Mount Everest
Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth above sea level. It stands 8,849 metres tall on the border between Nepal and Tibet, in the heart of the Himalayan mountain range. Around 6,000 people have reached the summit since the first successful climb in 1953, but over 300 climbers have also died trying.
- Height8,849 mTallest on land. Still growing 4 mm a year
- CountryNepal and TibetOn the border between the two
- RangeHimalayasThe greatest mountain range on Earth
- First climbed1953By Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay
- Successful climbsapprox. 12,000Since 1953
- Deathsapprox. 330Many bodies still on the mountain
Mount Everest compared to other famous peaks
Everest is just 238 m taller than K2. Both are in Asia and both are above 8,000 m, the "death zone" where the air is too thin for humans to survive for long.
What is Mount Everest?
Mount Everest sits on the border between Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It is the tallest peak in the Himalayan mountain range, which formed when the Indian tectonic plate crashed into the Asian plate around 50 million years ago. That collision is still going on, which is why Everest keeps growing taller by approx. 4 millimetres a year.
The mountain has many names. In Nepal it is called Sagarmatha ("Goddess of the Sky"). In Tibet it is called Chomolungma ("Goddess Mother of the World"). The English name "Everest" was given in 1865 in honour of Sir George Everest, a British surveyor who never even saw the mountain.
The first climb
In the early 1900s, many expeditions tried to climb Everest and failed. The most famous early attempt was by British climbers George Mallory and Andrew Irvine in 1924. They disappeared close to the summit. Whether they reached the top before they died is one of the great mysteries of mountaineering. Mallory's body was finally found in 1999; Irvine's has never been found.
The first confirmed successful climb came on 29 May 1953. New Zealand climber Edmund Hillary and Nepali Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reached the summit together. The news arrived in London just as Queen Elizabeth II was being crowned, and the British press treated the climb as a triumphant coronation gift. Hillary was knighted; Tenzing received the George Medal.
Why it is so dangerous
Climbing Everest is dangerous for several reasons. The thin air means climbers can develop altitude sickness, frostbite or pulmonary oedema (water in the lungs). Sudden storms can trap climbers high on the mountain. The famous Khumbu Icefall on the Nepal side is a constantly shifting glacier full of crevasses and falling seracs (huge blocks of ice) that can kill instantly. And the crowds on commercial expeditions cause long queues near the summit, with climbers running out of oxygen as they wait their turn.
The deadliest year on the mountain was 2014, when an avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall killed 16 Sherpa guides. The 1996 disaster (when 8 climbers died on a single day) became famous through Jon Krakauer's book Into Thin Air.
The commercialisation of Everest
For decades only the most experienced mountaineers attempted Everest. Since the 1990s, commercial expedition companies have made it possible for paying clients with much less experience to climb the mountain. Around 1,000 people now attempt the summit each year. Critics say this has led to overcrowding, more accidents, and huge amounts of rubbish on the mountain. Nepal has introduced new rules to try to limit numbers and clean up the mountain.
Deeper dive: the Himalayas, the Sherpas and the bodies on the mountain
Mount Everest is part of the Himalayan mountain range, which stretches around 2,500 km across South Asia and contains the world's 14 highest peaks. The Himalayas were created by the ongoing collision between the Indian and Asian tectonic plates, which began around 50 million years ago when India broke away from Africa and drifted northward into Asia. The collision is still happening: India continues to push into Asia at approx. 5 cm per year, which is why the Himalayas are still rising. Everest grows approx. 4 mm taller every year due to this uplift, partly offset by erosion. A 2020 joint Chinese-Nepali survey set the mountain's official height at 8,849 metres, slightly higher than the previous figure of 8,848 m.
The Sherpa people of the Nepalese Himalayas have been essential to almost every successful Everest expedition. Sherpas are ethnically Tibetan and have lived at high altitude for centuries, giving them a genetic adaptation to low oxygen levels. Their bodies produce more nitric oxide (which widens blood vessels and improves oxygen flow) and they process energy more efficiently at altitude than lowlanders. Sherpa climbers fix the ropes, set up the camps, carry the equipment, and guide the foreign climbers. Most Everest deaths happen to clients, but Sherpas die too, often in less spectacular but more frequent accidents in the Khumbu Icefall.
Roughly 200 dead bodies remain on Mount Everest. At extreme altitudes, recovering bodies is so difficult and dangerous that most are left where they fall. Some bodies have become landmarks on the climb, given names like "Green Boots" (an Indian climber who died in 1996 and whose body in green boots lay near a popular rest spot for decades before being moved) and "Sleeping Beauty" (American climber Francys Arsentiev, who died in 1998 and whose body was finally pushed off the mountain by a respect mission in 2007). Climate change is now thawing the higher slopes and exposing bodies that had been hidden in ice for decades. The mountain is also accumulating large amounts of rubbish from expeditions; cleanup expeditions remove tonnes of equipment, oxygen bottles and human waste every year.
For the second-tallest mountain on Earth, see K2. The mountain range it sits in is the Himalayas.