57 Fun Facts About Mount Everest

Which high-altitude pack animal hauls much of the expedition gear up the trail to Everest Base Camp?

Yak trains share the work with human porters, and the high trail suits them: with a dense coat and almost no working sweat glands, the animals cope badly with the warmth of lower altitudes.

China's 2005 survey put Everest over three metres below Nepal's figure because it left out what?

The summit snow cap was the sticking point: China measured to bare rock, Nepal to the snow on top, and only in December 2020 did the two jointly announce a single figure, 8,848.86 m.

What is Everest's Nepali name, shared by its national park?

Sagarmatha also names the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee, the local nonprofit whose staff at Base Camp check the waste that expeditions carry off the mountain.

Which of these is a common translation of Qomolangma, the Tibetan name for Everest?

Holy mother is one common rendering. The name was printed on a Paris map in 1733, yet the British survey that named the peak over a century later adopted no local name for it.

Under what temporary label did the British survey know Everest before it was named?

Peak XV replaced an even plainer tag, peak 'b', given in 1847 when surveyors first suspected it might top Kangchenjunga, then thought to be the world's highest mountain.

After whom was Everest named, at the suggestion of Andrew Waugh in the 1850s?

A former Surveyor General of India, Sir George Everest, held the post just before Waugh. He objected to having the peak named after him.

How did Sir George Everest pronounce his own surname?

EEV-rist, two syllables with a long first vowel, was how Sir George said his own name. The mountain named after him is almost always pronounced differently.

Which Indian mathematician is often credited with first calculating that Everest was the world's highest peak?

Radhanath Sikdar was the survey's chief computer, and a popular story has him announcing the find in 1852. A historian who went through the survey's records found no sign that he took part in the calculation.

Which surveying instrument, hauled across India in the 1800s, weighed about half a tonne and needed 12 men to carry it?

Theodolite: a pivoting telescope that measures angles. The Great Trigonometrical Survey hoisted its giant one onto towers and temple roofs to sight distant stations, building the chain of triangles that reached the Himalayas.

In a popular story, why was Everest's first official height announced as 29,002 feet?

So it wouldn't look rounded, the tale goes: the sums gave exactly 29,000 feet and two were added for credibility. A historian who checked the survey's records found 29,002 was simply the average of six measurements.

What is the closest sea to Everest's summit?

Bay of Bengal beaches were where Tim Macartney-Snape began walking in 1990, so that he climbed Everest's entire height from sea level instead of starting at a base camp.

What kind of rock forms the summit of Everest?

Ordovician limestone near the top holds fragments of trilobites and crinoids, because the summit began as the floor of a shallow sea long before India collided with Asia.

What do climbers call the prominent rock layer visible just below Everest's summit pyramid?

The Yellow Band wraps around the mountain, so climbers on both the Nepalese and the Tibetan route have to cross its bare rock on the way to the top.

Which two tectonic plates collide to push Everest upward?

Indian and Eurasian plates began colliding roughly 50 million years ago, and India is still pushing north. That is why the Himalayas are still rising today.

What creature found at 6,700 m on Everest may be Earth's highest permanent resident?

Euophrys omnisuperstes probably feeds on insects blown up by the wind.

Which bird did George Lowe of the 1953 expedition report seeing fly over Everest's summit?

Bar-headed goose flocks do cross the Himalayas on migration, but the highest flight that GPS trackers have logged is about 7,300 m, well short of the summit.

Roughly what fraction of sea-level air pressure exists at Everest's summit?

One third of sea-level pressure means each breath delivers about a third of the usual oxygen, which puts the summit close to the limit of what a human body can survive.

What name do climbers give Everest's highest reaches?

The death zone leaves climbers barely able to sleep or digest food, and their thinking grows confused. Many deaths up there trace back to poor decisions made by oxygen-starved minds.

Everest's summit is tall enough to reach the lower edge of which winds?

The jet stream can batter the summit with winds of more than 160 km/h. That is why most climbers wait for a short calmer window in May, just before the summer monsoon.

The summit of Everest has been described as being about the size of what?

It is capped with snow over ice over rock, and the snow layer varies from year to year.

News of the first ascent of Everest broke in London on the morning of which national occasion?

Elizabeth II's coronation was on 2 June 1953, four days after the climb. A Times correspondent with the expedition sent the news down in a coded message, so that it would break in London that morning.

Who led the 1953 British expedition that put the first climbers on the summit?

John Hunt, an army colonel, picked two pairs to try for the summit. The first turned back with oxygen trouble about 100 m below the top, and three days later the second pair made it.

Which nationality was Edmund Hillary?

New Zealander Edmund Hillary was knighted in 1953, the year of the climb. Fifty years on, Nepal made him an honorary citizen for the decades he spent building schools and hospitals for the Sherpa people.

What was Edmund Hillary's occupation when he was not climbing?

Beekeeper was the family trade. Hillary worked the hives with his father through the summer, which left his winters free for climbing.

Beginning in 1960, Hillary devoted himself to helping Nepal's Sherpa people through which organisation?

The Himalayan Trust, which Hillary founded himself, went on to build schools, hospitals and even airstrips for the Sherpa villages of the Everest region.

Which country's 1952 expedition took Tenzing Norgay to a new altitude record, a year before he reached the summit?

Switzerland's team, with Tenzing climbing beside Raymond Lambert, turned back a few hundred metres below the top. The Geneva Spur on the standard route still carries the name they gave it.

Which young climber vanished with George Mallory high on Everest's north side in June 1924?

Andrew Irvine was last glimpsed climbing with Mallory when the mist briefly cleared on the afternoon of 8 June. Whether the pair reached the top before they died has been argued over ever since.

Which item did the searchers who found Mallory's body hope to find?

A camera the pair are thought to have carried might hold a summit photograph. Searchers found an altimeter, a pocketknife and letters on Mallory's body, but no camera.

What famous three-word answer did Mallory reportedly give when asked why he wanted to climb Everest?

Because it's there became famous, but it may be apocryphal: some suspect that the newspaper reporter who quoted Mallory coined the phrase himself.

Why did early British expeditions attempt Everest only from the Tibetan side?

Nepal did not allow foreigners in until about 1950, just as Chinese control closed Tibet to Western climbers. The attempts switched sides, and the first ascent came from the south.

Which country's team made the first reported ascent from the North Ridge, in May 1960?

China's climbers said they reached the top at 4:20 am, in darkness, and left a small bust of Mao Zedong. The claim was doubted abroad for years before it was generally accepted.

Who was the first American to climb Everest, on 1 May 1963?

Jim Whittaker reached the top with Nawang Gombu, a nephew of Tenzing Norgay. Two years later Gombu went back up and became the first person to climb Everest twice.

Who became the first woman to summit Everest, in 1975?

Junko Tabei of Japan reached the top on 16 May 1975 with an all-women expedition. She was first by only 11 days: a Tibetan woman, Phantog, summited from the Chinese side on 27 May.

Which two climbers made the first ascent of Everest without supplemental oxygen in 1978?

Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler had been warned that air so thin could damage their brains. Habeler was worried enough that, after the summit, he got back down to the South Col in about an hour.

Climbers from which country made the first winter ascent of Everest, in February 1980?

Poland's team, led by Andrzej Zawada, put two climbers on top on 17 February. Three months later another Polish pair opened a new route up the mountain's south side.

Which skier's 1970 run down Everest from the South Col became an Oscar-winning documentary?

Yuichiro Miura came back decades later as a climber: he became the oldest person to reach the top of Everest at 70, then took the record back at 80.

Stranded near Everest's summit in the 1996 storm, Rob Hall was patched through by satellite phone to whom?

His wife, at home in New Zealand, was able to talk with him while he lay trapped high on the mountain, though no rescuer could reach him. Hall was one of eight climbers the storm killed.

Which journalist on assignment for Outside wrote Into Thin Air about the 1996 disaster?

Jon Krakauer had been sent to report on how commercial Everest climbing had become, and found himself in the middle of the disaster. His magazine article then grew into the bestselling book.

Which guiding company, led by Rob Hall, lost four members in the 1996 storm?

Adventure Consultants lost two guides, Hall among them, and two clients. One of Hall's fellow guides bought the New Zealand company afterwards and kept it running.

Which Texan climber, left for dead in 1996, walked back into Camp 4 with massive frostbite?

Beck Weathers, a Dallas pathologist, had been found barely alive and left behind, because rescuers judged him beyond saving. After he reached the tents, other climbers helped him down the mountain.

How did Sherpas respond after a 2014 avalanche killed 16 Everest guides?

Stopped work for the season: the Sherpas announced they would not climb again that year, which ended the season on the Nepalese side. It was the deadliest day Everest had seen up to then.

What triggered the avalanche that hit Everest Base Camp on 25 April 2015?

A 7.8-magnitude earthquake in central Nepal shook avalanches loose around the mountain. The climbing season was abandoned, and for the first time in more than 40 years nobody reached the top all year.

What was the Hillary Step, the last obstacle below Everest's summit, which climbers reported gone in 2017?

A steep rock face on the summit ridge, it was named for Edmund Hillary, who wedged himself up a crack beside it in 1953. Nepali officials disputed the 2017 reports, but photographs showed its main boulder had gone.

Which Nepali guide made a record 32nd ascent of Everest in May 2026?

Kami Rita was a kitchen helper at Base Camp in 1992 and first reached the summit two years later. By his 32nd climb he had held the record for most ascents for eight years.

Which notoriously dangerous stretch of the standard Nepalese route lies just above Base Camp?

Khumbu Icefall ice creeps downhill by about a metre a day, so its towers and crevasses keep shifting. Climbers set out before dawn, while the night's cold still holds the ice in place.

What nickname do climbers often give the Western Cwm, the broad glacial basin on Everest's standard Nepalese route?

The Valley of Silence is no cool refuge: its snow walls reflect the sun into the basin, and on a windless day climbers find it desperately hot, even at well over 6,000 m.

Most treks to Everest's Nepalese Base Camp begin with a flight to which airstrip, built under Edmund Hillary in 1964?

Lukla's airstrip sits on a steep slope because local farmers would not give up the flat land Hillary wanted. The result is a runway only about 500 m long, with high ground at one end and a sheer drop at the other.

What did French pilot Didier Delsalle land on the summit of Everest in May 2005?

A helicopter, which he had to keep on the summit for two minutes for the record to count. He stayed nearly four, then flew back up the next day and did it again.

What kind of aircraft made the first flight over Everest's summit, in 1933?

Biplanes carried the crews over the top, the pilots in open cockpits. Dust haze spoiled the survey photographs and a second try was forbidden, so the crews flew it again against orders later that month and got their pictures.

From 2014, what did Everest climbers lose for not bringing down 8 kg of rubbish?

Their cash deposit of $4,000 rode on it. The rule dealt with litter, though: the high camps had no toilets, and human waste went on piling up in holes dug in the snow.

What did Tenzing Norgay leave on Everest's summit in 1953 as an offering?

Sweets went into the snow, near a small cross that Hillary left. Many Sherpas believe the summit is home to the goddess Miyolangsangma, so they treat the mountain as a place to revere as well as to climb.

Which Tibetan monastery lies near the foot of Everest's north face, on the approach the early British expeditions used?

Rongbuk stands in Tibet, yet Sherpas from Nepal's Khumbu valley looked to it as a spiritual home, and pilgrims reached it by crossing a high Himalayan pass.

As of December 2024, roughly how many total summits of Everest had the Himalayan Database recorded?

13,000 summits, yet only a little over 7,000 different people: many climbers go back, and Sherpa guides who climb year after year account for roughly half of all the ascents.

By climbing Everest in 1985, Dick Bass is credited as the first to complete which mountaineering challenge?

The Seven Summits are the highest peaks of the seven continents. Bass climbed six of them in 1983 with a Hollywood executive, Frank Wells, but only Bass went on to reach the top of Everest and complete the set.

Why did China close Everest's Tibetan side to expeditions in spring 2008?

The Olympic torch relay went to the summit from the Tibetan side ahead of the Beijing Games. Under pressure from China, Nepal also closed the upper mountain on its own side until the flame had been and gone.

Under a bill put to Nepal's parliament in 2025, what would Everest permit applicants first have to climb?

A 7,000 m Nepali peak was the bar the draft law set. It was aimed at inexperienced climbers, who are often blamed for the queues and accidents high on the mountain.

Which neighbouring 8,516 m peak do some climbers summit in the same push as Everest, crossing the South Col between them?

Lhotse, the world's fourth-highest peak, is joined to Everest by the South Col, the saddle where climbers on the Nepalese route pitch their top camp. That lets a strong climber stand on both summits within a single day.