Tenzing Norgay Trivia
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50 free Tenzing Norgay trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Tenzing Norgay stood on the summit of Everest on 29 May 1953 and became the most famous Sherpa in history, yet almost everything about his early life, from his birthday to his birthplace, is uncertain. This quiz covers the man behind the ice-axe photograph. The easy questions ask who climbed with him, what year it was, what he left on the summit and where he lived and died. From there it moves into the climbing career: Eric Shipton's 1935 reconnaissance, the illegal 1947 attempt with Earl Denman, the 1952 Swiss expedition where he and Raymond Lambert set an altitude record, the crevasse rescue that made Hillary choose him, the frozen boots, the Hillary Step and the fifteen minutes on top. The harder end is for mountaineering readers: the head lama who renamed him, the Tiger Medal, the uniform that got him across India without a ticket, Jan Morris's coded telegram, the George Medal controversy and Nehru's rumoured veto, the 1955 autobiography that finally said who stepped up first, the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, the Bhutan trek of 1975, the Soviet sporting title, Tenzing Peak, Tenzing Montes on Pluto, the Lukla airport and the sons and grandsons who followed him up the mountain. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries on Tenzing, the 1953 expedition and its members, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Mount Everest, Edmund Hillary and famous explorers quizzes next.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01After the pair shook hands on Everest's summit, what did an overjoyed Tenzing do next?
Threw his arms around Hillary
Threw his arms around Hillary is how both men told it: they thumped each other on the back until, even on bottled oxygen, they were almost breathless.
Q 02What did Tenzing choose to celebrate each year on the anniversary of reaching Everest's summit?
His birthday
His birthday: Sherpas kept no birth records, and he knew only from the weather and the crops that he was born in late May, so 29 May, the day he reached the top, served for the rest of his life.
Q 03By Tenzing's own account, what does the name Tenzing Norgay mean?
Wealthy-fortunate follower of religion
Wealthy-fortunate follower of religion was his translation; he got the name as a small boy, after he was judged to be the reincarnation of a rich man who had recently died.
Q 04Which US weekly named Tenzing one of the 100 most influential people of the 20th century?
Time
Time gave the two climbers a joint entry in 1999 and had it written by Jan Morris, the reporter who had sent the first news of the climb to London in 1953.
Q 05For traces of which two lost climbers did Tenzing and Hillary look around on the summit of Everest?
Mallory and Irvine
Mallory and Irvine had vanished high on the mountain in 1924, so the pair checked for any sign that the summit had been reached 29 years before them, and saw nothing.
Q 06To which capital city did the 13-year-old Tenzing run away from home, only to return within weeks?
Kathmandu
Kathmandu was his first city, but he grew homesick and went back to his village after about six weeks; five years passed before he left again, that time for good.
Q 07Which English sweet did Tenzing and Hillary nibble on the summit of Everest?
Kendal mint cake
Kendal mint cake proved the most popular item in the high-altitude rations, one of the team wrote to its makers afterwards; their only criticism was that they had not taken enough of it.
Q 08Which organisation's flag flew topmost on Tenzing's ice axe in the famous Everest summit photograph?
The United Nations
The United Nations flag sat above those of Britain, Nepal and India; Tenzing said he had not planned the order but was glad of it, because the climb felt like a victory for all men everywhere.
Q 09Which British climber picked the untried Tenzing as a porter for the 1935 Everest reconnaissance?
Eric Shipton
Eric Shipton found he needed a couple more porters and took the newcomer, who had never been on an expedition, largely, by Shipton's own telling, because of his attractive grin.
Q 10Which Himalayan Club award did Tenzing earn for carrying loads high on Everest in 1938?
The Tiger Medal
The Tiger Medal made official a nickname British climbers had used since the 1920s for the Sherpas who carried highest, and his autobiography later appeared in America as Tiger of the Snows.
Q 11How did Tenzing ride home across India by train without paying?
Wearing an old army officer's uniform
Wearing an old army officer's uniform, a gift from the major he had worked for, he boarded a military train with his two small daughters and rode most of the way across India unchallenged.
Q 12With which Canadian-born climber did Tenzing sneak into Tibet for a 1947 Everest attempt?
Earl Denman
Earl Denman had no permit, very little money and almost no Himalayan experience, yet Tenzing went anyway; a storm at about 22,000 feet ended the attempt and all three men got down safely.
Q 13Which nation's 1952 expeditions first seriously attempted Everest from the Nepalese side?
Switzerland
Q 21About how long did Tenzing and Hillary stay on the summit of Everest?
15 minutes
15 minutes was all their oxygen allowed: Hillary checked the bottles, worked out how long the supply would last, and the two turned to go down.
Q 22By Tenzing's own account, why is there no summit photograph of Hillary?
Hillary turned him down
Hillary turned him down with a shake of the head, Tenzing wrote, and went on photographing the ridges below instead, which is why the only summit portraits show Tenzing holding up his ice axe.
Q 23What did Tenzing leave on the summit of Everest as an offering?
Chocolates
Switzerland held Nepal's Everest permit for 1952, and its climbers made Tenzing a full member of the climbing team for the first time, which he called the greatest honour ever paid him.
Q 14With which climber did Tenzing set an altitude record high on Everest's southeast ridge in May 1952?
Raymond Lambert
Raymond Lambert had lost every toe to frostbite in an Alpine storm years earlier, yet he climbed with Tenzing to within about 250 metres of the top, higher than anyone was known to have climbed.
Q 15Tenzing's actor grandson Tenzing Trainor voiced a lead role in which 2019 animated film about a journey to Everest?
Abominable
Abominable cast him as Jin, one of the friends who escort a lost young yeti from Shanghai back to the mountain his grandfather was first to climb; Yi, the girl who finds him, names the creature Everest.
Q 16What did Tenzing do in 1953 that made Hillary want him as a summit partner?
Saved him in a crevasse
Tenzing saved him in a crevasse fall: when the snow gave way under Hillary in the icefall, he rammed his ice axe into the slope and held the rope before Hillary could hit the bottom.
Q 17Roughly how many porters carried the 1953 Everest expedition's baggage?
350
About 350 porters were hired, so many that John Hunt sent them off in two caravans a day apart: the track was single file, and one long column would have taken far too long to get away each morning.
Q 18Which pair turned back 300 feet below the summit on 26 May 1953 when an oxygen set failed?
Bourdillon and Evans
Bourdillon and Evans made the first ascent of the South Summit, but Evans's experimental closed-circuit oxygen set gave trouble and they turned back, leaving the final ridge to the second pair.
Q 19What problem held up Tenzing and his partner on the morning of their summit climb?
Hillary's boots had frozen solid
Hillary's boots had frozen solid after he took them off damp for the night, so he cooked them over the stove's flame, through a strong smell of burning leather, until they were soft enough to wear.
Q 20What name was later given to the 40-foot rock face on Everest's final summit ridge?
The Hillary Step
The Hillary Step was climbed by its namesake jamming himself into a crack between the rock and a wall of ice and wriggling up, with Tenzing following on the rope.
Chocolates, biscuits and sweets went into a small hole he scraped in the snow, a Buddhist's gift to the gods believed to live on the summit; at home, he said, sweets are offered to those near and dear.
Q 24Who climbed up to meet Tenzing and Hillary with hot soup as they came down from the summit?
George Lowe
George Lowe, Hillary's fellow New Zealander, was the first to hear the news, in the words 'Well, George, we knocked the bastard off.'
Q 25What coded phrase did Times reporter Jan Morris use to signal that Everest's summit had been reached?
'Snow conditions bad'
'Snow conditions bad' opened a message that read like a setback; 'advanced base abandoned' and 'awaiting improvement' named Hillary and Tenzing, and a runner carried it to the nearest radio post.
Q 26On the morning of which event did news of the Everest ascent reach the British public?
Queen Elizabeth II's coronation
Queen Elizabeth II's coronation came four days after the climb; the news began its journey on foot, carried from base camp by a runner, and was given to the Queen at Buckingham Palace the night before.
Q 27Which honour did Tenzing receive from the Queen while Hillary and Hunt were knighted?
The George Medal
The George Medal is Britain's award for civilian bravery; Tenzing called the fuss over it foolish, since independent India did not allow its citizens to accept foreign titles such as a knighthood.
Q 28Which Indian prime minister did Tenzing say was like a father to him?
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru did more than befriend him: it was the prime minister's push that set up the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute, where Tenzing worked for the next two decades.
Q 29Which long-running argument did Tenzing's 1955 autobiography settle?
Who stepped first
Who stepped first onto the summit had been argued over since 1953, and the pair's signed statement said only 'almost together'; Tenzing's book stated plainly that Hillary stepped up first and he followed.
Q 30Which American writer ghost-wrote Tenzing's autobiography?
James Ramsey Ullman
James Ramsey Ullman joined the 1963 American Everest expedition as its official historian, but illness kept him from following the climbers to the mountain; he wrote the official account all the same.