A fitting son to a Hero

Jamling Tenzing Norgay was born on April 23, 1965, in Darjeeling, the fourth of six children. By age six, he had already shown a penchant for peaks, scaling mountains in Sikkim with his father, Tenzing Norgay, who with Sir Edmund Hillary, became the first climbers to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Jamling quickly became his father’s right-hand man on climbs organized by the Himalayan Mountaineering Institute. In 1985, Jamling moved to the U.S. to attend Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, where he studied business administration and graduated in 1989 with a Bachelor of Arts degree. While there, he worked as a black-belt instructor in karate and Tae Kwon Do. In 1986, Tenzing passed away, and Norgay began to think more seriously about Everest. In 1996, Jamling Tenzing Norgay summitted Everest, just two weeks after nine people died on Everest. Not only did Jamling Tenzing Norgay make it to the top of Everest—described by the Sherpa people as “The Mother Goddess of the World”—he also helped capture it all on film. As a star of Director David Breashears Imax film Everest, Norgay helped to portray not only the physical challenges of the Mountain, but also the mental and spiritual challenges faced by the climbers. Today Norgay runs his adventure travel company in Darjeeling and is often asked whether there are more big summits in his future. “I promised my wife that after Everest, I would never climb again,” says Norgay. “I will not break my word.” He lives in Darjeeling with his wife and daughter.