Yet Another Cycling Forum

Off Topic => The Pub => Topic started by: Wowbagger on 11 September, 2020, 10:22:02 am

Title: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Wowbagger on 11 September, 2020, 10:22:02 am
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/11/mount-everest-nepal-and-china-prepare-to-reveal-new-height-after-covid-delay

When I were a lad, I always believed it to be 29,002 feet in height. That's 8.8398096km. It seems, however, that a 1955 survey suggested 29,029 feet and that this was confirmed in 1975. Now we are awaiting the latest height.

Tectonic plate activity, the entire reason the Himalayas exist, makes the mountains grow constantly. Then, of course, erosion does its job, so the height needs to be re-evaluated on a fairly regular basis. And do you measure from the level of the rock, or the ice & snow?

I heard once on a Youtube lecture by some allegedly eminent geologist that the reason the atmosphere was constantly having its CO2 levels gradually reduced was down to the Himalayan rocks absorbing the gas. As new rocks are exposed, so the CO2 levels drop. Then some vandal started the industrial revolution.

Have any forummers climbed it?
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Beardy on 11 September, 2020, 10:32:57 am
Of equal interest is where do you measure it from? Sea level isn’t very level, nor is it constant and given that Everest isn’t exactly close to any sea, it could be debated which seating should be measured from. If a sea is decided as the datum of course.

I seem to remember there was also some debate in the 70s or 80s that K2 was actually higher, though that could have been a datum argument. I could be misremembering that of course.

ETA: a quick google later and Wikinaccurate tells me K2s claim to being taller than Everest is based on an inaccurate measurement of the same in 1986 which was corrected by an accurate measurement the following year.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: L CC on 11 September, 2020, 10:37:07 am
I believe jem has been to base camp.

https://yacf.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=93200.msg1922242#msg1922242
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Jaded on 11 September, 2020, 10:38:37 am
It will be getting shorter as the sea is rising.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: ElyDave on 11 September, 2020, 11:28:42 am
ISTR reading soenthing around it being measured from space these days using lasers or something, rather than using a very long ruler
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Tim Hall on 11 September, 2020, 11:44:24 am
I think I met someone who climbed it on Wednesday.

(Let's un-pick that. I definitely met some one on Wednesday at a site meeting.  Looking his name upon Teh Intarwebs there's someone of the same name who works in that locality who has climbed Everest. If I had a decent memory for faces I'd be able to say if the person I met was the person on Teh Intarwebs. I don't know which day of the week he climbed it.)
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Salvatore on 11 September, 2020, 11:59:13 am
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/11/mount-everest-nepal-and-china-prepare-to-reveal-new-height-after-covid-delay

When I were a lad, I always believed it to be 29,002 feet in height.

I'm sure I once read that when its height was first calculated (by people with theodolites and then by rooms full of people with log tables and the like) it came out at exactly 29,000 feet. But because that sounded improbable (or gave the impression that it had been calculated to the nearest 1000 ft) they added another couple of feet for added authenticity.

No, I haven't climbed Everest.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Lightning Phil on 11 September, 2020, 12:08:49 pm
I mountain biked to base camp on the Tibetan side in 2001. Base camp is 5,200m and bit. Some of the passes on the way there are higher. Highest I’ve climbed is Baruntse, (Nepalese side) which is 7,200m and in sight of Everest a few miles away. That was 1995. A fellow climber on that trip was aiming to climb Everest but no idea if they succeeded.

As well as theodolites they boiled water to calculate  the altitude of the positions they were measuring from.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Mr Larrington on 11 September, 2020, 12:32:46 pm
8,848 metres.

A few decades back there was a big furore when someone claimed that K2 was actually higher than Everest and many people, including quite a lot of dead ones, wondered whether they’d climbed the wrong mountain.  And the people who were making money out of guiding wealthy idiots up the Yak Route breathed a sigh of relief when the numbers were rechecked and K2 was found to be really titchy after all.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Asterix, the former Gaul. on 11 September, 2020, 12:36:19 pm
According to Zwift I am 19% on my way to the top.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Wowbagger on 11 September, 2020, 01:32:17 pm
A few years ago, I cycled across the Cairngorms in the company of JenM of this parish, and  friend of hers, NOTP. One night, in Tomintoul hostel, we shared a dormitory with a chap who had climbed the Old Man of Hoy. I suspect that that is a much more exclusive club that those who have climbed Everest.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 11 September, 2020, 01:44:46 pm


Pfft. Everyone knows that Chimborazo is the more significant peak... it is after all the highest point from the centre of the earth...

:p

J
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Jaded on 11 September, 2020, 02:07:09 pm
A few years ago, I cycled across the Cairngorms in the company of JenM of this parish, and  friend of hers, NOTP. One night, in Tomintoul hostel, we shared a dormitory with a chap who had climbed the Old Man of Hoy. I suspect that that is a much more exclusive club that those who have climbed Everest.

I know someone who was involved in the first filmed ascent of ToMoH.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: ian on 11 September, 2020, 02:12:31 pm
Honestly, it looks like a grim experience, crowds of mostly rich kids being traipsed up a dangerous mountain by weary locals who need the cash.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 11 September, 2020, 02:48:33 pm
The reason that the highest mountains are mostly in equatorial regions is because snow weight compresses the rocks. So the lower the height of the snow line, the taller the mountain has potential to be. Snow also erodes rock of course. So we can expect some other mountains to get higher with global warming. Maybe.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Wowbagger on 11 September, 2020, 02:53:24 pm
A few years ago, I cycled across the Cairngorms in the company of JenM of this parish, and  friend of hers, NOTP. One night, in Tomintoul hostel, we shared a dormitory with a chap who had climbed the Old Man of Hoy. I suspect that that is a much more exclusive club that those who have climbed Everest.

I know someone who was involved in the first filmed ascent of ToMoH.

...which was probably my favourite bit of television from the 1960s. Wonderful stuff. *Wasn't that the first ascent, not just the first filmed ascent? It's technically very difficult because the rock is so crumbly.

*No, it wasn't. Bonington climbed it a year or two before the filmed climb, and that was the first. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Man_of_Hoy
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: ian on 11 September, 2020, 02:58:02 pm
The reason that the highest mountains are mostly in equatorial regions is because snow weight compresses the rocks. So the lower the height of the snow line, the taller the mountain has potential to be. Snow also erodes rock of course. So we can expect some other mountains to get higher with global warming. Maybe.

The theory of plate tectonics, despite seeming fairly obvious now, was widely disparaged for many years (it was first suggested in 1915), it wasn't until the late 1950s – early 1960s that it started to gain support (with newer seismological imaging techniques).
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 11 September, 2020, 03:04:26 pm
Yes. The snow findings are within the last year or so.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: andytheflyer on 11 September, 2020, 03:09:03 pm
The reason that the highest mountains are mostly in equatorial regions is because snow weight compresses the rocks. So the lower the height of the snow line, the taller the mountain has potential to be. Snow also erodes rock of course. So we can expect some other mountains to get higher with global warming. Maybe.

The theory of plate tectonics, despite seeming fairly obvious now, was widely disparaged for many years (it was first suggested in 1915), it wasn't until the late 1950s – early 1960s that it started to gain support (with newer seismological imaging techniques).
As a geologist (retd) I should know for sure, but I thought that the plate tectonics hypothesis began to be accepted as proven after magnetic mapping of the Atlantic showed up the north/south reversal stripes either side of the mid Atlantic ridge.  Sea floor spreading was the only way to explain these phenomena, and hence the movement of the plates.  This all came to pass only a few years before I went to Uni, and whilst it was accepted by then, it was a bit of a revelation. 

IIRC, the magnetic mapping was a side-effect of wartime activity by the Navy, and carried on after the war.

But since I can't remember what I did last week, my memory could be defective on the subject.  I could look it up, but, I can't remember where.........
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: ian on 11 September, 2020, 03:19:31 pm
I confess, I base my knowledge on a book about the 'controversy' but that was probably decades ago. By the time I was at school it was incontestible so it was interesting that they were still battling it out a few decades before. If I recall, there were still some holdouts well in the 1960s.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Lightning Phil on 11 September, 2020, 03:28:21 pm
A few years ago, I cycled across the Cairngorms in the company of JenM of this parish, and  friend of hers, NOTP. One night, in Tomintoul hostel, we shared a dormitory with a chap who had climbed the Old Man of Hoy. I suspect that that is a much more exclusive club that those who have climbed Everest.

Have you seen this? A blind climber leading all the pitches of Old Man of Hoy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jb7t

P.S. I’ve led the Old Man of Hoy. It’s about E1 / E2 in UK trad grades.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Lightning Phil on 11 September, 2020, 03:31:52 pm
8,848 metres.

A few decades back there was a big furore when someone claimed that K2 was actually higher than Everest and many people, including quite a lot of dead ones, wondered whether they’d climbed the wrong mountain.  And the people who were making money out of guiding wealthy idiots up the Yak Route breathed a sigh of relief when the numbers were rechecked and K2 was found to be really titchy after all.

You have about a 29% chance of dying attempting K2, whilst you have about a 4% chance of dying attempting Everest. K2 isn’t known as the savage mountain for no reason.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Asterix, the former Gaul. on 11 September, 2020, 03:44:15 pm
8,848 metres.

A few decades back there was a big furore when someone claimed that K2 was actually higher than Everest and many people, including quite a lot of dead ones, wondered whether they’d climbed the wrong mountain.  And the people who were making money out of guiding wealthy idiots up the Yak Route breathed a sigh of relief when the numbers were rechecked and K2 was found to be really titchy after all.

You have about a 29% chance of dying attempting K2, whilst you have about a 4% chance of dying attempting Everest. K2 isn’t known as the savage mountain for no reason.

I'd imagine you are more likely to catch covid 19 on Everest.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: The Family Cyclist on 11 September, 2020, 03:54:17 pm
I seem to remember reading about a mountain probably 20 or so years ago which at one point had a 50% fatality rate for summit attempts but the guy was planning a different and hopefully safer route. Possibly called anapunia and translated as the Harvest Mountain.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 11 September, 2020, 03:59:41 pm
Annapurna?
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Mr Larrington on 11 September, 2020, 06:22:31 pm
8,848 metres.

A few decades back there was a big furore when someone claimed that K2 was actually higher than Everest and many people, including quite a lot of dead ones, wondered whether they’d climbed the wrong mountain.  And the people who were making money out of guiding wealthy idiots up the Yak Route breathed a sigh of relief when the numbers were rechecked and K2 was found to be really titchy after all.

You have about a 29% chance of dying attempting K2, whilst you have about a 4% chance of dying attempting Everest. K2 isn’t known as the savage mountain for no reason.

Plus it's a lot harder to get to the foot of and there’s no handy supply of Sherpas to carry the champers and tinned quail.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: hatler on 11 September, 2020, 06:31:13 pm
Wasn't plate tectonics sorted when a dedicated geologist did a bunch of work immediately after the Anchorage earthquake measuring movements up and down of various bits of the coast ?
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: hatler on 11 September, 2020, 06:32:12 pm
And, in tenuous claims to fame, I have a mate who has guided up Everest twice, and nearly had his nuts sued off following the disappearance of a client in one of his company's (but not his group) groups.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Asterix, the former Gaul. on 11 September, 2020, 06:57:43 pm
I thought the 2015 film about Everest was very good indeed.  Said a lot about climbing it.  It was called 'Everest, surprisingly'.  Great helicopter action, too.

Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Deano on 11 September, 2020, 07:03:41 pm
I seem to remember reading about a mountain probably 20 or so years ago which at one point had a 50% fatality rate for summit attempts but the guy was planning a different and hopefully safer route. Possibly called anapunia and translated as the Harvest Mountain.

Annapurna One, AKA Annapurna-Where-Death-Waits*

*Lie
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Wowbagger on 11 September, 2020, 07:11:12 pm
A few years ago, I cycled across the Cairngorms in the company of JenM of this parish, and  friend of hers, NOTP. One night, in Tomintoul hostel, we shared a dormitory with a chap who had climbed the Old Man of Hoy. I suspect that that is a much more exclusive club that those who have climbed Everest.

Have you seen this? A blind climber leading all the pitches of Old Man of Hoy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jb7t

P.S. I’ve led the Old Man of Hoy. It’s about E1 / E2 in UK trad grades.

I haven't. I think I know what I will be doing this evening. Thanks...

I ought perhaps to add that the dormitory was for 6 people in 3 bunks. Jen and Gill had decreed that they would each occupy a lower bunk at one end of the dormitory, whilst the chaps would occupy the same bunk at the other end. T'other chap had arrived before us and placed himself in the bottom bunk. He was much younger and fitter than I am (quite a large subset of humanity) so I persuaded him to move to the top bunk, particularly after I heard about his mountaineering prowess.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: ian on 11 September, 2020, 07:23:01 pm
I have it on good authority from the top of my garden that each and every night the local yeti jump up and down on the top of the mountain. Over and over. Until Everest is that little bit shorter.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: ElyDave on 11 September, 2020, 08:00:47 pm
The reason that the highest mountains are mostly in equatorial regions is because snow weight compresses the rocks. So the lower the height of the snow line, the taller the mountain has potential to be. Snow also erodes rock of course. So we can expect some other mountains to get higher with global warming. Maybe.

The theory of plate tectonics, despite seeming fairly obvious now, was widely disparaged for many years (it was first suggested in 1915), it wasn't until the late 1950s – early 1960s that it started to gain support (with newer seismological imaging techniques).
As a geologist (retd) I should know for sure, but I thought that the plate tectonics hypothesis began to be accepted as proven after magnetic mapping of the Atlantic showed up the north/south reversal stripes either side of the mid Atlantic ridge.  Sea floor spreading was the only way to explain these phenomena, and hence the movement of the plates.  This all came to pass only a few years before I went to Uni, and whilst it was accepted by then, it was a bit of a revelation. 

IIRC, the magnetic mapping was a side-effect of wartime activity by the Navy, and carried on after the war.

But since I can't remember what I did last week, my memory could be defective on the subject.  I could look it up, but, I can't remember where.........

I understood it was based on observations of movement of plates observed directly after an earthquake up in Alaska in the mid 60s, (from a documentary I watched some time ago)  but like most of these things it's probably a weight of various bits of evidence combined.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Zipperhead on 11 September, 2020, 08:06:13 pm
8,848 metres.

A few decades back there was a big furore when someone claimed that K2 was actually higher than Everest and many people, including quite a lot of dead ones, wondered whether they’d climbed the wrong mountain.  And the people who were making money out of guiding wealthy idiots up the Yak Route breathed a sigh of relief when the numbers were rechecked and K2 was found to be really titchy after all.

I think it was in the article that Wowbagger linked, which I read this morning, that gave the height that the victorians measured when they surveyed it in 1856 - and it's 4m different to the current measurement.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: hatler on 11 September, 2020, 08:20:04 pm
Ref the Anchorage earthquake thing - https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/quake-shook-geology-alaska-1964
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: ElyDave on 11 September, 2020, 10:41:21 pm
Ref the Anchorage earthquake thing - https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/quake-shook-geology-alaska-1964

Yes that's the one, about half way down, Hanning Bay - I think it was a bbc documentary I saw  :thumbsup:
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Tim Hall on 12 September, 2020, 12:11:05 am
I once went to a lecture by Sir John Hunt at the Royal Geographic Society. He hasn't climbed Everest, but knew people who did.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Mr Larrington on 12 September, 2020, 12:54:26 am
We met some jolly climbing types of FOREIGN mien on Hoy in 2018, who were clearly intent on knocking off the Old Man in an afternoon. Miss von Brandenburg blagged some tape off them to rebuild her rapidly disintegrating boots.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Gattopardo on 12 September, 2020, 02:37:15 pm
Honestly, it looks like a grim experience, crowds of mostly rich kids being traipsed up a dangerous mountain by weary locals who need the cash.

Yeah the queue to get to the top can be a real pain.

Also Brain Blessed has been to the top of Everest, I have seen the film Flash Gordon staring Brain Blessed. Tenuous enough?
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Basil on 12 September, 2020, 02:45:34 pm
Honestly, it looks like a grim experience, crowds of mostly rich kids being traipsed up a dangerous mountain by weary locals who need the cash.

Yeah the queue to get to the top can be a real pain.

Also Brain Blessed has been to the top of Everest, I have seen the film Flash Gordon staring Brain Blessed. Tenuous enough?

I don't think Brian Blessed actually summited.
I could be wrong.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Gattopardo on 12 September, 2020, 02:52:48 pm
Google and wiki says you are right.  He tried the climb, without supplemental oxygen, three times and failed.

So much for Blessed story of standing on Everests summit and reaching out to the moon.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: orienteer on 12 September, 2020, 03:15:08 pm
He was probably got within shouting distance of the moon  :)
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Gattopardo on 12 September, 2020, 06:10:02 pm
He was probably got within shouting distance of the moon  :)

POTD ;)
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Lightning Phil on 12 September, 2020, 06:24:20 pm
8,848 metres.

A few decades back there was a big furore when someone claimed that K2 was actually higher than Everest and many people, including quite a lot of dead ones, wondered whether they’d climbed the wrong mountain.  And the people who were making money out of guiding wealthy idiots up the Yak Route breathed a sigh of relief when the numbers were rechecked and K2 was found to be really titchy after all.

You have about a 29% chance of dying attempting K2, whilst you have about a 4% chance of dying attempting Everest. K2 isn’t known as the savage mountain for no reason.

I'd imagine you are more likely to catch covid 19 on Everest.

With all the oxygen masks and thick insulated gloves and clothing, probably not!   
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Lightning Phil on 12 September, 2020, 06:27:53 pm
I once went to a lecture by Sir John Hunt at the Royal Geographic Society. He hasn't climbed Everest, but knew people who did.

He led the successful 1953 Everest Expedition. So knew a bit more about it then just knowing a few who did.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Lightning Phil on 12 September, 2020, 06:34:02 pm
Honestly, it looks like a grim experience, crowds of mostly rich kids being traipsed up a dangerous mountain by weary locals who need the cash.

Yeah the queue to get to the top can be a real pain.

Also Brain Blessed has been to the top of Everest, I have seen the film Flash Gordon staring Brain Blessed. Tenuous enough?

I don't think Brian Blessed actually summited.
I could be wrong.

He didn’t summit but he did try three times getting as high as 8,200m on one attempt.  His other attempts ended at or around the South Col.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Lightning Phil on 12 September, 2020, 06:38:55 pm
Elizabeth Hawley was the authority on Himalayan attempts

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Hawley
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Tim Hall on 12 September, 2020, 06:43:47 pm
I once went to a lecture by Sir John Hunt at the Royal Geographic Society. He hasn't climbed Everest, but knew people who did.

He led the successful 1953 Everest Expedition. So knew a bit more about it then just knowing a few who did.
That was sort of my point.
It was a charity lecture at the end of which a signed copy of his book was auctioned. The bidding was in feet, at an exchange rate of so many pounds per hundred feet. I very nearly bid 29000 feet from the outset, but was unsure of my arithmetic and couldn't afford to be a factor of ten out, so bottled it.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Gattopardo on 12 September, 2020, 10:39:36 pm
And, in tenuous claims to fame, I have a mate who has guided up Everest twice, and nearly had his nuts sued off following the disappearance of a client in one of his company's (but not his group) groups.

Thought it was a bit hard to disappear....
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: hatler on 13 September, 2020, 05:03:29 pm
The client's body has not been found.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Asterix, the former Gaul. on 14 September, 2020, 08:15:30 am
How far is it from the top of Everest to the sky?
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 14 September, 2020, 08:52:28 am
Jimi Hendrix was 1.8m tall. When he recorded the line "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" he was in De Lane Lea studio in Soho, London, which seems to be at an altitude of 19m. We can therefore safely assume the sky begins at 20.8m, well below the summit of Mount Everest.

HTH
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Tim Hall on 14 September, 2020, 09:38:23 am
Jimi Hendrix was 1.8m tall. When he recorded the line "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" he was in De Lane Lea studio in Soho, London, which seems to be at an altitude of 19m. We can therefore safely assume the sky begins at 20.8m, well below the summit of Mount Everest.

HTH
We need more data points. Valentina Tereshkova, first woman in space said "Hey sky, take off your hat, I'm on my way" and she was at the pointy end of a big rocket.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: hatler on 14 September, 2020, 09:46:32 am
Jimi Hendrix was 1.8m tall. When he recorded the line "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" he was in De Lane Lea studio in Soho, London, which seems to be at an altitude of 19m. We can therefore safely assume the sky begins at 20.8m, well below the summit of Mount Everest.

HTH
We need more data points. Valentina Tereshkova, first woman in space said "Hey sky, take off your hat, I'm on my way" and she was at the pointy end of a big rocket.
Clearly this belongs in the 'Tenuous claims to fame' thread, but I asked VT a question at the Science Museum in 2015 when she was on stage with the director of the SciMu.

"In the USSR, was your flight regarded as a triumph of Science or Engineering ?"
Cue a perfect politician's answer. Ten minutes of waffle that didn't answer the question.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 14 September, 2020, 10:09:38 am
Jimi Hendrix was 1.8m tall. When he recorded the line "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" he was in De Lane Lea studio in Soho, London, which seems to be at an altitude of 19m. We can therefore safely assume the sky begins at 20.8m, well below the summit of Mount Everest.

HTH
We need more data points. Valentina Tereshkova, first woman in space said "Hey sky, take off your hat, I'm on my way" and she was at the pointy end of a big rocket.
It's possible that although Hendrix never left the Earth's atmosphere, he was already in a different sort of orbit.

Jimi Hendrix was 1.8m tall. When he recorded the line "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" he was in De Lane Lea studio in Soho, London, which seems to be at an altitude of 19m. We can therefore safely assume the sky begins at 20.8m, well below the summit of Mount Everest.

HTH
We need more data points. Valentina Tereshkova, first woman in space said "Hey sky, take off your hat, I'm on my way" and she was at the pointy end of a big rocket.
Clearly this belongs in the 'Tenuous claims to fame' thread, but I asked VT a question at the Science Museum in 2015 when she was on stage with the director of the SciMu.

"In the USSR, was your flight regarded as a triumph of Science or Engineering ?"
Cue a perfect politician's answer. Ten minutes of waffle that didn't answer the question.
Disappointing but I suppose you didn't get to be a cosmonaut (nor a US astronaut back then) without being a little bit of a politician too.

Getting back to the distance from the top of Everest to the sky, I think we're measuring to the end of the sky not the start. Sky is air, atmosphere, so it starts at ground level and fades to nothing at some undetermined altitude a little above Everest.

But then sky is also stars and planets and stuff. It's everywhere. No wonder Jimi kissed it, but I do wonder how it managed to take off its hat.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Mr Larrington on 14 September, 2020, 11:12:16 am
Obviously the sky handed over said hat to the sun, which put it on before coming out to play.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: mrcharly-YHT on 14 September, 2020, 11:49:38 am
Due to tidal loading, Cornwall sinks and rises by up to 15cm twice a day.

The official sea level height datum is in Cornwall, on a plaque fixed to a building.

Ergo, the official heights of anything alters by up to 15cm a day.

https://youtu.be/lCA0II1sVZA (https://youtu.be/lCA0II1sVZA)
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: trekker12 on 14 September, 2020, 03:30:47 pm
I thought the 2015 film about Everest was very good indeed.  Said a lot about climbing it.  It was called 'Everest, surprisingly'.  Great helicopter action, too.

It is a very good film. The 1996 season on Everest is possibly the most documented. There have been other storms and more deaths in a season than that one but that was at the beginning of the tourist guiding experience so the mountaineers up there were generally excellent but it didn't necessarily make them good mountain guides for amateurs.

It was also at the peak (pun) of my interest in climbing, I was in the air cadets then and we regularly bussed to Wales for mountain walking and rock climbing and I soaked it all up. Someday, I was going to climb Everest despite the books I read about that climbing season.

I'm older now and don't want to and don't regret I never did. The tourist climbing has ruined the mountain and it's appeal. I would never have dreamed of going up if I wasn't capable of doing it myself and I wouldn't have tried. Now, as long as you are rich enough and want a good selfie. Off you go, have an adventure. I'm happy walking up my old favourite haunts in Wales - and sometimes Austria but normally I hire skis or ride my bike when I'm there and it's only every three or four years.

I'd like to go to Nepal, I think whilst I'm there I should go to base camp but I don't want to meet those sorts of people and I'm happier dreaming and reading all the books I still have. Perhaps I should go and see a different part of Nepal and see a different mountain and trek higher than I ever have before. I don't intend to ever go above 8,000 metres without using an airliner, I'm not good enough and I can't be bothered with all the ropes and harnesses and paraphenalia than 'climbing' requires over trekking.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Tim Hall on 23 September, 2020, 06:47:44 pm
I think I met someone who climbed it on Wednesday.

(Let's un-pick that. I definitely met some one on Wednesday at a site meeting.  Looking his name upon Teh Intarwebs there's someone of the same name who works in that locality who has climbed Everest. If I had a decent memory for faces I'd be able to say if the person I met was the person on Teh Intarwebs. I don't know which day of the week he climbed it.)
Update: Yes he has. Met him again and asked. Then had to explain why I'd been stalking him on Teh Intarwebs.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: citoyen on 23 September, 2020, 10:02:47 pm
And, in tenuous claims to fame, I have a mate who has guided up Everest twice

My brother’s home was formerly the residence of one C. Bonington.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: JennyB on 24 September, 2020, 10:27:10 am
I vaguely recall an old Bicycling article about the RAAM saying that more people had stood on top of Everest than had cycled across America in less than twenty days.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: quixoticgeek on 02 October, 2020, 12:43:55 pm

Not so high that it doesn't have 5G signal now...

https://adventureblog.net/2020/04/mt-everest-now-has-5g-cellular-coverage.html

J
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 02 October, 2020, 03:13:25 pm
I'm not sure that live feed is actually live.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Lightning Phil on 02 October, 2020, 03:26:48 pm

Not so high that it doesn't have 5G signal now...

https://adventureblog.net/2020/04/mt-everest-now-has-5g-cellular-coverage.html

J

Well that’s not hard is it, it’s only five miles high and they can get direct line of sight. Highest antenna is just 3000m below summit so only 3-4km away.

Plus did you note there is now a live 4k feed and getting better weather than here?
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Jaded on 02 October, 2020, 03:41:48 pm

Not so high that it doesn't have 5G signal now...

https://adventureblog.net/2020/04/mt-everest-now-has-5g-cellular-coverage.html

J

Well, there's no point in injecting people with tracking chips and then not being able to track them.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Lightning Phil on 02 October, 2020, 03:51:58 pm
Here we are, having mtn biked to base camp on north side in July 2001. Highest pass on way there was 5,800m but mostly they were 5,200-5,400m high. Glorious 4000m descent into Nepal, to finish eventually in Kathmandu.

(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/P6pfQyDF3gRoqpveg_UHdFNEACq5fZX43uAVcgDER4flMxz9OMN5O3C6WxvjvqiaqH0i_n6t60XqiKSscmCXn1oibdYbnjkODhqBl5KjWgtINr35DRovYQDp3FJX4-2F0Cproahqow)


(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/XxPAaGI8gU1oIpWrl9n62SiH97N20-smS-Qpwoolhym06ktQ-SHJQDSkiKcrCWvUAbSeO1BZUnICZ-KamTg2FXUmySO7NT3gTrh8m1R0cFZAz4PNvKx1n6PAMoO3mRI7JH8USIB6_Q)
(https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/BKxj7n9xuwpi3xfQ1cNkZQlBz0kqiyyXOseN6ru6lJs7lr0psF4bTrhqoDevHjlQoaWSZAWxTxRIQwatB6v96BllA06CdSnF7SUcJBqys2oVtwVwH6yy92vMYZAoNGzLdFWh64SiLw)

Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: hatler on 02 October, 2020, 04:29:39 pm
Glorious !   A distinct lack of luggage mind.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Cudzoziemiec on 02 October, 2020, 05:09:35 pm
Glorious !   A distinct lack of luggage mind.
Well did you expect him to ride a yak? !!!

Great photos.  :thumbsup:
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Mr Larrington on 02 October, 2020, 06:10:09 pm

Not so high that it doesn't have 5G signal now...

https://adventureblog.net/2020/04/mt-everest-now-has-5g-cellular-coverage.html

J

So now you can get Coronalurgi on the roof of the world.  Yay :thumbsup:
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: Lightning Phil on 02 October, 2020, 06:46:03 pm
Glorious !   A distinct lack of luggage mind.

Correct we required a Chinese escort as part of the visa requirement for those regions of Tibet. So the best way to have an escort (who left you alone) was to cycle and have the escort transport luggage in their 4x4.

I did meet the red army when trying to climb a peak near the China / Tibet border about 6 weeks earlier. But that’s another story (that had a good outcome).

I’d crossed into Tibet from the Chinese side. It’s a major trade route and getting a lift wasn’t a problem.
Title: Re: How high is Mount Everest?
Post by: hatler on 02 October, 2020, 06:53:29 pm
What a fantastic adventure.