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Portrait of Mount Everest

Geography · Records & extremes

Mount Everest

official height agreed at 8,848.86 m in December 2020

Highest mountain on Earth — the Nepal–China (Tibet) border, in the Mahalangur Himal

The highest point on the Earth's surface above sea level, rising on the watershed between Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. Nepal and China jointly announced an agreed height of 8,848.86 metres in December 2020, ending decades of competing figures. It was first climbed in 1953, and the thin air above about 8,000 metres is known to climbers as the death zone.

How to spot them

  • ▸Highest mountain above sea level; named after a Surveyor General of India who never saw it
  • ▸Quiz clue: 'Sagarmatha', 'Chomolungma', 'Peak XV', 'Khumbu Icefall', 'South Col', 'death zone'
  • ▸Straddles the border between Nepal and Tibet; approached from Nepal by the Khumbu valley
  • ▸Beware the traps: it is not the tallest measured from base, nor the point furthest from Earth's centre

Key facts

First climbed on 29 May 1953 by a New Zealand beekeeper and a Sherpa from Darjeeling (1953)

Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, on John Hunt's British expedition; news reached London on coronation day

In 2020 Nepal and China finally agreed its height at 8,848.86 metres (2020)

Earlier figures included the Survey of India's 8,848 m and an American GPS reading of 8,850 m

In Nepali it is Sagarmatha and in Tibetan Chomolungma, but the Survey of India first logged it as Peak XV

Andrew Waugh proposed the English name in 1865 for his predecessor as Surveyor General

George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared high on its north-east ridge in June 1924 (1924)

Mallory's body was found in 1999; whether they reached the top is still unknown

Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler reached its summit without bottled oxygen in 1978 (1978)

Messner repeated the feat solo, by the north face, in 1980

Junko Tabei became the first woman to stand on its summit in 1975 (1975)

She had survived an avalanche at Camp II days earlier

A 12-metre rock wall just below the summit, named after the first ascensionist, collapsed after the 2015 earthquake

The Hillary Step, on the South-East Ridge

Its Nepalese approach crosses a notoriously lethal moving glacier below the Western Cwm

The Khumbu Icefall

Quick-fire facts

  • •Official height 8,848.86 m (29,031 ft 8½ in), agreed by Nepal and China on 8 December 2020
  • •It lies on the border of Nepal's Solukhumbu district and Tibet, in the Mahalangur Himal of the Himalaya
  • •Named in 1865 after Sir George Everest, Surveyor General of India 1830–1843, who objected to the honour
  • •Nepali name Sagarmatha; Tibetan name Chomolungma, usually glossed as 'Goddess Mother of the World'
  • •The 'death zone' is the altitude above roughly 8,000 m, where the body cannot acclimatise
  • •The standard routes are the South Col from Nepal and the North Col–North East Ridge from Tibet
  • •Mauna Kea is taller measured from its base on the sea floor; Chimborazo's summit is further from the Earth's centre
  • •Sagarmatha National Park, which contains it, became a World Heritage Site in 1979
  • •Its Nepal side sits above the Sherpa town of Namche Bazaar and the monastery at Tengboche

Drill it — 9 cards

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Sources