How high is Mount Everest?

[Mr Larrington]

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.

[hatler]

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 ?

[hatler]

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.

[Asterix, the former Gaul.]

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.

[Deano]

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

[Wowbagger]

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.

[ian]

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.

[ElyDave]

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.

[Zipperhead]

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.

[hatler]

Ref the Anchorage earthquake thing - https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/quake-shook-geology-alaska-1964

[ElyDave]

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 

[Tim Hall]

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.

[Mr Larrington]

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.

[Gattopardo]

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?

[Basil]

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.

[Gattopardo]

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.

[orienteer]

He was probably got within shouting distance of the moon 

[Gattopardo]

He was probably got within shouting distance of the moon 

POTD

[Lightning Phil]

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!   

[Lightning Phil]

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.

[Lightning Phil]

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.

[Lightning Phil]

Elizabeth Hawley was the authority on Himalayan attempts

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Hawley

[Tim Hall]

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.

[Gattopardo]

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....

[hatler]

The client's body has not been found.