Mount Everest

Mount Everest, at 8,848.86 metres (29,031.7 feet), is the highest mountain on Earth and the most famous peak in Nepal. Known in Nepali as Sagarmatha, it rises on the Nepal–China border in the Khumbu region of northeastern Nepal and is the ultimate goal for trekkers and mountaineers alike.

Where is Mount Everest located?

Mount Everest is located on the border between Nepal and China (Tibet), in the Mahalangur Himal section of the Himalaya. The summit sits exactly on the international border, at roughly 27.99° N, 86.93° E. The southern half of the mountain falls within Sagarmatha National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Nepal's Solukhumbu district of Koshi Province (formerly Province No. 1); the northern half lies in the Tibet Autonomous Region of China.

No road reaches the mountain. On the Nepali side, access starts with a flight from Kathmandu to Lukla — the nearest airport, at 2,846 m — followed by a walk up the Khumbu Valley through Namche Bazaar, the region's main town, and on past Tengboche and Gorak Shep towards Base Camp.

Is Everest in Nepal or China?

Neither country owns Everest outright: the frontier runs across the summit itself, an arrangement Nepal and China formalised in their 1961 boundary treaty. The south side belongs to Nepal and the north side to China (Tibet). In practice, Nepal is the mountain's front door — the 1953 first-ascent route, the Everest Base Camp trek and the majority of modern summit attempts are all on the Nepali side, and virtually all trekkers see the mountain from Nepal. The Tibetan north side is reached by road and hosts a smaller number of expeditions.

How tall is Mount Everest?

Mount Everest is 8,848.86 metres (29,031.7 feet) tall — the official height jointly announced by Nepal and China in December 2020, and the first figure both governments have agreed on. It is a genuinely modern measurement: Nepali surveyors carried a GNSS satellite receiver to the summit in May 2019 and combined the reading with trigonometric levelling from the plains, while a Chinese team repeated the exercise in spring 2020 using GNSS and ground-penetrating radar to gauge the depth of the snow cap. The agreed figure measures to the top of the snow and replaced the long-standing 8,848 m from the 1954 Survey of India.

Everest is also the world's most topographically prominent mountain — by definition. Prominence measures how far a summit rises above the lowest contour separating it from anything higher, and since nothing on Earth is higher, Everest's prominence equals its full elevation of 8,848.86 m. The mountain is still growing, too, pushed upward a few millimetres a year as the Indian plate grinds beneath Eurasia. For how it compares with K2, Kangchenjunga and the rest of the 8,000ers, see our guide to the highest mountains in the world.

How big is Mount Everest?

Height is only part of Everest's size. The mountain is a vast three-sided pyramid: the Southwest Face rises above Nepal, the North Face above Tibet and the remote Kangshung Face above the east, separated by the Southeast, Northeast and West ridges. From Everest Base Camp at 5,364 m — itself higher than any point in Western Europe — the summit still rises nearly three and a half vertical kilometres. Together with Lhotse (8,516 m) and Nuptse (7,861 m) it forms a single horseshoe-shaped massif that feeds the Khumbu Glacier, the highest glacier on Earth. Measured above sea level nothing beats it, though pub-quiz fans note that Hawaii's Mauna Kea is taller from base to summit (its base is on the ocean floor) and Chimborazo's peak sits farther from Earth's centre — by the standard that matters to climbers and cartographers, elevation above sea level, Everest is the biggest of them all.

Overview

Everest is the crown of the Himalaya and the centrepiece of the Himalayan peaks of Nepal. Its pyramid summit pierces the jet stream, and it shares its base with neighbouring giants, most notably Lhotse just to the south and Nuptse to the southwest. For the Sherpa people who live in its shadow the peak is deeply sacred — Sagarmatha, roughly "forehead of the sky", in Nepali; Chomolungma, "goddess mother of the world", in Tibetan — and the whole region is steeped in Tibetan Buddhist tradition, from the spinning prayer wheels of small villages to the great monastery at Tengboche. Everest's fame draws tens of thousands of trekkers each year, yet the high mountain itself remains the preserve of a small number of well-supported expeditions.

First ascent and climbing

The first confirmed ascent was made on 29 May 1953 by Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa from Nepal, via the South Col route as part of a British expedition. Their success, announced as Queen Elizabeth II was crowned, made them household names around the world. Everest remains a serious and dangerous undertaking: climbers face extreme altitude, the treacherous Khumbu Icefall with its shifting seracs and crevasses, fierce winds, and a long summit day in the death zone above 8,000 metres where the body slowly fails. Most expeditions use bottled oxygen and rely heavily on Sherpa support, and a guided ascent runs to tens of thousands of US dollars — see our full Everest expedition cost breakdown. Hundreds now reach the top in good seasons, often forming queues on the upper ridges, but fatalities still occur most years.

How to see it

Most visitors experience Everest on foot rather than by climbing. The classic option is the Everest Base Camp trek, which walks through Sherpa country to the base of the mountain over about twelve days; the viewpoint of Kala Patthar at 5,545 metres gives the best close-up summit view, glowing gold at sunrise. For a shorter taste, the Everest View Trek reaches comfortable lodges with panoramas in under a week, and mountain flights from Kathmandu skim the range without any walking — there are more no-hiking options in our guide to seeing Everest without trekking. Lower viewpoints around Namche Bazaar frame the peak alongside Ama Dablam, one of the most beautiful sights on the whole trail.

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