50 Fun Facts About Mountain

What height did the 2020 joint Nepalese-Chinese survey give for Mount Everest?

It sits in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range and its summit marks part of the China-Nepal border.

What does Sagarmatha, Everest's Nepali name, mean?

The Tibetan name Qomolangma means 'holy mother'; the Royal Geographical Society adopted 'Mount Everest' in 1865.

Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first documented ascent of Everest in 1953 by which route?

A Chinese team made the first reported ascent from the North Ridge on 25 May 1960.

George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared on Everest during a summit attempt on 8 June of which year?

Mallory's body was found in 1999; whether the pair reached the top remains unknown.

By May 2024, roughly how many people had died on Mount Everest?

The toll stood at about 340 by May 2024; over 200 bodies remain on the mountain because retrieving them is too dangerous.

Which body of water is the closest sea to Everest's summit, almost 700 km away?

Climbers usually start from base camps above 5,000 metres.

K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth at 8,611 m, lies in which range?

Locals call it Chogori, 'big mountain' in Balti; its east face has never been climbed.

K2's nickname 'the Savage Mountain' comes from a remark by which climber on the 1953 American expedition?

'It's a savage mountain that tries to kill you'; historically about one climber died for every four who summited.

Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni made the first ascent of K2 in 1954 for which country's expedition?

Ardito Desio led the expedition up the Abruzzi Spur.

A team from which country made the first winter ascent of K2 in January 2021?

Nirmal Purja and Mingma Gyalje Sherpa led the all-Nepali team.

How many mountains does the UIAA recognise as eight-thousanders?

All of them are in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges of Asia.

Which peak was the first eight-thousander climbed, by Herzog and Lachenal in June 1950?

It is also statistically the deadliest, at roughly one death for every three summiteers.

Which eight-thousander, entirely in Tibet, was the last to be climbed, in 1964?

Tibet was closed to foreigners until 1978, so a Chinese team got there first.

Who became the first person to climb all 14 eight-thousanders, in October 1986, without bottled oxygen?

Nirmal Purja later did all 14 in six months and six days in 2019, with supplementary oxygen.

Nirmal 'Nims' Purja set what record on the eight-thousanders in 2019?

The previous record for the full set was measured in years, not months.

Who was the first person to climb the Seven Summits, on 30 April 1985?

His list used Kosciuszko for Australia; Pat Morrow was first to finish the Messner version with Puncak Jaya in 1986.

The Messner version of the Seven Summits swaps Australia's Kosciuszko for which peak?

Kosciuszko is an easy hike; the Carstensz Pyramid climb 'has the character of an expedition'.

Depending on Europe's boundary, its highest peak is Mont Blanc or which Caucasus mountain?

Elbrus is 5,642 m against Mont Blanc's 4,810 m.

Why is Mauna Kea, only 4,207 m above sea level, sometimes called the world's tallest mountain?

Its name is short for Mauna a Wākea and means 'white mountain'; thirteen telescopes crown the summit.

Olympus Mons on Mars is how many multiples of Everest's height above sea level?

It is a shield volcano about 600 km wide covering an area the size of Italy, with six nested calderas at the top.

Kilimanjaro, Africa's tallest peak, holds what worldwide distinction?

Almost 85 percent of its ice cover disappeared between 1912 and 2011.

Kilimanjaro's summit, Uhuru Peak, sits on the crater rim of which of its three volcanic cones?

Hans Meyer and Ludwig Purtscheller made the first ascent in 1889 and confirmed Kibo has a crater.

What does the Koyukon Athabaskan name Denali, applied to North America's highest peak, mean?

The federal name flipped from Mount McKinley to Denali in 2015 and back to Mount McKinley in January 2025.

The first verified ascent of Denali, on 7 June 1913, was led by which Episcopal archdeacon?

Walter Harper, an Alaska Native, was the first to actually stand on the summit; a station there once recorded a wind chill of -83.4 C.

What went wrong when four of Edward Whymper's party died descending the Matterhorn after its first ascent in 1865?

The rope linking Lord Francis Douglas to the elder Taugwalder snapped; Douglas's body was never found, and the tragedy is said to have ended the golden age of alpinism.

The Matterhorn's summit is on the border between Switzerland and which country?

It rises to 4,478 m near Zermatt, and more than 500 alpinists have died on it.

The summit of which Ecuadorian volcano is the point on Earth's surface farthest from the planet's centre?

It is 2,585 m lower than Everest, but the equatorial bulge does the rest; Humboldt tried and failed to climb it in 1802 and Whymper succeeded in 1880.

Mount Fuji, Japan's highest peak at 3,776 m, last erupted in which years?

It was inscribed as a UNESCO Cultural, not Natural, World Heritage Site in June 2013.

Fuji is one of Japan's 'Three Holy Mountains', along with Tate and which other peak?

About 300,000 people climb it each year, mostly in July and August.

The Himalayas were formed when the Eurasian landmass collided with which other?

They are still rising by about 5 mm a year; the name is Sanskrit for 'abode of snow'.

The Himalayas span five countries: Nepal, India, China, Bhutan and which other?

About 53 million people live in the range, and the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra all rise nearby.

Roughly how long is the Andes, the world's longest continental mountain range?

It runs through seven countries and is the highest range outside Asia.

Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Southern and Western Hemispheres at 6,961 m, is in which country?

Ojos del Salado on the Chile-Argentina border, at 6,893 m, is the world's highest volcano.

Which oceanic slab is sliding beneath South America to push up the Andes?

The Altiplano is the world's second-highest plateau after Tibet's.

What is the Lakota name for the mountain into which Mount Rushmore was carved?

Gutzon Borglum and 400 workers carved the 60-foot heads between 1927 and 1941 without a single fatality.

How far down were the four Mount Rushmore presidents originally meant to be carved?

Money ran out; a Hall of Records behind the heads was also left largely unbuilt.

A team from which country made the first documented ascent of Everest's North Ridge, in 1960?

Everest's northern side lies in Tibet, closed to Western expeditions for decades after 1950.

Which eight-thousander is generally considered the safest, with the lowest fatality rate?

K2 and Nanga Parbat follow Annapurna as the deadliest.

Denali's vertical relief above the surrounding plateaus is roughly how much?

That is more than Everest's rise above the Tibetan Plateau, which is why Denali looks so vast.

Olympus Mons was known to 19th-century astronomers by what Latin name, meaning 'Olympic Snow'?

Its summit calderas form a depression 60 by 80 km across and up to 3.2 km deep.

Which volcano, first climbed by Whymper in 1880, appears on Ecuador's coat of arms as a symbol of the Sierra?

Its last known eruption was around AD 550.

Roughly what share of Earth's land mass is classed as mountainous?

Mountains cover about 33 percent of Eurasia, 24 percent of North America, 19 percent of South America and 14 percent of Africa.

In the UK, a mountain is officially defined for access purposes as a summit of at least what height?

Some definitions add a prominence requirement, such as rising 300 metres above the surrounding terrain.

What are the three main types of mountains, all products of plate tectonics?

Block mountains, or horsts, rise along faults, with dropped blocks called graben forming rift valleys like those in East Africa.

What is the geological term for the uplifted blocks that form block mountains?

The Vosges and Rhine valley and the Basin and Range Province of western North America show this horst-and-graben landscape.

Climbing 100 metres up a mountain is roughly equivalent to moving how far towards the nearest pole?

That is about 0.75 degrees of latitude, though proximity to oceans can drastically modify local climate.

What is the moist adiabatic lapse rate, the rate at which saturated rising air cools?

Condensing water vapour releases latent heat, which is why saturated air cools more slowly than the dry adiabatic rate.

The Alpide belt of young mountain ranges stretches roughly how far across southern Eurasia?

It runs from Java to the Iberian Peninsula and includes the Himalayas, Karakoram, Hindu Kush, Alborz, Caucasus and Alps.

Counting underwater peaks, which is the longest continuous mountain system on Earth at 65,000 km?

On land the Andes, at about 7,000 km, are usually considered the world's longest mountain system.

Tenzing Montes and Hillary Montes are mountain ranges made mainly of ice on which body?

Saturn's moon Titan has its own icy ranges, the Mithrim Montes and Doom Mons.