He is said to have protested bitterly the commercialization of alpinism on Everest.  Whether that had more to do with disgust at the pollution, or with a sense of violation of a mountainclimber's idealism, I do not know.

I think it was E.O. Wilson who recently shared an amusing memory with Bill Moyers of a visit to Edmund Hillary, not many years ago, at his home in a neighborhood high on a hill overlooking Wellington.  Wilson's driver drove him up the road to the house, and Hillary, on greeting him, kept exclaiming how frightfully high that hill was, and how he could never drive on that road without trembling.

The moral of which is, Everything is relative, even within one and the same person.  Or, after Heracleitus, You cannot step into the same river twice.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

The Everest expedition included a newspaperman.  He realized the goal might be achieved in time for Elizabeth's coronation.  The two men reached the summit on May 29 but it took time for word of it to get off the mountain and out.  The reporter hired runners and a driver to speed to Katmandu.  A telegram with a code phrase was sent to Britain.  His paper scooped the story and portrayed it as a coronation gift to Elizabeth.

According to wiki, there was a 2nd climb team that came within 300 feet of the summit two days earlier, but turned back due to exhaustion.