Last surviving member of 1953 Everest expedition dies

PanARMENIAN.Net - George Lowe, the last surviving climber from the team that made the first successful ascent of Mount Everest, has died. He was 89, according to The Associated Press.

Lowe's widow, Mary, said he died Wednesday, March 20 at a nursing home in Ripley, central England, after an illness.

One of two New Zealanders on the 1953 British expedition, Lowe helped establish the final camp 1,000 feet below the mountain's summit on May 28, 1953. The next day, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the peak.

As Hillary descended the next day, he told Lowe: "Well, George, we knocked the bastard off."

Lowe directed a film of the expedition, "The Conquest of Everest," and also made "The Crossing of Antarctica," a movie about a trans-Antarctic expedition later in the 1950s.

He is survived by Mary and three sons.