Tenzing Norgay | The Sherpa who Conquered Mt. Everest

At 19, Tenzing Norgay moved to Darjeeling, India, where there was a sizable Sherpa community. There, the British Everest expedition leader Eric Shipton noticed him, and hired him as a high-altitude porter for a 1935 reconnaissance of the northern (Tibetan) face of the mountain. Tenzing would act as a porter for two additional British attempts on the northern side in the 1930s, but this route would be closed off to westerners by the 13th Dalai Lama in 1945.
Along with Canadian mountaineer Earl Denman and Ange Dawa Sherpa, Tenzing snuck over the Tibetan border in 1947 to make another attempt on Everest. They were turned back at about 22,000 feet (6,700 meters) by a pounding snow-storm.