R E C E N T L Y   I N T R O Why we launched Brilliant Careers     S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		A MAN TO MATCH HIS MOUNTAIN | PAGE 1, 2, 3, 4 - - - - - - - - - - There was no knighted mountaineer to inspire young Edmund Percival Hillary's dreams when he was a lad growing up in New Zealand. Edmund's father was a rural newspaper editor and beekeeper, and there wasn't much money in the household to fuel far-flung adventures. Even so, Hillary spent a good deal of his childhood reading tales of adventure and dreaming. "There was a phase when I was 'the fastest gun in the West,'" Hillary recalled in an interview, "then another when I explored the Antarctic. I would walk for hours with my mind drifting to all these things." Hillary's first climb was up 7,500-foot Mount Oliver in southern New Zealand. "It wasn't a difficult mountain by any means, but making it through the snow to the ridge, then along the ridge and up to the summit really captured me," he said. "It was then that I resolved I was going to do a lot more mountains." And he did. He began climbing seriously among the Himalayan peaks of India. Then, in 1951, at the age of 31, he was asked to join a British expedition to the Everest region. That team reconnoitered the Khumbu glacier and a great ice fall under the mountain. "We were the first to realize there was a potential route up Everest from the south side," Hillary said. Two years later, Hillary was invited with Norgay and 400 others on the massive British Everest Expedition, the first ascent from the Nepalese side. As the expedition proceeded toward its goal, the force dwindled until only Hillary and Norgay were left for the final ascent. In this age of high-tech commercialized mountain climbing, it is almost impossible to imagine the earth-shaking impact Hillary's and Norgay's achievement had in 1953. Here was a mountain -- unreachable, tantalizing, fearsome, deadly -- that had defeated 15 previous expeditions. Some of the planet's strongest climbers had perished on its slopes. For many, Everest represented the last of the earth's great challenges. The North Pole had been reached in 1909; the South Pole in 1911. But Everest, often called the Third Pole, had defied all man's efforts -- reaching its summit seemed beyond mere mortals. Hillary's and Norgay's feat was electrifying. Heightening the impact even further was the felicitous coincidence of their arrival just before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II -- and the dramatic announcement of their triumph on the morning of the coronation. Add to this the figure of the mountaineer himself -- firm of jaw and bright of eye, humble and high-minded and handsome in a lean, mountainous way, daring but down to earth, supremely competent without being showy -- and you had the makings of an immediate legend. Hillary embodied the dash, the pluck, the stiff-upper-lip and what-the-hell, let's-go-for-it aplomb the British empire still aspired to, and almost overnight the two mountaineers became worldwide sensations. Hillary was knighted, Norgay was given the George Medal, one of Britain's highest civilian awards, and the duo was medaled, titled, toasted and feted around the world. N E X T_ P A G E .|. Handling fame with grace