Wellington - Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to climb the world's highest peak Mount Everest with Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953, died in hospital in Auckland on Friday, aged 88. He suffered a sudden heart attack shortly before he was due to be discharged after a period of treatment and had been in "high spirits" and looking forward to going home, a family statement said.
As tributes poured in from around the world, flags flew at half mast in his homeland and it was announced that the man Prime Minister Helen Clark described as the best-known New Zealander ever to have lived would be given a state funeral.
Hillary outlived Sherpa Tenzing by nearly 22 years, his Everest co-conqueror having died in May 1986 aged 71.
Despite failing health in recent years, Hillary remained an adventurer until 12 months ago when he made his last visit to Antarctica, scene of another of his triumphs, having made an overland 3,200-kilometre tractor trip to the South Pole in January 1958.
His visit to the Antarctic in January last year marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of New Zealand's Scott Base where the flag was also lowered to half mast in his memory.
In a sporting tribute, it was announced that the New Zealand cricket team will wear black arm bands and observe a minute's silence before play when the second test match against Bangladesh starts in Wellington on Saturday.
Hillary - the only living New Zealander to have his portrait on a banknote - was known to all his fellow countrymen as Sir Ed and Clark said he described himself as an average Kiwi with modest abilities.
"In reality, he was a colossus," she said. "He was an heroic figure who not only 'knocked off' Everest but lived a life of determination, humility, and generosity."
Clark said that after his ascent of Everest brought him worldwide fame "he set out to support development for the Sherpa people of the Himalayas. His lifetime's humanitarian work there is of huge significance and lasting benefit."
Hillary established the Himalayan Trust in the early 1960s and toured and lectured around the world to raise funds and build schools and hospitals for Sherpas in the mountains.
He told an interviewer in his final years, "When I sort of kick the bucket as it were, of all the things that I would really like to feel have some continuing activity would unquestionably be my Sherpa schools and so on."
For many years, Hillary insisted on sharing the honour of being the first to stand on the roof of the world with Sherpa Tenzing, refusing to say who reached the summit first.
But finally in his autobiography View From The Summit, he said, "I continued cutting a line of steps upwards. Next moment I had moved on to a flattish exposed area of snow with nothing but space in every direction.
"Tenzing quickly joined me and we looked round in wonder. To our immense satisfaction we realised we had reached the top of the world."
All the photographs of the occasion showed only Tenzing on the summit. Asked why there were no pictures featuring him, Hillary replied, "Tenzing did not know how to operate the camera and the top of Everest was no place to start teaching him how to use it."
