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Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, is on the Tibet and Nepal border in Asia.
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Mount Everest: Highest Mountain in the World

From Stewart Green,
Your Guide to Climbing.
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Fast Facts About Mount Everest

Elevation: 29,035 feet (8,850 meters)
Location: Nepal/Tibet, Asia
First Ascent: Sir Edmund Hillary (New Zealand) and Tenzing Norgay (Nepal), May 29, 1953

Fast Facts

  • Mount Evererst is also called Chomolangma, meaning “Goddess Mother of Snows” in Tibetan and Sagarmatha, meaning ‘Mother of the Universe’ in Nepalese.
  • British surveyors named the peak for George Everest (properly pronounced “I-ver-ist”) a Surveyor General of India in the mid-nineteenth century.
  • Everest's current elevation is based on a GPS device implanted on the highest rock point under ice and snow in 1999 by an American expedition.
  • Mount Everest was once surveyed at exactly 29,000 feet but the surveyors didn't think people would believe that so they added two feet to its elevation, making it 29,002 feet.
  • Mount Everest is rising from 3 to 6 millimeters a year.
  • The best time to climb Everest is in early May before the monsoon season.
  • The Southeast Ridge from Nepal and the Northeast Ridge from Tibet are the usual climbing routes.
  • In 1978 Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler were the first to climb Mount Everest without supplemental oxygen. In 1980 Messner made the first solo ascent.
  • Over 150 bodies of dead climbers are on the peak.
  • A jumping spider lives up to 22,000 feet on Everest.
  • A helicopter piloted by a Frenchman supposedly made a hover landing on the summit in 2005.
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