The Rolex Explorer and Mount Everest

On the "Houston" expedition in 1933, the first flight over Mount Everest at an altitude of over 10,000 meters, the pilots wore Rolex watches. One of them, Lieutenant Colonel Stewart Blacker, a British army officer and weapons inventor, wrote in a subsequent letter to Rolex: "I can hardly imagine that a watch has ever been subjected to such extreme conditions before. Despite everything, the Oyster continued to function with absolute precision."

That same year, the brand with the iconic crown logo equipped a 16-person British team with watches for an Everest expedition. This time, they climbed the mountain. Some of them reached an altitude of approximately 8,580 meters—which is extremely close to the summit, at 8,849 meters, and has long been in the death zone. Unfortunately, due to poor weather conditions, the climbers were ultimately forced to turn back.

For the first time in human history, mountaineer Edmund Percival Hillary and his Nepalese-born Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached the summit of the planet's highest mountain . The day that would forever go down in history was May 29, 1953.

Naturally, Rolex also equipped this expedition with wristwatches. Specifically, a smaller prototype of the Oyster Perpetual , which withstood the low temperatures, extreme pressure, and other rigors of the adventure.

Although some sources claim that the climbers left their watches behind at base camp before reaching the summit, the aforementioned prototype became the Rolex Explorer after the adventurers' successful return. The Explorer II model was then launched in 1971. Today, one of the original watches from the historic 1953 expedition can be admired at the Beyer Watch Museum in Zurich.

Source: GQ Magazine Germany