Mount Everest, also called Chomolungma or Qomolangma (Tibetan:
ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ) or Sagarmatha (Nepali:
सगरमाथा) is the
highest mountain on
Earth, as
measured by the height of its
summit above
sea level,
which is 8,848 meters or 29,028 feet. The mountain, which is part of the
Himalaya
range in High Asia, is located on the border between
Nepal and
Tibet,
China. By the end of the 2007 climbing season there had been 3,679 ascents
to the summit by 2,436 individuals. There have been 210 deaths on the mountain,
where conditions are so difficult that most corpses have been left where they
fell; some are visible from standard climbing routes.[4]
Climbers range from experienced
mountaineers to relative
novices who
count on their paid guides to get them to the top. This means climbers are a
significant source of tourist revenue for Nepal, whose government also requires
all prospective climbers to obtain an expensive permit, costing up to $25,000 (USD)
per person.[5]
Naming
The
Tibetan name for Mount Everest is Chomolungma or Qomolangma (ཇོ་མོ་གླིང་མ,
translated as "Mother of the Universe" or "Goddess Mother of the Earth"), and
the related
Chinese name is Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng (simplified
Chinese: 珠穆朗玛峰;
traditional Chinese: 珠穆朗瑪峰)
or Shèngmǔ Fēng (simplified
Chinese: 圣母峰;
traditional Chinese: 聖母峰).[citation
needed] According to English accounts of the
mid-19th century, the local name in
Darjeeling
for Mount Everest was Deodungha, or "Holy Mountain."[6]
In the 1960s, the Government of Nepal gave the mountain the official
Nepali name of Sagarmatha (सगरमाथा), meaning "Goddess of the Sky".[citation
needed]
In 1865, the mountain was given its
English name by
Andrew Waugh, the
British
surveyor-general of India. With both Nepal and
Tibet closed to
foreign travel, he wrote:
I was taught by my respected chief and predecessor, Colonel Sir
George Everest to assign to every geographical object its true local or
native appellation. But here is a mountain, most probably the highest in the
world, without any local name that we can discover, whose native appellation,
if it has any, will not very likely be ascertained before we are allowed to
penetrate into Nepal. In the meantime the privilege as well as the duty
devolves on me to assign…a name whereby it may be known among citizens and
geographers and become a household word among civilized nations.
Waugh chose to name the mountain after
George Everest, first using the spelling Mont Everest, and then
Mount Everest. However, the modern pronunciation of Everest (IPA:
/ˈɛvərɪst/ (EV-er-est))
is in fact different from Sir George's own pronunciation of his surname, which
was
/ˈiːvrɪst/ (EAVE-rest).[citation
needed]
In the late 19th century many European
cartographers incorrectly believed that a native name for the mountain was "Gaurisankar".[7]
This was a result of confusion of Mount Everest with the actual
Gauri
Sankar, which, when viewed from
Kathmandu,
stands almost directly in front of Everest.[citation
needed]
In the early 1960s, the
Nepalese government
realized that Mount Everest had no
Nepalese name.[citation
needed] This was because the mountain was not known and
named in ethnic Nepal (that is, the
Kathmandu valley and surrounding areas).[citation
needed] The government set out to find a name for the
mountain (the
Sherpa/Tibetan name Chomolangma was not acceptable, as it would have
been against the idea of unification (Nepalization) of the country. The name
Sagarmatha (सगरमाथा) was thus invented by
Baburam Acharya.[citation
needed]
In 2002, the Chinese
People's Daily newspaper published an article making a case against the
continued use of the English name for the mountain in the
Western world, insisting that it should be referred to by its Tibetan name.
The newspaper argued that the Chinese (in nature a Tibetan) name preceded the
English one, as Mount Qomolangma was marked on a Chinese map more than 280 years
ago.[8]
Aerial view of Mount Everest from the south
Measurement
Mount Everest north face from Rongbuk in Tibet
Another aerial view of Mount Everest from the south, with Lhotse in front
and Nuptse on the left
Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian mathematician and surveyor from
Bengal, was the
first to identify Everest as the world's highest peak in 1852, using
trigonometric calculations based on measurements of "Peak XV" (as it was
then known) made with
theodolites
from 240 km (150 miles) away as part of the
Great Trigonometric Survey of
India.
Measurement could not be made from closer due to a lack of access to Nepal. Peak
XV was found to be exactly 29,000 feet (8,839 m) high, but was publicly declared
to be 29,002 feet (8,840 m). The arbitrary addition of 2 feet (0.6 m) was to
avoid the impression that an exact height of 29,000 feet was nothing more than a
rounded estimate.
More recently, the mountain has been found to be 8,848 m (29,028
feet) high, although there is some variation in the measurements. The
mountain K2 comes in
second at 8,611 m (28,251 ft) high. On
May 22,
2005, the People's
Republic of China's Everest Expedition Team ascended to the top of the mountain.
After several months' measurement and calculation, on
October 9,
2005, the PRC's
State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping officially announced the height of Everest
as 8,844.43 m ± 0.21 m (29,017.16 ± 0.69
ft). They claimed it was the most accurate measurement to date.[9]
This height is based on the actual highest point of rock and not on the snow and
ice covering it. The Chinese team also measured a snow/ice depth of 3.5 m,[10]
which is in agreement with a net elevation of 8,848 m. The snow and ice
thickness varies over time, making a definitive height of the snow cap
impossible to determine.
The elevation of 8,848 m (29,029 ft) was first determined by an Indian survey
in 1955, made closer to the mountain, also using
theodolites.
It was subsequently reaffirmed by a 1975 Chinese measurement.[11]
In both cases the snow cap, not the rock head, was measured. In May 1999 an
American Everest Expedition, directed by
Bradford Washburn, anchored a
GPS unit into the highest bedrock. A rock head elevation of 8,850 m
(29,035 ft), and a snow/ice elevation 1 m (3 ft) higher, were obtained via this
device.[12]
Although it has not been officially recognized by Nepal,[13]
this figure is widely quoted.
Geoid uncertainty
casts doubt upon the accuracy claimed by both the 1999 and 2005 surveys.
A detailed
photogrammetric map (at a scale of 1:50,000) of the
Khumbu region,
including the south side of Mount Everest, was made by Erwin Schneider as part
of the 1955 International Himalayan Expedition, which also attempted
Lhotse. An even
more detailed
topographic
map of the Everest area was made in the late 1980s under the direction of
Bradford Washburn, using extensive
aerial photography.[14]
It is thought that the
plate tectonics of the area are adding to the height and moving the summit
north-eastwards. Two accounts[12][15]
suggest the rates of change are 4 mm per year (upwards) and 3-6 mm per year
(northeastwards), but another account mentions more lateral movement (27 mm),[16]
and even shrinkage has been suggested.[17]
The Mount Everest region, and the
Himalayas
in general, are thought to be experiencing ice-melt due to
global warming.[18]
The exceptionally heavy southwest summer
monsoon of
2005 is consistent with continued warming and augmented convective uplift on the
Tibetan plateau to the north.[citation
needed]
Comparisons
Everest is the mountain whose summit attains the greatest distance above
sea level.
Several other mountains are sometimes claimed as alternative "tallest mountains
on Earth".
Mauna Kea in
Hawaii is tallest when measured from its base;[19]
it rises over 10,200 m (6.3 mi) when measured from its base on the mid-ocean
floor, but only attains 4,205 m (13,796 ft) above sea level.
By the same measure of base[19]
to summit,
Denali, in
Alaska, is also taller than Everest. Despite its height above sea level of
only 6,193.6 m (20,320 ft), Denali sits atop a sloping plain with elevations
from 300-900 m (1,000-3,000 ft), yielding a height above base in the range of
5,300-5,900 m (17,300-19,300 ft); a commonly quoted figure is 5,600 m
(18,400 ft).[20]
By comparison, reasonable base elevations for Everest range from 4,200 m
(13,800 ft) on the south side to 5,200 m (17,100 ft) on the
Tibetan Plateau, yielding a height above base in the range of 3,650 m
(12,000 ft) to 4,650 m (15,300 ft).[14]
The summit of
Chimborazo in
Ecuador is 2,168 m (7,113 ft) farther from the Earth's centre (6,384.4 km or
3,967.1 mi) than
that of Everest (6,382.3 km or 3,965.8 mi), because the Earth bulges at the
Equator. However, Chimborazo attains a height of only 6,267 m (20,561 ft) above
sea level, and by this criterion it is not even the highest peak of the
Andes.
The deepest spot in the ocean is deeper than Everest is high: the
Challenger Deep off the
Mariana Islands, is so deep that if Everest could be placed into it there
would be more[citation
needed] than 2 km (more than 1.3 mi) of water covering it.
Climbing routes
Southern and northern climbing routes as seen from the International Space
Station.
Mt. Everest has two main climbing routes, the southeast ridge from Nepal and
the northeast ridge from
Tibet, as well as
many other less frequently climbed routes.[21]
Of the two main routes, the southeast ridge is technically easier and is the
more frequently-used route. It was the route used by
Edmund Hillary and
Tenzing Norgay in 1953 and the first recognised of fifteen routes to the top
by 1996. This was, however, a route decision dictated more by politics than by
design as the Chinese border was closed to foreigners in 1949.
Reinhold Messner (Italy) reached the summit the mountain solo for the first
time, without supplementary oxygen or support, on the more difficult Northwest
route via the North Col to the North Face and the Great Couloir, on
August 20
1980. He climbed for three days entirely alone from his base camp at 6500
meters. This route has been noted as the 8th climbing route to the summit.
View from space showing South Col route and North Col/Ridge route
Most attempts are made during May before the summer
monsoon
season. A change in the
jet stream
at this time of year reduces the average wind speeds high on the mountain. While
attempts are sometimes made after the monsoons in September and October, the
additional snow deposited by the monsoons and the less stable weather patterns
makes climbing more difficult.
Southeast ridge
The ascent via the southeast ridge begins with a trek to
Base Camp at 5,380 m (17,600 ft) on the south side of Everest in Nepal.
Expeditions usually fly into
Lukla (2,860 m)
from
Kathmandu and pass through
Namche Bazaar. Climbers then hike to Base Camp, which usually takes six to
eight days, allowing for proper altitude acclimatization in order to prevent
altitude sickness. Climbing equipment and supplies are carried by
yaks,
dzopkyos (yak
hybrids) and human
porters to Base Camp on the
Khumbu Glacier. When Hillary and Tenzing climbed Everest in 1953, they
started from Kathmandu Valley, as there were no roads further east at that time.
Climbers will spend a couple of weeks in Base Camp, acclimatizing to the
altitude. During that time,
Sherpas and some expedition climbers will set up ropes and ladders in the
treacherous
Khumbu Icefall.
Seracs, crevasses and shifting blocks of ice make the icefall one of the
most dangerous sections of the route. Many climbers and Sherpas have been killed
in this section. To reduce the hazard, climbers will usually begin their ascent
well before dawn when the freezing temperatures glue ice blocks in place. Above
the icefall is Camp I at 6,065 m (19,900 ft).
From Camp I, climbers make their way up the
Western
Cwm to the base of the
Lhotse face,
where Camp II or Advanced Base Camp (ABC) is established at 6,500 m (21,300 ft).
The Western Cwm is a relatively flat, gently rising glacial valley, marked by
huge lateral
crevasses in the centre which prevent direct access to the upper reaches of
the Cwm. Climbers are forced to cross on the far right near the base of
Nuptse to a
small passageway known as the "Nuptse corner". The Western Cwm is also called
the "Valley of Silence" as the topography of the area generally cuts off wind
from the climbing route. The
high
altitude and a clear, windless day can make the Western Cwm unbearably hot
for climbers.
From ABC, climbers ascend the Lhotse face on
fixed ropes
up to Camp III, located on a small ledge at 7,470 m (24,500 ft). From there, it
is another 500 metres to Camp IV on the
South Col
at 7,920 m (26,000 ft). From Camp III to Camp IV, climbers are faced with two
additional challenges: The Geneva Spur and The Yellow Band. The Geneva Spur is
an anvil shaped rib of black rock named by a 1952 Swiss expedition. Fixed ropes
assist climbers in
scrambling
over this snow covered rock band. The Yellow Band is a section of interlayered
marble,
phyllite,
and semischist
which also requires about 100 metres of rope for traversing it.
On the South Col, climbers enter the
death zone.
Climbers typically only have a maximum of two or three days they can endure at
this altitude for making summit bids. Clear weather and low winds are critical
factors in deciding whether to make a summit attempt. If weather does not
cooperate within these short few days, climbers are forced to descend, many all
the way back down to Base Camp.
A view of Everest southeast ridge
base camp. The
Khumbu Icefall can be seen in the left. In the center are the remains
of a helicopter that crashed in 2003.
From Camp IV, climbers will begin their summit push around midnight with
hopes of reaching the summit (still another 1,000 metres above) within 10 to 12
hours. Climbers will first reach "The Balcony" at 8,400 m (27,700 ft), a small
platform where they can rest and gaze at peaks to the south and east in the
early dawn light. Continuing up the ridge, climbers are then faced with a series
of imposing rock steps which usually forces them to the east into waist deep
snow, a serious
avalanche
hazard. At 8,750 m (28,700 ft), a small table-sized dome of ice and snow marks
the South Summit.
From the South Summit, climbers follow the knife-edge southeast ridge along
what is known as the "Cornice traverse" where snow clings to intermittent rock.
This is the most exposed section of the climb as a misstep to the left would
send one 2,400 m (8,000 ft) down the southwest face while to the immediate right
is the 3,050 m (10,000 ft)
Kangshung face. At the end of this traverse is an imposing 12 m (40 ft) rock
wall called the "Hillary
Step" at 8,760 m (28,750 ft).
Hillary and Tenzing were the first climbers to ascend this step and they did
it with primitive ice climbing equipment and without fixed ropes. Nowadays,
climbers will ascend this step using fixed ropes previously set up by Sherpas.
Once above the step, it is a comparatively easy climb to the top on moderately
angled snow slopes - though the exposure on the ridge is extreme especially
while traversing very large cornices of snow. After the Hillary Step, climbers
also must traverse a very loose and rocky section that has a very large
entanglement of fixed ropes that can be troublesome in bad weather. Climbers
will typically spend less than a half-hour on "top of the world" as they realize
the need to descend to Camp IV before darkness sets in, afternoon weather
becomes a serious problem, or supplemental oxygen tanks run out.
Northeast ridge
Everest North Face, Tibet
The northeast ridge route begins from the north side of Everest in Tibet.
Expeditions trek to the
Rongbuk Glacier, setting up
Base Camp at 5,180 m (17,000 ft) on a gravel plain just below the glacier.
To reach Camp II, climbers ascend the medial moraine of the east Rongbuk Glacier
up to the base of
Changtse at
around 6,100 m (20,000 ft). Camp III (ABC - Advanced Base Camp) is situated
below the
North Col at 6,500 m (21,300 ft). To reach Camp IV on the north col,
climbers ascend the glacier to the foot of the col where fixed ropes are used to
reach the North Col at 7,010 m (23,000 ft). From the North Col, climbers ascend
the rocky north ridge to set up Camp V at around 7,775 m (25,500 ft). The route
goes up the north face through a series of gullies and steepens into downsloping
slabby terrain before reaching the site of Camp VI at 8,230 m (27,000 ft). From
Camp VI, climbers will make their final summit push. Climbers must first make
their way through three rock bands known as First Step: 27,890 feet -
28,000 feet, Second Step: 28,140 feet - 28,300 feet, and Third Step: 28,510 feet
- 28,870 feet. (The Second Step includes a climbing aid called the "Chinese
ladder", a metal ladder placed semi-permanently in 1975 by a party of Chinese
climbers. It has been almost continuously in place since, and is used by
virtually all climbers on the route.) Once above these steps, the final summit
slopes (50 to 60 degrees) to the top.
China is paving a 130-km (66-mile) dirt road from
Tingri County to its Base Camp in order to accommodate growing numbers of
climbers on their side of the mountain. It will become the highest asphalt-paved
road in the world. Construction began on
June 18,
2007, at a cost of
150 million yuan (US$19.7 million). China also plans on routing the
2008 Olympic Torch Relay over Everest, going up the South Col route and back
down the North Col route, on the way to the
2008 Summer Olympics in
Beijing.[22]
Ascents
Early expeditions
In 1885,
Clinton Thomas Dent, president of the
Alpine Club, suggests that climbing Mount Everest is possible in his book
Above the Snow Line.[23]
On June 8,
1924,
George Mallory and
Andrew Irvine, both of the
United Kingdom, made an attempt on the summit via the north col/north ridge
route from which they never returned.
On May 1,
1999, the
Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition found Mallory's body in the predicted
search area near the old Chinese camp. Controversy has raged in the
mountaineering community as to whether or not one or both of them reached
the summit 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
among climbers has been that they did not.
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 1933,
Lady
Houston, a
British
millionaire ex-showgirl,
funded the Houston Everest Flight of 1933, which saw a formation of
aircraft led by the
Marquess of Clydesdale fly over the summit in an effort to deploy the
British
Union 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 reasserted control over Tibet. However, in 1950,
Bill
Tilman and a small party which included Charles Houston, Oscar Houston and
Betsy Cowles undertook an exploratory expedition to Everest through Nepal along
the route which has now become the standard approach to Everest from the south.
First successful ascent by Tenzing and Hillary
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 (Tom
Bourdillon and
Charles Evans) came within 300 feet of the summit on
26 May, but
turned back after becoming exhausted. Two days later, the expedition made its
second and final assault on the summit with its second climbing pair. They
eventually reached the summit at 11:30 a.m. local time on
May 29,
1953 by the
New
Zealander
Edmund Hillary and
Sherpa
Tenzing Norgay from Nepal climbing the South Col Route. At the time, both
acknowledged it as a team effort by the whole expedition, but Tenzing revealed a
few years later that Hillary had put his foot on the summit first.[24]
They paused at the summit to take photographs and buried 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, Hunt (a Briton) and Hillary (a subject of
Elizabeth, through her role as
head
of state of New Zealand) discovered that they had been promptly
knighted
in the
Order of the British Empire, a KBE, for the ascent. Tenzing (a subject of
the King of Nepal) was granted the
George
Medal by the UK. Hunt was ultimately made a
life peer
in Britain, while Hillary became a founding member of the
Order of New Zealand.
1996 disaster
During the 1996 climbing season, fifteen people died trying to come down from
the summit, making it the deadliest single year in Everest history. Eight of
them died on May 11 alone. The disaster gained wide publicity and raised
questions about the commercialization of Everest.
Journalist
Jon
Krakauer, on assignment from
Outside magazine, was in one of the affected parties, and afterwards
published the bestseller
Into
Thin Air which related his experience.
Anatoli Boukreev, a guide who felt impugned by Krakauer's book, co-authored
a rebuttal book called
The Climb. The dispute sparked a large debate within the climbing
community. In May 2004, Kent Moore, a physicist, and John L. Semple, a surgeon,
both researchers from the
University of Toronto, told
New
Scientist magazine that an analysis of weather conditions on May 11
suggested that freak weather caused oxygen levels to plunge approximately 14%.[25][26]
The storm's impact on climbers on the mountain's other side, the North Ridge,
where several climbers also died, was detailed in a
first hand
account by British filmmaker and writer
Matt Dickinson in his book The Other Side of Everest.
2003 - 50th Anniversary of First Ascent
2003 marked the 50th anniversary of the first ascent, and a record number of
teams, including some very distinguished climbers, climbed or attempted to climb
the mountain.
2005 - Helicopter landing
On 14 May
2005, pilot
Didier Delsalle of
France landed a
Eurocopter
AS 350 B3 helicopter on the summit of Mount Everest[27]
(without any witness) and took off after about four minutes. (His rotors were
continually engaged, constituting a "hover landing", and avoiding the risks of
relying on the snow to support the aircraft.) He thereby set
rotorcraft
world records, for highest of both landing (de facto) and take-off (formally).[28]
Delsalle had also performed, two days earlier, a take-off from the South Col;
some press reports suggested[citation
needed] that the report of the summit landing was a
misunderstanding of a South Col one.
2006 - North Face ski descent
On 16 May
2006, adventurers
Tormod Granheim and
Tomas
Olsson skied the Norton Couloir from the summit to the North Col. During the
descent Olsson fell an estimated 1700 meters to his death.
2006 - David Sharp controversy
Double-amputee climber
Mark
Inglis revealed in an interview with the press on
May 23,
2006, that his
climbing party, and many others, had passed a distressed climber,
David
Sharp, on May
15, sheltering under a rock overhang 450 meters below the summit, without
attempting a rescue. The revelation sparked wide debate on climbing ethics,
especially as applied to Everest. The climbers who left him said that the rescue
efforts would be useless and only cause more deaths because of how many people
it would have taken to pull him off.
Much of this controversy was captured by the
Discovery Channel while filming the television program
Everest: Beyond the Limit. A crucial decision affecting the fate of
Sharp is shown in the program, where an early returning climber (Max Chaya) is
descending and radios to his base camp manager (Russell Brice) that he has found
a climber in distress. He is unable to identify Sharp, and Sharp had chosen to
climb solo without any support, so he did not identify himself to other
climbers. The base camp manager assumes that Sharp is part of a group that has
abandoned him, and informs his climber that there is no chance of him being able
to help Sharp [at 8000+ meters in altitude, barely anyone has the strength to
help another man who is only semi conscious, and Max Chaya is only an amateur
mountaineer]. As Sharp's condition deteriorates through the day and other
descending climbers pass him, his opportunities for rescue diminish: his legs
and feet curl from frost-bite, preventing him from walking; the later descending
climbers are lower on oxygen and lack the strength to offer aid; time runs out
for any Sherpas to return and rescue him. Most importantly, Sharp's decision to
forgo all support leaves him with no margin for recovery.
As this debate raged, on
May 26,
Australian climber
Lincoln Hall was found alive, after being declared dead the day before. He
was found by a party of four climbers (Dan
Mazur, Andrew Brash, Myles Osborne and Jangbu Sherpa) who, giving up their
own summit attempt, stayed with Hall and descended with him and a party of 11
Sherpas sent up to carry him down. Hall later fully recovered. Similar actions
have been recorded since, including on May 21, 2007, when
Canadian
climber Meagan McGrath initiated the successful high-altitude rescue of
Nepali Usha Bista.
