A five-hour climb brought Hillary and Norgay to the top of the world. (Image Credit: Aerial Photography and Terrain Model by SWISSPHOTO AG and National Geographic Maps)

The expedition reached the South Peak in May, but all but two of the climbers who had come this far were forced to turn back by exhaustion from the high altitude. In the end, Sir Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a native Nepalese climber who had participated in five previous Everest trips, were the only members of the party able to make the final climb towards the summit. At 11:30 on the morning of May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the summit, 29,028 feet above sea level, the highest spot on Earth.

1953: Sir Edmund Hillary with Lord Willoughby Norrie, the Governor-General of New Zealand, and George Lowe, a New Zealand-born mountaineer and film director, at Government House, Wellington. In 1953, Lowe was a member of the British Mount Everest expedition led by John Hunt. On May 28, 1953, Lowe, Alfred Gregory and Sherpa Ang Nyima set out with Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay as the support party for their historic summit attempt. Their summit camp was established at 27,900 feet, then Lowe, Gregory and Ang Nyima descended to the South Col camp. The following day, May 29, Hillary and Tenzing successfully reached the summit of Mount Everest. During their descent to the South Col, Hillary and Tenzing were met by Lowe. It was then that Edmund HIllary delivered his immortal summary of their achievement: “Well, George, we knocked the bastard off.” George Lowe went on to direct a documentary of the expedition, The Conquest of Everest, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

By coincidence, the conquest of Everest was announced to the British public on the eve of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. The triumph of a British-led expedition combined with the inauguration of the young queen did much to restore the confidence of a nation weary from long years of wartime hardship and postwar shortages. Edmund Hillary returned to Britain with the other climbers and was knighted by the queen.

June 23, 1953: Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary pose for a portrait after being honored by King Tribhuvan of Nepal. Norgay was presented with the Nepal-Tara-Padak and Hillary received the Gorkha Dakshina Bahu. (Getty Images)

Now world famous, Sir Edmund Hillary turned to Antarctic exploration and led the New Zealand section of the Trans-Antarctic expedition from 1955 to 1958. In 1958 he participated in the first mechanized expedition to the South Pole. Hillary went on to organize further mountain-climbing expeditions but, as the years passed, he became more and more concerned with the welfare of the Nepalese people. In the 1960s, he returned to Nepal, to aid in the development of the society, building clinics, hospitals and 17 schools.

At the 1973 Banquet of the Golden Plate ceremonies in Chicago, Awards Council chairman and pioneer newscaster Lowell Thomas presents the Academy’s Golden Plate Award to Sherpa mountaineer, Tenzing Norgay, twenty years after Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary became the first two individuals to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

To facilitate these projects, two airstrips were built. These airstrips had the unforeseen consequence of bringing more tourists and would-be mountain climbers to the remote region. The Nepalese cut down ever more of their forests to provide fuel for the mountaineers. Edmund Hillary became concerned about the degradation of the environment of the Himalayas and persuaded the Nepalese government to pass laws protecting the forest and to declare the area around Everest a national park. The Nepalese could not afford to fund this project themselves and had no experience in park management. Hillary used his great prestige to persuade the government of New Zealand to provide the necessary aid.

Immediately after the successful Everest expedition, Hillary and Sir John Hunt published their account of the expedition, The Ascent of Everest. The book was published in the U.S. as The Conquest of Everest. Sir Edmund Hillary’s autobiography, Nothing Venture, Nothing Win, was published in 1975. In 1979, he published From the Ocean to the Sky, an account of his 1977 expedition on the Ganges river from its mouth to its source in the Himalayas.

Sir Edmund’s life was darkened by personal tragedy. In 1975, his wife Louise and their daughter, Belinda, were killed in a plane crash while en route to join him in the village of Phaphlu, where he was helping to build a hospital. He continued to occupy himself with environmental causes and humanitarian work on the behalf of the Nepalese people for the rest of his life.

In June 1999, Sir Edmund Hillary was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century. On January 11, 2008, he died at home in New Zealand at the age of 88, mourned by his countrymen and by legions of admirers around the world.

To Sir Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay of Nepal, we salute them both with today’s Drink Of The Day, a Mountain Man cocktail.

Ingredients

Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink: