A father's Everest legacy inspires mountaineer from Nepal

Mountaineer Jamling Tenzing Norgay says Mount Everest has “changed a great deal” since his father accompanied Edmund Hillary to the top in 1953.

HONG KONG — Some families go to the beach for vacations, others visit big cities. Jamling Tenzing Norgay’s family climbed mountains.

“We went on a trek to some beautiful ridges. That’s what we did all the time, with my father,” said Tenzing, whose father, Tenzing Norgay, was a Nepalese-Indian Sherpa who in 1953 became one of the first two confirmed people to reach the top of Mount Everest along with New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary.

Tenzing’s father instilled a passion for mountaineering in him from a young age.

“I ultimately wanted to try to aspire to climb Everest because I looked up to my father as my greatest role model,” Tenzing, 59, told NBC News in an interview in Hong Kong this month. “He was my hero, and I wanted to become just like him.”

Tenzing achieved his Everest dream in 1996, reaching the top of the 29,032-foot mountain.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fathers-everest-legacy-inspires-mountaineer-nepal-rcna157143

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