On top of the world: discover what it takes to conquer Mount Everest

Science World, Oct 11, 2004 by Karen de Seve

DID YOU KNOW?

* Everest climbers who fall ill can now get help at a health center located at base camp. Perched 5,364 meters (17,600 feet) above sea level, it's the world's highest medical clinic!

* Climbers leave tons of garbage on Mount Everest. Special cleanup expeditions have bagged broken tent parts, leftover food, and hundreds of oxygen tanks. To keep the mountain in top shape, the cleanup crew even bagged their own feces. They used a chemical "poo-poo" powder to decompose the droppings before hauling them downhill.

CRITICAL THINKING:

* Last May, Pemba Dorjee Sherpa ascended Mount Everest in a record time of 8 hrs and 10 rain. If the mountain summit is approximately 5.5 miles high, what Was this record holder's average speed of ascent? Compare that to the pace of an average person's walking speed: 3.5 mph. (Answer:. 0.67 mph)

CROSS-CURRICULAR CONNECTIONS:

Social Studies Along with ropes and other gear, climbers depend on Sherpas for their survival. Who are these people? Research and then make a list of reasons why a Sherpa is a climber's "lifeline."

RESOURCES

* Grolier search term: Mount Everest

* This site is chock full of information about Mount Everest: www.nationalgeographic.com/everest/

He's not faster than a speeding bullet, or able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. But 26-year-old Pemba Dorjee Sherpa showed superhuman speed last May. That's when he sprinted to the summit of Mount Everest--the highest place on Earth. After 8 hours, 10 minutes of nonstop climbing, he set foot on top of the nearly 8.9 kilometer (5.5 mile)-high peak. Most experienced climbers take about four days to scale the ragged route to the top from base camp, a group of tents permanently pitched at an elevation (height above sea level) 3.5 km (2.2 mi) below the summit. That's after they spend six weeks adjusting to the towering elevation. The previous record holder, Lakpa Gyelu Sherpa, disputes Dorjee's claim of shattering his record by more than two hours, adding to a long history of drama surrounding Everest's imposing slopes.

Mount Everest and its neighboring peaks make up the Himalayas--a mountain range separating Nepal and China. In 1953, the dynamic climbing duo of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first people known to reach the towering summit. They followed a route forged by scores of mountaineers who had tried to reach the summit and failed since the peak was pinpointed in 1852 as the tallest on Earth.

Since Hillary and Norgay's historic feat, more than 1,600 climbers have conquered the king of cliffs from 18 different angles. "Any route is difficult," says Ryan Waters, a mountain-climbing guide who reached Everest's summit this May. "Each route has its pros and cons. The north side has more difficult sections near the summit, but the south side is more technical on the lower mountain," Waters adds. Everest's geology--the composition and movement of the rock layers--determines whether climbers must navigate vertical walls of ice or teeter on towering cliffs of rock. After years of digging into the mountain's rocky past, scientists have revealed how the mountain was made.

BUMPY BEGINNINGS

Mount Everest began taking shape about 50 million years ago when a creeping land mass now known as India collided with what we now call Asia (see diagram, below). The Indian plate--or sliding slab of rock--began to dive beneath Asia. As the plates overlapped, the Indian and Asian continents converged. "The Himalayas [formed] when the northern edge of India crumpled as the plates crashed together," explains Mike Searle, a geologist at England's Oxford University. "India has continued to move north with respect to stable Asia. As long as [India] still moves, it will [continue to] fold and thrust up the Himalayas." In fact, that process raises Mount Everest's summit by about 0.5 to 1 centimeter per year, says Searle.

GOING UP

The most popular route to Everest's top follows the footsteps of pioneers Hillary and Norgay. Starting in Nepal, expedition teams hike to base camp, located at a lofty 5,364 meters (17,600 feet) above sea level. After adjusting to the elevation, the mountaineers embark on the climb of their lives.

Everest's lower slopes are made of cliffs of hard granite. The rock formed when magma (melted rock) rose from deep underground, then cooled and hardened over 20 million years ago, says Searle. Rather than scale these steep cliffs, climbers choose a slightly less menacing obstacle: Khumbu Icefall. This glacier (massive, slowly moving river of ice) is broken into building-size ice blocks that are separated by bottomless crevasses, or deep cracks in the ice. The glacier slides down the mountain at a rate of about 1.2 m (4 ft) per day, and the constant shifting shakes loose the towering chunks. "It's dangerous," says Amy Bullard, a climbing guide who reached the summit this May. "You feel like a mouse in a mousetrap," she says. Climbers cross the gaping crevasses on "bridges" of aluminum ladders lashed together. Bullard braved her way through this icy maze 12 times, moving between camps to train her body for high-elevation climbing.