Highest mountain on Earth

What to remember

At the summit, the border between Nepal and China runs right across the top. Mount Everest belongs to the Mahalangur Himal, a sub-range of the Himalayas, and its height of 8,849 m makes it the highest point on Earth above sea level. The most recent survey, carried out jointly by Nepalese and Chinese authorities in 2020, measured 8,848.86 m, rounded to 8,849 m.

Europeans first sighted it in 1847, and it took several years of observation and calculation to show that it rose above every other peak. It received its Western name in 1865, after George Everest, Surveyor General of the East Indies from 1830 to 1843. In Nepali it is Sagarmāthā, and in Tibetan Jomolangma.

From the 1920s, climbers turned their attention to its faces. Two main routes lead to the top: the standard route from the southeast in Nepal, and another from the north in China. At least 108 mountains on Earth reach 7,200 m or more, and 14 of them exceed 8,000 m, nearly all in the Himalayas or the Karakoram, on the edge of the Indian and Eurasian plates. By other criteria, such as prominence, Aconcagua, Mount McKinley and Kilimanjaro follow Everest in second, third and fourth place.