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The
Everest Trek
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General Information About Mount
Everest - World's Tallest Peak
Mount
Everest is the highest mountain in the world. It rises to a height
of about 8850 mt. above sea level. The mountain is in the Himalaya
range, on the frontiers of Tibet and Nepal, north of India.
Surveyors agree that Mount Everest is over 29,000 feet tall, but
disagree on its exact height. A British government survey in the
middle 1800's set the height at 29,002 feet. The 1954 Indian
government survey set the present official height at 29,028 feet.
But a widely used unofficial figure is 29,149 feet. Mount Everest
was named for Sir George Everest (1790-1866), a British
surveyor-general of India.
Mount Everest is just one of over 30 peaks in the Himalayas that
are over 24,000 feet high. Himalaya is a Sanskrit word meaning,
"abode of snow". The snowfields which dominate many of
the peaks in the Himalayas are permanent. Mount Everest is
permanently covered in a layer of ice, topped with snow. The
"top" of the mountain at which the elevation was
measured can vary as much as twenty feet or more, depending on how
much snow has fallen on its peak.
Sir
Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Nepalese
Sherpa tribesman, reached the top on May 29, 1953, the first men
to do so. They were members of a British expedition led by Sir
John Hunt. The expedition left Katmandu, Nepal, on March 10, 1953-
It approached the mountain from its south side-which most earlier
parties had called unclimbable. As the climbers advanced up the
slopes, they set up a series of camps, each with fewer members.
The last camp, one small tent at an altitude Of 27,900 feet, was
established by Hillary and Norgay, who reached the summit alone.
In 1956, a Swiss expedition climbed Mount Everest twice. It also
became the first group to scale Lhotse, the fourth highest peak in
the world and one of the several summits of the Mount Everest
massif.
Tibetans call it Chomolungma, which means Goddess-Mother of the
World. Many climbers have tried to scale Mount Everest since the
British first saw the mountain in the 1850's. Avalanches,
crevasses, and strong winds have combined with extreme steepness
and thin air to make Mount Everest difficult to climb.
Please feel free to peruse the various
"web diary" entries John has made via Satellite Phone
to his cousin and good friend Jim Figlozzi:
John
Rost Trek Diary
Hear
John's Voice
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