Where is the highest mountain in
the world?
The world's highest mountain is
Mount Everest, on the Nepal-Tibet frontier in the eastern Himalayas. Mount
Everest was named after Sir George Everest who discovered it in 1856, when he
was surveyor-general of India. At that time its height was estimated by
trigonometry as 29,002 feet, but more recently it has been established as
29,028 feet.
Everest is not only the highest
mountain in the world, but also the most magnificent and inaccessible. It is
swept by icy winds and gripped in a coldness that often drops far below zero.
There are great of glaciers and crevasses, ice-falls and sheer rock faces, and
the rarified atmosphere at its greatest heights defied generations of climbers.
It was not until 1920 that the
Dalai Lama of Tiber was persuade to permit a British climbing party into his
territory. Until then both Nepal and Tibet had forbidden any such intrusion.
Several unsuccessful British
expeditions were made to conquer the mountain and 16 men were lost in the
attempts. In 1951 Eric Shipton made an approach from the south through Nepal.
Before then all the expeditions had made their approach from the north.
Shipton had no intention of
attempting an assault on the summit. His object was to gather information for
future expeditions.
With the help of this information
a British expedition, using light-weight oxygen-breathing apparatus and other
weight-saving equipment, reached the summit in 1953. It was led by Colonel
H.C.J. Hunt, later Lord Hunt.
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