[cthalupa]

There's no evidence that Sherpas summited Everest prior to Norgay doing it with Hillary's expedition. Into The Silence covers this in more detail, if you care to read the whole book, but there were technological and cultural hurdles to it ever happening.

Everest is a pretty clear example of native people not bothering to do stupid things until white people show up and get them tangled up in the mess.

[maxxxxx]

From what I have read they were pretty far up but there is a pretty hard limit to what you can achieve without technology. There is a huge difference between climbing to 8000m vs 8800m.

[JoeAltmaier]

Technical detail (who was first to the tippy top). Sherpa's were climbing the mountain for centuries. Somebody has been in that cave, because its there.