wenty years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made their historic ascent of Mount Everest, a team of British aviatorsand flying low in search of familiar terrain, the pilots were shocked to discover themselves heading straight toward Everest’s craggy peak. “We were in a serious position,” Lord Clydesdale, the lead pilot, later wrote. “The great bulk of Everest was towering above us to the left, [Mount] Makalu downwind to the right and the connecting range dead ahead, with a hurricane wind doing its best to carry us over and dash us on the knife-edge side of Makalu.” At the last minute, an updraft sent them skimming over the summit. Clydesdale would never reveal exactly how close they came to disaster, saying only that he cleared the peak “by a more minute margin than I cared to think about then, or ever.”
