Mount Everest is the highest mountain on Earth above sea level, standing 29,031.69 ft (8,848.86 m) on the border between Nepal and China. It rises in the Mahalangur subrange of the Himalayas, the chain pushed up by the ongoing collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates. Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa from Nepal, became the first confirmed climbers to reach the summit at 11:30 a.m. on May 29, 1953, on the British expedition led by Colonel John Hunt. As of the end of 2024 the mountain had been summited more than 12,000 times by individual climbers and had taken the lives of more than 340 people.
Why Mount Everest is so hard to climb
Mount Everest is dangerous for 3 reasons that compound each other.
The first is air pressure. The summit sits in an atmospheric pressure of roughly 309 to 343 hectopascals, about a third of sea level. Because the fraction of oxygen in air stays constant at 21 percent regardless of altitude, that pressure cut means each breath delivers about a third as much oxygen as the same breath at the beach. A sea-level dweller transported to the summit without acclimatization would lose consciousness in 2 to 3 minutes. The ‘death zone’ (the slopes above 26,247 ft / 8,000 m) is named for the fact that the human body deteriorates faster than it can recover above this altitude, even with bottled oxygen.
The second is weather. The jet stream sits over Everest most of the year, and summit winds routinely exceed 100 mph (160 km/h) and can reach 200 mph (320 km/h) in winter. The mountain only becomes climbable in narrow weather windows: the main pre-monsoon window in late April and May, and a smaller post-monsoon window in late September and October. The 1996 storm that killed 8 climbers (including Adventure Consultants founder Rob Hall and Mountain Madness founder Scott Fischer) was an unforecast deterioration of one such window.
The third is glacial and rock hazard. The Khumbu Icefall, the lower section of the Khumbu Glacier just above Base Camp, advances down the mountain at about 0.9 to 1.2 m (3 to 4 ft) per day, breaking into car-sized seracs that lean and collapse without warning. The 2014 ice avalanche, the worst single-day disaster in Everest history at the time, killed 16 Sherpa climbers in the Khumbu Icefall on April 18 of that year. The 2015 Gorkha earthquake triggered a separate avalanche off Pumori that struck Base Camp and killed at least 19 people.
Key Mount Everest facts
- Height. 29,031.69 ft (8,848.86 m) above sea level, set by the 2020 joint Nepal-China survey announced December 8, 2020. The previous standard figure was 8,848 m. Geodetic measurements suggest the mountain is rising about 4 mm per year as the Indian Plate continues pushing into Eurasia.
- Location. On the border of Khumbu, Nepal and Tibet (China), in the Mahalangur Himal subrange of the Himalayas. The Nepali side falls within Sagarmatha National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
- Names. Mount Everest (English, named for Sir George Everest by the Royal Geographical Society in 1865), Sagarmatha (Nepali, ‘Goddess of the Sky’), and Chomolungma (Tibetan, ‘Goddess Mother of the World’).
- First confirmed ascent. Edmund Hillary (New Zealand) and Tenzing Norgay (Sherpa, Nepal/India), May 29, 1953, on the British expedition led by Colonel John Hunt. South Col route. The news broke on June 2, the morning of Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation.
- First ascent without supplemental oxygen. Reinhold Messner (Italy) and Peter Habeler (Austria), May 8, 1978. Messner returned in August 1980 to make the first solo ascent, again without bottled oxygen.
- First woman to summit. Junko Tabei (Japan), May 16, 1975, on the Japanese Women’s Everest Expedition.
- First American to summit. Jim Whittaker, May 1, 1963, with Sherpa Nawang Gombu, on the American Mount Everest Expedition led by Norman Dyhrenfurth.
- Most ascents. Kami Rita Sherpa of Nepal, 31 summits, most recent on May 27, 2025. Pasang Dawa Sherpa is second with 29.
- Youngest summit. Jordan Romero (USA), May 22, 2010, age 13 years 10 months. Climbed from the Tibetan side because Nepal does not permit climbers under 16.
- Oldest summit. Yuichiro Miura (Japan), May 23, 2013, age 80 years 223 days.
- Total deaths. More than 340 since recorded climbing began in 1922, when 7 Sherpas were killed in an avalanche on the North Col during the British reconnaissance.
- Worst single-day disasters. April 18, 2014 ice avalanche in the Khumbu Icefall (16 dead). May 10 to 11, 1996 storm (8 dead). April 25, 2015 avalanche off Pumori onto Base Camp during the Gorkha earthquake (at least 19 dead).
- Summit rock. Ordovician limestone roughly 450 million years old, deposited in a shallow Tethyan Sea long before the Indian-Eurasian collision and uplifted into its current position by tectonic activity. Climbers near the summit can find marine fossils (brachiopods, conodonts, crinoids) in the gray-yellow rock.
- Summit air temperature. Around 0°F (-18°C) in summer; can drop below -76°F (-60°C) in winter.
Common myths about Mount Everest
Myth: Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth. Everest is the highest point above sea level, but Mauna Kea in Hawaii is taller measured base-to-summit. Mauna Kea’s summit stands 4,205 m above sea level, but its base sits 6,000 m below the Pacific surface, for a total of about 10,205 m (33,481 ft). Measured from the center of the Earth, Chimborazo in Ecuador wins because the equator bulges outward; Everest is at about 28 degrees north and sits closer to Earth’s center.
Myth: Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay climbed Everest without oxygen. Hillary and Tenzing both used bottled oxygen above the South Col on May 29, 1953. The first oxygen-free ascent did not occur until May 8, 1978, when Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler proved that the pre-1978 medical consensus (that humans could not survive above 8,500 m without bottled oxygen) was wrong.
Myth: Mallory and Irvine reached the summit in 1924. They may have. Mallory and Irvine disappeared on the Northeast Ridge on June 8 or 9, 1924, having been seen at about 800 vertical feet from the summit through breaks in the cloud. Mallory’s body was found in 1999 at 26,760 ft (8,160 m); Irvine’s partial remains in 2024. The camera that might hold a summit photograph has not been recovered. Whether they reached the top before dying is unresolved.
Myth: Mount Everest is in India. It is on the Nepal-China border. India does not share the mountain. The colonial-era confusion partly comes from the fact that Sir George Everest (after whom the peak was named) was the British Surveyor General of India, and that the surveys were conducted from British India.
Myth: Helicopters can land on the summit. Air density above the South Col is too thin for helicopter rotors to generate the lift needed to land or take off safely with crew and load. The exception is the May 14, 2005 record landing of a specially modified Eurocopter AS350 B3 by pilot Didier Delsalle, who briefly touched down on the summit but did not pick up or unload anything.
Myth: George Everest climbed the mountain that bears his name. Sir George Everest never visited the mountain or attempted to climb it. He opposed having it named after him, on the grounds that local Nepali and Tibetan names should be preferred; the Royal Geographical Society used his name anyway in 1865 over his objection.
Myth: Climbing Everest is mostly a 1-day push to the summit. A guided expedition typically takes about 2 months from arrival in Nepal to departure, with weeks of acclimatization rotations on the lower mountain before the final summit push. The summit-day climb itself is usually a single 12 to 18 hour effort from the South Col, but the rest of the expedition is a slow climb-and-descend pattern designed to acclimatize the body to thin air.
Frequently asked questions about Mount Everest
How many people have summited Mount Everest, and how many have died?
By the end of the 2024 climbing season, Everest had been summited by more than 7,000 distinct individuals across more than 12,000 successful summits (some climbers, especially Sherpa guides, summit repeatedly). The cumulative confirmed death toll exceeds 340. About a quarter of recorded fatalities occurred on a single bad day (April 18, 2014, in the Khumbu Icefall). The general death rate among climbers attempting to summit on the modern, commercial South Col route is roughly 1 percent. The worst recent year was 2023, with 18 deaths or disappearances; 2024 saw a sharp drop to 8 to 9, partly attributed to better permit screening.
Why does Everest grow taller every year, and by how much?
The Indian tectonic plate is still moving north into Eurasia at roughly 5 cm (2 in) per year. The collision crumples and uplifts the rocks of the Himalayas; geodetic measurements indicate Everest itself rises by about 4 mm per year, with erosion partly canceling the uplift. Major earthquakes can reset the value: the 2015 Gorkha earthquake measurably shifted the position of GPS markers on the mountain, although the change in height was less than a few centimeters. The original sea-floor rocks at the summit are now roughly 9 km above the elevation at which they formed about 450 million years ago.
What is the cheapest legal way to climb Everest?
There is no cheap legal way. The Nepalese government’s permit fee is set at $11,000 per climber for the standard pre-monsoon season, and that is the smallest line item on the budget. A fully guided commercial expedition with a Western operator costs $40,000 to $100,000 or more, including Sherpa support, oxygen, medical, and rescue insurance. Lower-cost Nepali-led operations have driven prices down at the entry level but raised concerns about training and emergency capacity. The Tibetan side requires permits issued through the Chinese government and is intermittently closed to foreign climbers.
Why are bodies left on the mountain?
The death zone is too high and too unstable for routine recovery. Most bodies sit at altitudes where helicopter rescue cannot operate (above the South Col on the Nepal side), and a recovery team would need to spend hours in the death zone to handle and lower the body, multiplying the rescuers’ own risk. A documented retrieval can cost $30,000 to $80,000, and the expedition is itself dangerous; several rescuers have died trying. As a result, more than 200 bodies are believed to remain on the mountain. A stretch of the Northeast Ridge is informally known as ‘Rainbow Valley’ for the colorful jackets visible on long-dead climbers.
Who is Kami Rita Sherpa, and why does the Sherpa community dominate Everest?
Kami Rita Sherpa, 55, was born in Thame in the Khumbu region of Nepal and first summited Everest in May 1994. He has summited Everest 31 times as of May 27, 2025, more than any other climber in history. The Sherpa population of Nepal is roughly 250,000 nationwide, with only a few thousand living in the Khumbu region itself; the community has produced more high-altitude guides, route-fixers, and load-carriers than any other ethnic group on Earth. Sherpas are not biologically immune to altitude (no human is), but they have lived for generations at altitudes of 10,000 to 14,000 ft, which gives most adult Sherpas a baseline acclimatization that lowland climbers reach only after weeks of rotations. Their economic role on the mountain is enormous: most commercial summit successes depend directly on Sherpa labor.
Source notes
The 2020 height figure comes from the joint Nepal-China announcement reported by Al Jazeera. The 1953 first-ascent details come from Wikipedia’s 1953 British Mount Everest expedition entry. The Messner-Habeler oxygen-free ascent and Messner’s solo are documented at Reinhold Messner - Wikipedia. The first-woman, first-American, youngest, oldest, and most-summits records are at Junko Tabei, Jim Whittaker, Jordan Romero, Yuichiro Miura, and the NPR story on Kami Rita’s 31st summit. The cumulative-death figures and incident summaries are at the Wikipedia list of Everest deaths, the 1996 disaster, the 2014 ice avalanche, and the April 2015 Nepal earthquake entries. The summit-rock geology comes from the IUGS entry. The growth rate and tectonic context come from National Geographic.
You can test these facts on the Mount Everest trivia quiz, a 10-question true-or-bluff round at the Sharp reading level.
