Mount Everest

Would you like to climb Mount Everest one day, and be an amazing adventurer?

Well read on for facts about this amazing mountain and then decide for yourself!

Interesting Information about Mount Everest

Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world at 8848m. That’s seriously high! Think about it like this! In 2010, Dubai broke the record for both the world’s tallest building and tallest man-made structure of any kind with the Burj Khalifa at 829m high. Everest is more than ten times its height. Wow! The world’s second-highest building, Taipei 101 in Taiwan, which held the record between 2004 and 2010 at 509m, would need to be stacked on top of each other more than 17 times over to reach the peak of Everest.

Where is Mount Everest? Well, it can be found in the Himalayas mountain range on the border of Nepal and Tibet.

The height of Mount Everest was first published in 1856. It was then known as Peak XV. But there is some debate as to how tall it really is!

Sir Edmund Hillary and Nepali Sherpa Tenzing Norgay were the first to successfully get to the summit of Mount Everest In 1953. There has been some debate about who really put a foot on the summit first, although this didn’t bother Sir Edmund Hillary.

There are two main climbing routes that people use. Thousands of people have climbed to the summit, but hundreds have also died, unfortunately. There can be high winds, bad weather, and altitude sickness that await you on your journey up, making it very dangerous. Do you think you could take it?

More recently the number of climbers trying to reach the summit of Mount Everest has gone up hugely. This is actually concerning not only safety but the state of the mountain and there are often lots of litter left around.

The temperature at the summit never goes above freezing, and it’s normally -36⁰C in winter and -19⁰C in summer. That’s seriously cold!

This is quite something! Every year the mountain grows taller by 4mm because of the upward push that comes from two tectonic plates.

The rock at the summit of Everest is marine limestone and was left on the seafloor around 450 million years ago!

Interesting Facts about Mount Everest

The last time that no one climbed to the summit of Everest was in 1974.
The mountain was named after George Everest in 1856. He had never even seen the peak. How weird!
Sir Edmund Hillary’s son, Peter Hillary, climbed the mountain in 1990. This was the first father and son pair to do this.
This is unbelievable. The mountain has actually been skied down in 2000! Davorin Karnicar, a Slovenian, skied nearly 3,700m back to the south-side of Base Camp. That must have been one hectic ski ride!
But it’s not just skiing. The mountain has also had some crazy folks snowboard down it.
In 2005 a man by the name of Didier Delsalle said that he was the first helicopter pilot to land on the summit. He didn’t change anything on the helicopter and he hovered for a while and then made contact with the summit for 2 minutes. Wow, that’s unbelievable.
The youngest person to ever climb Mount Everest was 13, and the oldest was 80. Amazing.
So what is the mountain really called? Well, it has got heaps of names. In Nepal, it’s known as ‘Sagarmatha’, which means ‘forehead of the sky’ and in Tibet, it’s known as ‘Chomolungma’ or ‘mother of the universe.’
Lhakpa Tenzing Sherpa has climbed to the summit 21 times since 1990. He’s a record holder for this, hardly surprising, that is a lot of climbing and danger!
Unbelievably there was a tweet from the summit in 2011 from Kenton Cool. He tweeted, “Everest Summit no 9! 1st tweet from the top of the world thanks to a weak 3G signal.” Gosh, you can even tweet now from way up there!
Google is just everywhere, even on Mount Everest. They mapped it out in 2011 and a whole team of them spent 12 days walking nearly 113km to get some snaps for Google Maps. They didn’t reach the summit, however.
Whoa, 8t of rubbish were collected on the slopes of Everest, even the remains of a helicopter. That’s a lot of rubbish. It took 65 porters, and 75 yaks to get the rubbish down the mountain.
The summit of Mount Everest is just lower than the cruising altitude of a jumbo jet. Most jumbo’s fly between 9,000m and nearly 11,000m.
Even a phone call has taken place on the summit, is the first-ever. But the Nepalese officials weren’t too happy about this and said it was illegal. How strange.
Amazingly there’s even been a wedding on the summit. Imagine how exhausted you would be when you got up there, or you had to climb up in your best suits and dresses!
There’s an unbelievable spider on Mount Everest, which is tiny and called the black jumping spider. They hide away and eat frozen insects that are blown into the area by winds. That must be one tough spider!

Hope you enjoyed our Mount Everest facts! So are you going to be the ultimate adventurer when you grow up?