It's the most widely known mountain in the world. At 29,035 feet above sea level, Mt. Everest towers over the the Himalayas on the border of Nepal, Tibet and China. The highest temperature at the top of Mount Everest in the middle of July is 0 degrees Fahrenheit. This perfectly illustrates just how bitterly cold it is at the tip of the highest mountain in the world. Temperatures will reach as low as negative 76 degrees Fahrenheit. NEGATIVE. In addition to the biting cold, brave and daring climbers also have to endure the thinning oxygen levels at the extreme altitudes as they scale Everest.
Of the 4,000 different people who have attempted to scale Mt. Everest's terrifying terrain, only 660 have successfully reached its peak and 142 people have died trying. Climbing Everest is on many a person's bucket list, but why? When revered mountain climber, George Mallory was asked why he was going to climb Mt. Everest in 1924, he responded with his famous answer, "Because its there". People want to climb Everest because of the danger, not in spite of it. Climbing Everest is the ultimate challenge. It tests your strength, your endurance, and your will - power. Scaling Everest tests you.
The first person to ever reach the top of Everest was either Sir Edmund Hillary or his climbing partner Tenzing Norgay in the year 1953. Neither will admit who was first. Like many before Hillary, and after for that matter, climbing Mt. Everest was a life - long dream. When he reached the the peak, he wrote: ". . . there was nothing above us but the sky . . we had reached the top of the world." Hillary and Norgay, were, on May 29 1953, looking down on every other person on the Earth. It is the tallest altitude any person can be at without leaving the ground. It's no wonder so many people feel the insatiable need to climb Everest. When standing on Mount Everest's Peak, you are literally on top of the world.
Lexi Kierstead
Sources:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jan/11/uk.thairshaikh
http://www.jitourism.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Mount-Everest.jpg
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/hillary/archive/evefacts.htm
http://ehistory.osu.edu/world/articles/articleview.cfm?AID=11
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