50 free Mountain trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
41 free Mountain trivia questions with answers. Mountain trivia is more than 'which is the highest'. This quiz covers Everest's names, first ascents, death toll and nearest sea; K2 and why it is called the Savage Mountain; the fourteen eight-thousanders and the people who collected them, from Messner to Nims Purja; the Seven Summits and the argument over Australia and Europe; and the famous individual peaks: Kilimanjaro, Denali, the Matterhorn tragedy of 1865, Fuji, Chimborazo, Mauna Kea, Mount Rushmore and Olympus Mons on Mars. Early questions suit anyone who has watched a climbing documentary (which country Aconcagua is in, which plate built the Himalayas). Later ones will test geography teachers and armchair mountaineers: which eight-thousander was climbed last and why, who said 'it's a savage mountain', and how far the Rushmore presidents were meant to go. Good for a geography classroom, a hiking-club social or a pub quiz picture round. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the peaks and ranges, and each question shows its source.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What height did the 2020 joint Nepalese-Chinese survey give for Mount Everest?
8,848.86 m
It sits in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range and its summit marks part of the China-Nepal border.
Q 02What does Sagarmatha, Everest's Nepali name, mean?
The head in the great blue sky
The Tibetan name Qomolangma means 'holy mother'; the Royal Geographical Society adopted 'Mount Everest' in 1865.
Q 03Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary made the first documented ascent of Everest in 1953 by which route?
The Southeast Ridge
A Chinese team made the first reported ascent from the North Ridge on 25 May 1960.
Q 04George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappeared on Everest during a summit attempt on 8 June of which year?
1924
Mallory's body was found in 1999; whether the pair reached the top remains unknown.
Q 05By May 2024, roughly how many people had died on Mount Everest?
340
The toll stood at about 340 by May 2024; over 200 bodies remain on the mountain because retrieving them is too dangerous.
Q 06Which body of water is the closest sea to Everest's summit, almost 700 km away?
The Bay of Bengal
Climbers usually start from base camps above 5,000 metres.
Q 07K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth at 8,611 m, lies in which range?
The Karakoram
Locals call it Chogori, 'big mountain' in Balti; its east face has never been climbed.
Q 08K2's nickname 'the Savage Mountain' comes from a remark by which climber on the 1953 American expedition?
George Bell
'It's a savage mountain that tries to kill you'; historically about one climber died for every four who summited.
Q 09Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni made the first ascent of K2 in 1954 for which country's expedition?
Italy
Ardito Desio led the expedition up the Abruzzi Spur.
Q 10A team from which country made the first winter ascent of K2 in January 2021?
Nepal
Nirmal Purja and Mingma Gyalje Sherpa led the all-Nepali team.
Q 11How many mountains does the UIAA recognise as eight-thousanders?
14
All of them are in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges of Asia.
Q 12Which peak was the first eight-thousander climbed, by Herzog and Lachenal in June 1950?
Annapurna
It is also statistically the deadliest, at roughly one death for every three summiteers.
Q 13Which eight-thousander, entirely in Tibet, was the last to be climbed, in 1964?
Shishapangma
Tibet was closed to foreigners until 1978, so a Chinese team got there first.
Q 14Who became the first person to climb all 14 eight-thousanders, in October 1986, without bottled oxygen?
Q 21Kilimanjaro, Africa's tallest peak, holds what worldwide distinction?
Highest free-standing mountain above sea level
Almost 85 percent of its ice cover disappeared between 1912 and 2011.
Q 22Kilimanjaro's summit, Uhuru Peak, sits on the crater rim of which of its three volcanic cones?
Kibo
Hans Meyer and Ludwig Purtscheller made the first ascent in 1889 and confirmed Kibo has a crater.
Q 23What does the Koyukon Athabaskan name Denali, applied to North America's highest peak, mean?
The high or tall one
Reinhold Messner
Nirmal Purja later did all 14 in six months and six days in 2019, with supplementary oxygen.
Q 15Nirmal 'Nims' Purja set what record on the eight-thousanders in 2019?
All 14 in six months and six days
The previous record for the full set was measured in years, not months.
Q 16Who was the first person to climb the Seven Summits, on 30 April 1985?
Richard Bass
His list used Kosciuszko for Australia; Pat Morrow was first to finish the Messner version with Puncak Jaya in 1986.
Q 17The Messner version of the Seven Summits swaps Australia's Kosciuszko for which peak?
Puncak Jaya
Kosciuszko is an easy hike; the Carstensz Pyramid climb 'has the character of an expedition'.
Q 18Depending on Europe's boundary, its highest peak is Mont Blanc or which Caucasus mountain?
Elbrus
Elbrus is 5,642 m against Mont Blanc's 4,810 m.
Q 19Why is Mauna Kea, only 4,207 m above sea level, sometimes called the world's tallest mountain?
Measured from its underwater base it exceeds 9,000 m
Its name is short for Mauna a Wākea and means 'white mountain'; thirteen telescopes crown the summit.
Q 20Olympus Mons on Mars is how many multiples of Everest's height above sea level?
2.5x
It is a shield volcano about 600 km wide covering an area the size of Italy, with six nested calderas at the top.
The federal name flipped from Mount McKinley to Denali in 2015 and back to Mount McKinley in January 2025.
Q 24The first verified ascent of Denali, on 7 June 1913, was led by which Episcopal archdeacon?
Hudson Stuck
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.
Q 25What went wrong when four of Edward Whymper's party died descending the Matterhorn after its first ascent in 1865?
A rope broke
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.
Q 26The Matterhorn's summit is on the border between Switzerland and which country?
Italy
It rises to 4,478 m near Zermatt, and more than 500 alpinists have died on it.
Q 27The summit of which Ecuadorian volcano is the point on Earth's surface farthest from the planet's centre?
Chimborazo
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.
Q 28Mount Fuji, Japan's highest peak at 3,776 m, last erupted in which years?
1707 to 1708
It was inscribed as a UNESCO Cultural, not Natural, World Heritage Site in June 2013.
Q 29Fuji is one of Japan's 'Three Holy Mountains', along with Tate and which other peak?
Haku
About 300,000 people climb it each year, mostly in July and August.
Q 30The Himalayas were formed when the Eurasian landmass collided with which other?
The Indian plate
They are still rising by about 5 mm a year; the name is Sanskrit for 'abode of snow'.