Mount Everest, also known in Nepal as Sagarmāthā and in Tibet as Chomolungma, is Earth's highest mountain. Its peak is 8,848 metres (29,029 ft) above sea level.[1] Mount Everest is located in the Mahalangur mountain range in Nepal and Tibet.The international border between China (Tibet Autonomous Region) and Nepal runs across Everest's precise summit point. Itsmassif includes neighbouring peaks Lhotse, 8,516 m (27,940 ft); Nuptse, 7,855 m (25,771 ft) and Changtse, 7,580 m (24,870 ft).
First Climber:
29 May 1953Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay
The Tibetan name for Mount Everest is ཇོ་མོ་གླང་མ (IPA: [t͡ɕʰòmòlɑ́ŋmɑ̀]lit. "Holy Mother"), whose official Tibetan pinyinform is Qomolangma. It is also popularly romanised as Chomolungma and (in Wylie) as Jo-mo-glang- ma or Jomo Langma.The official Chinese transcription is 珠穆朗玛峰 (t 珠穆朗瑪峰), whose pinyin form is Zhūmùlǎngmǎ Fēng("Chomolungma Peak").[30] It is also infrequently simply translated into Chinese as Shèngmǔ Fēng (t 聖母峰, s 圣母峰,lit. "Holy Mother Peak"). In 2002, the Chinese People's Daily newspaper published an article making a case against the use of "Mount Everest" in English, insisting that the mountain should be referred to as "Mount Qomolangma", based on the official form of the local Tibetan name. The article argued that British colonialists did not "first discover" the mountain, as it had been known to the Tibetans and mapped by the Chinese as "Qomolangma" since at least 1719.
In the early 1960s, the Nepalese government coined a Nepali name for Mount Everest, Sagarmāthā or Sagar-Matha[32] (सागर-मथ्था),allegedly to supplant the Tibetan name among the locals, a usage which the Nepali government felt was "not acceptable"
One of the most infamous tragedies on the mountain was the 1996 Mount Everest disaster on May 11, 1996, during which eight people died while making summit attempts. In that entire season, 15 people died trying to reach the summit, making it the deadliest single year in the mountain's history to that point. The disaster gained wide publicity and has been written about many times; both Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer and The Climb by Anatoli Boukreev were written by mountaineers who were on Mount Everest at the time, and they give conflicting accounts of the events. Curiously, 1996 was statistically a safe year for Everest climbers. Before 1996, one in four climbers had died making the ascent; 1996 saw huge numbers of people attempting the climb and the statistics for 1996 reveal that only one in seven died.
Another notable incident occurred in 1998 when Francys Arsentiev and her husband, Sergei Arsentiev, became separated and then died while looking for each other.Francys's frozen body lay next to the main route to the summit for nine years before climber Ian Woodall led an expedition to push her body over an edge and out of view.
In the consecutive 2014 and 2015 seasons, tragedies that each killed more than a dozen people caused no one to ascend the mountain in those years. On April 18, 2014, 16Sherpas were killed in an avalanche that struck Base Camp. Just over a year later, on April 25, 2015, 19 people were killed in an avalanche at Base Camp following apowerful 7.8 earthquake, which killed at least 9,000 people and injured at least 23,000. This is the worst single-day death toll ever in the history of Mount Everest, in modern incidents with accurate counts.
Due to the difficulties and dangers in bringing bodies down, most of those who die on the mountain remain where they fall, although some are moved by winds and ice. Two Nepalese climbers died on October 24, 1984, while trying to recover the body of Hannelore Schmatz. While searching for George Mallory's body in a "catchment basin" near the peak in 1999, searchers came across multiple bodies in the snow, including Mallory's.
2015 with 22 climbers killed (and NOBODY reached the summit)
For the first time in more than 41 years, nobody has successfully reached the summit of Mount Everest.
With the highest death toll recorded since 1975, the 'roof of the world' remained deserted in 2015 following the Himalayan earthquake, which hit Nepal on April 25 and claimed 8,700 lives - 22 of which were climbers killed by an avalanche that struck Everest Base Camp.
Around 170 climbers were evacuated from the south side of the peak due to fears of further avalanches, while Chinese authorities closed the Tibetan side for security reasons.
THE FASTEST ASCENT AND OLDEST CLIMBER: TOWERING EVEREST FACTS
1. In 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay were the first to reach the summit of Mount Everest. To this date, people doubt whether Hillary did reach the summit as although photographic evidence of Norgay at the top was provided – that of Hillary was not.
2. The last year prior to 2015 that no one climbed to the Everest summit was 1974.
3. The mountain is named after George Everest – a retired Surveyor General who never saw the peak
4. In May 1975, Junko Tabei earned the ‘first woman’ title when she reached the top of the 29,035-feet mountain.
5. Doug Scott and Dougal Haston created the first ‘new route’ in September 1975 which was separate to that provided by Hillary and Norgay. The path was dubbed ‘England 1975’ as the duo were the first British nationals to reach the summit.
6. Mount Everest stands at 29,035ft, 10 times the height of the world’s tallest building – Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
7. In 1978, Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler conquered the peak without supplemental oxygen. Messner later repeated and reached the summit alone.
8. The youngest person to reach the summit is Jordan Romero who climbed the peak age 13.
9. In 1980, Leszek Cichy and Krysztof Wielicki became the first to reach the summit in winter. Ignoring the recommended periods to climb, which are between April and June and September and October, the duo tackled the peak in February and battled against temperatures as low as -42 degrees.
10. In 1990, Peter Hillary – Edmund Hillary’s son – climbed to the summit, making them the first father and son duo to both complete it.
11. The oldest person to climb Everest is 80 year-old Yuichiro Miura of Japan.
12. The first two men to snowboard down the peak were the Frenchman Marco Siffredi and Austrian Stefan Gatt in May 2001.
13. In 2004, the fastest time climbed to date was set by Pemba Dorjee Sherpa 12 years ago. He set the time of eight hours and 10 minutes to reach Base Camp – a trek that would usually take climbers at least four days.
14. In May 2005, Didier Delsalle claimed to be the first helicopter pilot to land on the summit of Everest.
15. The temperature at the summit never rises above freezing. It averages at -36 degrees in winter and -19 degrees in summer.
16. The rock at the top of the mountain used to be on the seafloor - 450million years ago.
