Location: Solukhumbu District Map
Elevation: 8,848 m (29,029 ft)
Mount Everest or Qomolangma (Holy Mother) is situated in Solukhumbu District of Nepal. Mount Everest is the tallest peak in the World reaching an elevation of 8,848 m (29,029 ft). Several expeditions attempted to conquer the summit starting with George Finch and Captain C. Geoffrey Bruce on 23 May 1922. The first successful ascension happened in May 29, 1953 by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Since then thousands of people tried to repeat the same feat. Some made, other turned back or died trying. The worst accident happened here in 1996 when 16 people died on the slopes of this unforgiving mountain. It became known as a 1996 Mount Everest disaster.
The summit is located in the Himalayas in the
ridge Mahalangur-Himal, along which the border of Nepal and the
Tibet Autonomous Region (China) passes.
Everest has the shape of a trihedral pyramid, the southern slope is
steeper. Snow and firn are not kept on the southern slope and ribs,
as a result of which they are bare. The height of the Northeast
shoulder is 8393 m. The height from the foot to the top is about
3550 m. The summit consists mainly of sedimentary deposits.
From the south, Everest is connected by the South Saddle Pass (7906
m) with Lhotse (8516 m), sometimes called the South Peak. From the
north, the steeply falling sharply sharpened Northern saddle (7020
m) connects Everest with the Northern peak - Changze (7553 m). To
the east, the impenetrable eastern wall of Kangshung (3350 m)
abruptly breaks off. Glaciers flowing from the massif in all
directions, ending at an altitude of about 5000 m.
Chomolungma is partly part of the Sagarmatha National Park (Nepal).
Climate
The average daily temperature at the top of the Jomolungma in July
is about −19 ° C, in January –36 ° C (and can drop to −60 ° C).
Since the height of the peak is almost at the lower boundary of the
high-altitude jet stream, sudden storms with gusts of wind up to 160
km / h are quite characteristic. Precipitation falls in the form of
snow during the summer monsoon, which lasts from late May to
mid-September.
Height measurements
The first to determine that the Chomolungma is the highest peak on
Earth was the Indian mathematician and topographer Radhanat Sikdar.
In 1852, on the basis of trigonometric calculations and compilation
of data obtained as a result of at least six observations, he came
to the conclusion that Peak XV is the highest on Earth, and not
Kanchenjunga, as previously thought. He also calculated the
approximate height of the eight-thousander, which was exactly 29,000
feet (8839 m), to which the head of the British Indian Surveying
Service, Andrew Scott Wo - the successor of George Everest, added a
couple of feet so that Sikdar’s calculations did not look “rounded”.
The results of Sikdar's calculations were officially published in
March 1856.
After 100 years, in 1952-1954, Indian topographers repeated
measurements of the height of the peak, and in 1955, its height was
29028 feet (8848 m) above sea level universally accepted by
geographical science.
In 1975, the Chinese, as a result of their own measurements,
estimated the height of the peak at 29,029.24 feet (8848.11 m), and
Italian surveys of 1987 showed a height of 29,108 feet (8872 m). In
1992, Italians using GPS and laser measurement technology received a
true height of 8846 m (minus the 2-meter height of the snow-ice peak
"cap"). The methodology of all these measurements, however, has been
called into question.
In 1999, an American expedition funded by the National Geographic
Society, using high-precision GPS equipment, determined a peak
height of 29,035 feet (8850 m) +/- 6.5 feet (2 meters). In 2005,
another Chinese expedition determined the height of the rocky level
of the peak as 8844.43 m, Nepal did not agree with the assessment,
insisting on the classical assessment of 8848 m. In 2010, the
parties reached a compromise - the official height of the Jomolungma
is fixed at 8848 m above the level sea, and the height of the hard
rock is 8844 m. The height of the mountain 8850 m was also accepted
as fundamental by many experts in the field of geodesy and
cartography.
After the Nepal earthquake of 2015, according to the non-profit
consortium of geophysical exploration UNAVCO, the height of the
Chomolungma decreased by about 2.54 centimeters (1 inch).