Challenging Everest
Several attempts to challenge Everest had failed before it was finally conquered in 1953.[5] The most famous of the previous challengers was the British adventurer George Mallory, who disappeared with his climbing partner Andrew Irvine, somewhere high on the northeast ridge during the first ascent of the mountain in June, 1924. The pair's last known sighting was only a few hundred meters from the summit. Mallory's ultimate fate was unknown for 75 years, until 1999 when his body was finally discovered.
In 1951, a British expedition led by Eric Shipton and including Edmund Hillary, traveled into Nepal to survey a new route via the southern face. Taking their cue from the British, in 1952 a Swiss expedition attempted to climb via the southern face, but the assault team of Raymond Lambert and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay turned back 600 feet short of the summit. The Swiss attempted another expedition in the autumn of 1952; this time a team including Lambert and Tenzing turned back at an earlier stage in the climb.
In 1953, a ninth British expedition, led by Baron of Llanfair Waterdine, 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 a.m. local time on May 29, 1953 by the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa 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. 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, Hillary and Hunt discovered that they had been promptly knighted for their efforts.
Naming
The ancient Sanskrit names for the mountain are Devgiri for "Holy Mountain," and Devadurga. The Tibetan name is Chomolungma or Qomolangma, meaning "Mother of the Universe," and the related Chinese name is Zhumùlangma Feng or Shèngmu Feng.
In 1865, the mountain was given its English name by Andrew Scott 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 Everest, first using the spelling "Mont Everest," and then "Mount Everest." However, the modern pronunciation of Everest is in fact different from Sir George's own pronunciation of his surname.
In the early 1960s, the Nepalese government realized that Mount Everest had no Nepalese name. This was because the mountain was not known and named in ethnic Nepal, that is, the Kathmandu valley and surrounding areas. The government set out to find a name for the mountain since the Sherpa/Tibetan name Chomolangma was not acceptable, as it would have been against the idea of unification, or Nepalization, of the country. The name Sagarmatha in Sanskrit for "Head of the Sky" was thus invented by Baburam Acharya.
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 name preceded the English one, as Mount Qomolangma was marked on a Chinese map more than 280 years ago.
Measurement
Aerial view of Mount Everest.
Attempts to measure Everest have yielded results ranging from 29,000 to 29,035 feet. Radhanath Sikdar, an Indian mathematician and surveyor, 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 150 miles (240 kilometers) away in 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.
The mountain was found to be 29,028 feet (8,848 meters) high, although there is some variation in the measurements. The mountain K2 comes in second at 28,251 feet (8,611 meters) 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' complicated measurement and calculation, on October 9, 2005, the PRC's State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping officially announced the height of Everest as 29,017.16 ± 0.69 feet (8,844.43 ± 0.21 meters). They claimed it was the most accurate measurement to date. But this new height is based on the actual highest point of rock and not on the snow and ice that sits on top of that rock on the summit. So, in keeping with the practice used on Mont Blanc and Khan Tangiri Shyngy, it is not shown here.
Another aerial view of Mount Everest.
In May 1999, an American Everest Expedition, directed by Bradford Washburn, anchored a GPS unit into the highest bedrock. A rock-head elevation of 29,035 feet (8,850 meters), and a snow/ice elevation 3 ft (i meter) higher, were obtained via this device. Nepal, however, did not officially recognize this survey, and the discrepancy with the above mentioned 2005 Chinese survey is significantly greater than the surveys' claimed accuracy. Meanwhile, it is thought that the plate tectonics of the area are adding to the height and moving the summit north-eastwards.
Everest is the mountain whose summit attains the greatest distance above sea level. Two other mountains are sometimes claimed as alternative "tallest mountains on Earth." Mauna Kea in Hawaii is tallest when measured from its base; it rises about 6.3 miles (over 10,203 meters) when measured from its base on the mid-Pacific ocean floor, but only attains 13,796 feet (4,205 meters) above sea level. The summit of Chimborazo, a volcano in Ecuador is 7,113 feet (2,168 meters) farther from the Earth's center than that of Everest, because the Earth bulges at the Equator. However, Chimborazo attains a height of 20,561 feet (6,267 meters), and by this criterion it is not even the highest peak of the Andes mountains.
The deepest spot in the ocean is deeper than Everest is high: the Challenger Deep, located in the Mariana Trench, is so deep that if Everest were to be placed into it there would be more than 1.25 miles (2 kilometers) of water covering it.
Additionally, the Mount Everest region, and the Himalaya mountains in general, are thought to be experiencing ice-melt due to global warming. In a warming study, the exceptionally heavy southwest summer monsoon of 2005 is consistent with continued warming and augmented convective uplift on the Tibetan plateau to the north.
Climbing Everest
Southern and northern climbing routes as seen from the International Space Station.
Death zone
A death zone is typically any area classified as higher than 24,000 feet, and while all death zones deserve their moniker, Everest's is particularly brutal. Temperatures can dip to very low levels, resulting in frostbite of any body part exposed to the air. Because temperatures are so low, snow is well-frozen in certain areas and death by slipping and falling can also occur. High winds at these altitudes on Everest are also a potential threat to climbers. The atmospheric pressure at the top of Everest is about a third of sea level pressure, meaning there is about a third as much oxygen available to breathe as at sea level.
As of the end of the 2004 climbing season, 2,238 people had reached the summit (1,148 of them since 1998) and 186 people died in the attempt. The conditions on the mountain are so difficult that most of the corpses have been left where they fell; some of them are easily visible from the standard climbing routes.
Climbing routes
Mt. Everest has two main climbing routes, the southeast ridge from Nepal and the northeast ridge from Tibet, as well as other less frequently climbed routes. 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 recognized 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 of Italy summited the mountain solo for the first time, without supplementary oxygen or support, on the more difficult Northwest route via the North Col, a high mountain pass, to the North Face and the Great Couloir, on August 20, 1980. He climbed for three days entirely alone from his base camp at 19,500 feet (6500 meters). This route has been noted as the eighth climbing route to the summit.
Most attempts are made during April and 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 make climbing more difficult.
