Mount Everest
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Mt. Everest and Khumbu Icefall |
Mount Everest, measuring from sea level, is the tallest mountain on Earth. It is located at 27ÃÂð 59' 16" N, 86ÃÂð 56' 40" E in the Himalayas, and the summit ridge of the mountain marks the border between Nepal and Tibet. In Nepal the mountain is called Sagarmatha (goddess of the sky) and in Tibet Chomolangma (mother of the universe); and although it was named Everest by Sir Andrew Waugh, the British surveyor-general of India, in honour of his predecessor Sir George Everest, the popular pronunciation of Everest is different from how Sir George pronounced his own last name.
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2 Ascents 3 Timeline 4 External link |
The mountain is around 8,850 metress (29,035 feet) high, although there is some variation in the measurements. It was first measured in 1856 to have a height of 29,000 feet, but declared to be 29,002 feet high. The arbitrary addition of 2 feet reflected the sentiment at the time that an exact height of 29,000 feet would be viewed as nothing more than a rounded estimate. Today's generally accepted value of 8,850 m was obtained via GPS readings. Mount Everest is still growing due to the plate tectonics of the area; however, the effects are significant only on a geological timescale.
Radhanath Sikdar, a Bengali mathematician and surveyor, was the first to identify it as the world's tallest peak through trigonometric calculations, in 1852. At the time it was known as Peak XV.
To be precise, Mount Everest is the mountain whose summit attains the greatest distance above sea level. Two other mountains are sometimes claimed as alternative "highest mountains on Earth." Mauna Loa in Hawaii is highest when measured from its base; it rises 17 km (58,000 ft) when measured from its base on the mid-ocean floor, but only attains 4,170 m (13,680 ft) above sea level. The summit of Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is 2,150 m further from the Earth's centre than that of Everest, because the Earth bulges at the Equator. However, Chimborazo attains a height of 6,272 m above sea level, by which criterion it is not even the highest peak of the Andes.
On June 8 1924, George Mallory and Andrew Irvine, both of the United Kingdom, made an assault on the summit from which they never returned. Noel Odell, the expedition's geologist, saw the pair climbing up "with great alacrity...near the base of the final pyramide."(sic) at 12:50pm that day. In 1979 climber Wang Hongbao of China revealed to a companion that he had discovered a body in 1975 thought to roughly match Irvine's description, but he unfortunately was killed in a fall the very next day before he could provide precise details to anyone else. In 1999 however, the famous Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition found instead Mallory in the predicted search area near the old Chinese camp. Controversy has raged in the mountaineering community as to whether the duo may have made it to the top of the world, 29 years before the confirmed ascent (and of course, safe descent) of Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953. The general consensus shared by legendary climber Reinhold Messner and others is that they did not; however, as of this writing (2004) another expedition being undertaken by the discoverers of Mallory's body to find Irvine's stands a good likelihood of producing further evidence one way or the other. In particular, the two (probably Irvine, since none was found on Mallory) are known to have carried at least one Kodak 'Vestpocket' camera between them, whose film would still be able to be developed even 80 years later, & may well contain pictures of a sucessful summit. Mallory had gone on a speaking tour of the United States the year before in 1923; it was then that he exasperatedly gave the famous reply, "Because it is there," to a New York journalist in response to hearing the question, Why climb Everest? for seemingly the thousandth time.
In 1995 George Mallory II of South Africa (grandson) summited Everest.
In 1933, Lady Houston, a millionaire ex-showgirl, funded the Houston Everest Flight of 1933, which saw a formation of aeroplanes led by the Marquess of Clydesdale fly over the summit in an effort to deploy the British Union Jack flag at the top.
Early expeditions ascended the mountain from Tibet, via the north face. However, this access was closed to western expeditions in 1950, after the Chinese took over Tibet. During 1951 and 1952 a British led expedition, including Edmund Hillary, travelled into Nepal to survey a new route via the southern face.
Taking their cue from the British, a Swiss expedition attempted to climb via the southern face, but turned back 200 meters short of the summit. Among the assault team was Sherpa Tenzing Norgay.
In 1953, a ninth British expedition, led by John Hunt, returned to Nepal. Hunt selected two climbing pairs to attempt to reach the summit. The first pair turned back after becoming exhausted high on the mountain. The next day, the expedition made its second and final assault on the summit with its fittest and most determined climbing pair. The summit was eventually reached at 11:30 AM on May 29, 1953 by the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay from Nepal climbing the South Col Route. Although Hillary admits his foot may have been ahead of Tenzing's, both acknowledged it as a team effort by the whole expedition. They paused at the summit to take photographs and bury a few sweets and a small cross in the snow, before descending. News of the expedition's success reached London on the morning of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation. Returning to Kathmandu a few days later, Hillary and Hunt discovered that they had been promptly knighted for their efforts.
Up to the end of the 2001 climbing season, 1491 people have reached the summit (560 of them since 1998), and there have been 172 climber deaths (the worst year being 1996, when 15 people died trying to reach the summit). The conditions on the mountain are difficult enough that most of the corpses have been left where they fell, some of them easily visible from the standard climbing routes. On May 16, 1975 Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Everest.
Most expeditions use oxygen masks and tanks ([1]) to climb Everest above 26,000 ft (8,000 meters). - known as the death zone. Everest can be climbed without oxygen tanks, but this requires special fitness training and increases the risk to the climber: humans do not think clearly with low oxygen, and the weather, low temperatures and the slopes often require quick, accurate decisions.
Mountain climbers are a significant source of tourist revenue for Nepal; they range from experienced mountaineers to relative novices who count on their paid guides to get them to the top.
Measurement
Ascents
Timeline
See also: Geography of China, Sagarmatha National Park