Nepal and China jointly announced the new height of Mount Everest as 8,848.86 meters.

8,848 metres — the answer to one of the most widely popular quiz questions, and a number drilled into the minds of school students around the world for decades, is set for a revision.

Mt. Everest

• Mount Everest or Sagarmatha, Earth’s highest mountain above sea level, is located in the Himalayas between China and Nepal -– the border between them running across its summit point.
• Its current official elevation – 8,848.86m – places it more than 200m above the world’s second-highest mountain, K2, which is 8,611m tall and located in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.
• The mountain gets its English name from Sir George Everest, a colonial-era geographer who served as the Surveyor General of India in the mid-19th century.
• Considered an elite climbing destination, Everest was first scaled in 1953 by the Indian-Nepalese Tenzing Norgay and New Zealander Edmund Hillary.

Try this PYQ:

Q.When you travel to the Himalayas, you will see the following:

1. Deep gorges
2. U-turn river courses
3. Parallel mountain ranges
4. Steep gradients causing land-sliding

Which of the above can be said to be the evidences for the Himalayas being young fold mountains?

(a) 1 and 2 only

(b) 1, 2 and 4 only

(c) 3 and 4 only

(d) 1, 2, 3 and 4

Everest’s first survey

• The mission to measure the world’s highest peak was taken up on a serious note in 1847 and culminated with the finding of a team led by Andrew Waugh of the Royal Surveyor General of India.
• The team discovered that ‘Peak 15’ — as Mt Everest was referred to then — was the highest mountain, contrary to the then-prevailing belief that Mt Kanchenjunga (8,582 m) was the highest peak in the world.
• Another belief, prevailing even today, is that 8,840 m is not the height that was actually determined by the 19th-century team.
• That survey, based on trigonometric calculations, is known as the Great Trigonometric Survey of India.

Why is the height being revised?

• The height of the summit, however, is known to change because of tectonic activity, such as the 2015 Nepal earthquake.
• Its measurement over the decades has also depended on who was surveying.
• Another debate is whether the height should be based on the highest rock point or the highest snow point.

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