Screenshot: Universal Pictures
Editor’s Note: Interested in the highest point on Earth? Be sure to watch Everest the movie, out in theaters today, September 18.
There are wonders of this world that invoke a sense of ethereal awe. Mount Everest is atop those awe-inspiring wonders. And what makes the highest point on Earth even more enthralling is how its elevation has affected both environment and inhabitants, as well as the countless climbers who have come through Base Camp in an attempt to summit the mountain. The elevation and its resultant otherworldly backdrop offer a rugged, alien experience as unforgiving as it is awe-inspiring.
The highest point on Earth is currently listed at 29,035 feet above sea level, though it presently grows at four millimeters a year. The height was originally calculated by Indian mathematician Radhanath Sikdar in the mid nineteenth century. He recorded it at 29,002. But that figure was adjusted in 1999 by researchers from the American Millennium Expedition who placed a global positioning satellite device (GPS) below the summit to measure growth. Following these more accurate findings, the official height of the mountain changed to 29,035 feet.
Screenshot: Universal Pictures
Like Denali, Everest was also renamed in honor of an influential person, the man who supposedly discovered that the summit was indeed the highest point on Earth. In 1865, the mountain, originally called Peak XV (15) by non-natives, was renamed for famed British Surveyor General of India George Everest. Then Surveyor General Andrew Waugh proposed his predecessor’s name to the Royal Geographical Society. Why? Because there was no one common name. (And according to a few sources, the Hindi name, Gauri Shankar, was apparently too difficult to pronounce.) But even today, the mountain is called different names by different people. Nepalese refer to the mountain as Sagarmatha, meaning “forehead of the sky” or “goddess of the sky.” Tibetans refer to it as Chomolungma, meaning “goddess mother of the universe” or “goddess mother of mountains.”
Although Everest is the highest point on Earth, it is not the tallest mountain — that honor goes to Mauna Kea in Hawaii. The dormant volcano only reaches 13,796 feet, but extending 20,000 feet below the water’s surface, from base to peak it is 33,465 feet. That is a mile taller than Everest.
However, that doesn’t make Everest any less challenging, as this spring’s tragic Deadliest Day Ever would prove. One of the mountain’s most famous climbers and consummate scribes, Jon Krakauer, carries a heavy and torn heart after the fateful 1996 expedition that is the subject of this year’s big budget take on Everest.
Screenshot: Universal Pictures
“I wish I’d never gone,” the author of Into Thin Air recently told a young, aspiring climber when asked for advice.
“It’s a serious, serious choice,” Krakauer continued. “If you do it, if you go for it, you’ll be making really important decisions where your brain isn’t functioning because of hypoxia or you haven’t had enough to eat. Meru is a much harder mountain to climb, but in some ways Everest is much more dangerous. The dangers are more insidious. They’re not as obvious.”
Screenshot: Universal Pictures
Then why do so many people climb in?
“Because it’s there,” legendary English mountaineer George Mallory, a man who literally left his life on the mountain, once so matter-of-factly stated.
And in the eyes of countless climbers, that is more than reason enough.
Screenshot: Universal Pictures
9 Ridiculous Facts About Mount Everest
1. While Sir Edmund Hillary is recorded as being the first to reach Everest’s peak, his climbing partner, Tenzing Norgay, had already (unsuccessfully) attempted to summit the mountain SIX TIMES. And the duo’s pull to the mountain seems to be hereditary. Both of their sons have gone on to climb the mountain, with Hillary and his son doing it together, becoming the first father-son team to do so.
2. Don’t like the cold? Then don’t climb Everest. Temperatures drop to 60 BELOW. And that’s Celsius.
3. The avalanches and ice fields/falls and general extremes aside, the wind proves to be a major obstacle reaching 200 miles per hour. 200 MILES PER HOUR.
Screenshot: Universal Pictures
4. When you summit, the atmospheric pressure is so great that you are breathing a mere third of the oxygen you you breathe at otherwise “normal” elevations. Gives a whole new meaning to “out of breath.”
5. 1 in 10 summits results in death. And more than 250 people had died climbing the mountain. In fact, the past two years has seen two separate Deadliest Day Evers.
6. Climbing Everest is a workout for sure, a workout to the tune of 10,000 calories a day, up to 20,000 the day you summit. Those mountain climbers that your trainer makes you do are nothing.
Screenshot: Universal Pictures
7. A 1976 study claimed that after thousands of years living in one of the world’s highest regions, Sherpas had experienced genetic adaptations. Awesome.
8. Frenchman Jean-Marc Boivin is down in history as the fastest descent at 11 minutes back in 1988. How did he do it? By paragliding down. The fastest ascent? Australian Christian Stangl reaching the summit from Camp III (without oxygen) at 16 hours and 42 minutes back in 2006.
9. Want to feel good about yourself (and by good we mean bad)? Japanese Yuichiro Miura is the oldest person to climb Everest, doing so at age 80. And this wasn’t the first time he climbed the mountain. He previously had done so at ages 70 and 75 — after heart surgery no less.
Screenshots are from Everest the movie, out in theaters today, September 18.
Sources:
Sixty Fascinating Everest Facts
Conquering Everest: 60 facts about the world’s tallest mountain
