Mt. Everest… have you ever really looked?

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I’m doing research on Mt Everest for a project, and it is totally cool! Have you ever really studied Mt Everest? Well, here are some cool things I dug up…

- By the time you reach the Base Camp (the first camp up the mountain) you are already 17,700ft above sea level! The famous “14teeners” are only 14,000ft above sea level!

- Although the climbers get most of the credit, they wouldn’t be able to do squat if it weren’t for the sherpas. The sherpas are local climbers who go and set up all the ropes and climbs before the climbers get to them! They do this without help and usually the climbers wellfare is based on their set-ups!

- At the altitude of 21,300ft there is a glacier the climbers have to cross. It isn’t the first or last glacier but what makes this one unique is that topography is such that there is no wind and on a clear day the climbers are vulnerable to heatstroke! At 21,300ft above sea level!

- Between Camps III and IV you climb only 500m but the elevation change is 450m! That makes a grade of about 45%. And to add the problem there is two challenges that require ropes and time to get over.

- After Camp IV you are only able to stay at the elevation (26,000ft+) for three days max. Hillary and Tenzing were the first people to set foot on the summit, but they were the second pair to attempt. The pair before them had gone on the first day from Camp IV but had to turn back. After two days of weather delays Hillary and Tenzing attempted and made it. They tried on the very last day they could!

- From Camp IV it takes 10 to 12 hours to reach the summit. At one point you are literally walking on the Earth’s rim. One step to either side send you tumbling down the moutain.

- At 28,740ft there is the “Hillary Step” a 40ft rock wall to climb, the last obstacle before the summit. When Hillary and Tezing did it, they did it without ropes and just primitive ice climbing equipment. Nowadays the sherpas go before the climbers and set up fixed ropes for the climb.

- The expedition that Hillary and Tenzing were a part of, not one person got frostbitten!

-Tenzing was a local sherpa, and although he had never reached the summit it was his seventh time up the moutain!

- There are no pictures of Hillary on top of the world, but there are of Tenzing. When asked about it Hillary said, “Tenzing did not know how to operate the camera and the top of Everest was no place to start teaching him how to use it!” 

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