Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Conquering Mount Everest (Encore)

Episode Date: February 18, 2024

You are probably well aware that Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth.  Because of its status as the highest point on Earth, it has attracted thousands of people who have climbed to the summit. In the process, it has also killed hundreds of people who died in the attempt. Learn more about the history of trying to climb Mount Everest on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Sponsors BetterHelp Visit BetterHelp.com/everywhere today to get 10% off your first month ButcherBox Sign up today at butcherbox.com/daily and use code daily to choose your free steak for a year and get $20 off."  Subscribe to the podcast!  https://link.chtbl.com/EverythingEverywhere?sid=ShowNotes -------------------------------- Executive Producer: Charles Daniel Associate Producers: Peter Bennett & Cameron Kieffer   Become a supporter on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/everythingeverywhere Update your podcast app at newpodcastapps.com Discord Server: https://discord.gg/UkRUJFh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/everythingeverywhere/ Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/everythingeverywheredaily Twitter: https://twitter.com/everywheretrip Website: https://everything-everywhere.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. You're probably well aware that Mount Everest is the tallest mountain on Earth. Because of its status is the highest point on Earth, it's attracted thousands of people who have climbed to its summit. In the process, it's also killed hundreds of people who died in the attempt. Learn more about the history of trying to climb Mount Everest on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to understand. uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the Thuline podcast from NPR. Mount Everest, the tallest mountain in the world, lies on the border of China and Nepal in the Himalayan mountains. And just to be pedantic, it's only the tallest mountain, depending on how you measure it. It is the highest point above sea level on earth. However, it's not the point on the planet that is furthest from the center of the earth,

or the point that is closest to space. That would be Mount Chimbizoro in Ecuador. And the reason that this is the point furthest from the center has to do with the fact that it's near the equator. The earth bulges just slightly enough to make up for the difference in height between it and Everest. Likewise, if you measure from the base of a mountain to the top, Everest is also not the largest. That would be Monacaea in Hawaii, which has a base that extends to the bottom of the ocean. If you just consider the base to the peak on land, then it's also not Everest. That would be Mount Denali in Alaska. So, that nitpicking aside, for the purpose of this episode, Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world,

coming in at a whopping 8,848.86 meters or 29,0.31.7 feet. It actually took a lot of work to figure out that Everest was in fact the tallest mountain in the world. In 1802, the British began an effort to survey the entire continent of India in what was known as the great trigonometrical survey. It was an extremely difficult project as the surveyors had to battle malaria and monsoons. 28 years after the start of the project, they had finally reached the foothills of the Himalayas. The problem was Nepal, unlike India, wasn't controlled by the British, and Westerners weren't welcome. The project was restarted in 1847, with observations of the Himalayan peaks from outside of Nepal, which could be seen about 200 kilometers in the distance.

From this, it was determined in 1847 that Mount Kanchenjunga was the tallest mountain in the world. However, as more measurements were made, another peak was discovered that was even taller. Using the data from the survey team, in 1852, an Indian mathematician named Rodhan Sikdar was the first person in the world to calculate and determine that the mountain, known at that time as peak 15, was the tallest in the world. He calculated that it was exactly 29,000 feet tall. However, his bosses added two feet to the total just because such a round number would look suspicious. During the survey, the British tried to name Himalayan peaks using local names. However, because they couldn't enter Nepal, they didn't know of any local name for the mountain.

So, the decision was made to name the peak after the Surveyor General of India, Sir George Everest. Today, the mountain is known by several different names in different languages. In Nepali, it's known as Sagar Mata. In Tibetan, it's known as Chomolongma. And in Chinese, it's known as Chumulangma Fung. Once you know what the tallest mountain is, of course, someone's going to try to climb it. There were no attempts to try to climb Mount Everest through the entirety of the 19th century. Mountain climbing was extremely difficult, and technical innovations that would make an attempt possible didn't exist yet.

Moreover, nobody can enter Nepal, so even if someone wanted to make an attempt, it wasn't possible by that route. The real beginning of Everest exploration can be said to have begun with the 1921 British Mount Everest Reconicense Expedition. This was not an attempt to climb Mount Everest. It was really just an opportunity to figure out how close you can get to the mountain, and then once there to figure out what approaches up the mountain might have been possible. The expedition was required because almost next to nothing was known about it outside of Tibet and Nepal. The expedition started from Tibet because Nepal was still closed to outsiders in 1921. They explored the north side of Everest because that was the only one that was available to them. The leader of the expedition was Charles Howard Burry, but the lead climber was a man by the name of George Mallory, who was visiting the Himalayas for the first time.

The 1921 reconnaissance expedition set the stage for the very first attempt to climb Everest in 1920. By this time, both the north and south poles had been explored, and the climbing world's tallest peak had become the last, greatest achievement in exploring the globe. As the British hadn't been first to either pole, they wanted to be the first to what was called the third pole. The first summit was sponsored by the Royal Geographic Society. They planned it for April and May, which would be after winter but before the monsoons arrived. The thing which this attempt did, which had never been done before mountaineering, was used bottled oxygen. When made an Everest attempt so difficult than any other mountaineering effort was the extreme height.

Humans had no real experience at such an altitude. At the time, of the attempt, the flight altitude record was about the same as the height of Mount Everest. There was debate amongst members of the expedition if using oxygen constituted fair means. Eventually, it was decided that above what is known as the Death Zone, which is about 8,000 meters or 26,000 feet, it was simply necessary for survival. This decision was actually based on research done on high altitude aviation during the First World War. The team consisted of 13 British and about 150 Nepalese and Tibetan porters. most of them being used to get supplies to the base camp.

The attempt was on the northern face of Everest, because, again, that was the only option available at the time. The attempt was a failure, and a pretty bad one at that. They managed to make an advanced base camp at about 6,400 meters or 21,000 feet. From there, they made three attempts at the summit. The first was without oxygen, and the second was with oxygen. In both attempts, they set records for the highest altitude ever climbed, but neither attempt was successful. On the third attempt, they caused an avalanche which actually killed seven porters. They were the first, but by no means the last, people to die on Mount Everest.

The next attempt was in 1924. Again, they had to make the attempt on the north face of the mountain, which was in China. In many ways, it was similar to the first attempt in 1922. They made camp at a very high altitude and made three attempts at the summit. The first failed. The second set a new altitude record at 8,570 meters, just 300 meters from the summit. The third attempt was made by George Mallory, the only person on all three of the expeditions to Everest and Andrew Irving. They set out for the summit and never returned. The disappearance of Mallory and Irving became something of a legend in Everest expeditions because no one knows if they reached the summit or not. Their bodies were found on a special expedition to find

the remains in 1999. The camera that they had with him, which could have documented if they had reached the summit was never found. Attempts to reach the summit event. Attempts to reach the summit event Everest didn't go much better after 1924. One guy, a British eccentric by the name of Maurice Wilson, tried to solo Everest in 1934 and died. There was a 1936 British expedition, which was a total failure, and they didn't even reach the heights they did 12 years earlier. There were also failed attempts in 1938 and 1947. Then, however, something happened which changed everything. Nepal opened itself up to the outside world. It turned out the north face of Everest was the hard way to do it. There were expeditions to Nepal for reconnaissance of the South Slope in 1950 and 1951, with the Swiss team making the first attempt on the South Face in 52.

The Swiss attempt was conducted by the mountaineer Raymond Lambert and a local Nepalese by the name of Tenzig Norgay. What many of the expeditions had discovered is that the local Sherpa people who lived in the mountains were really good at extreme altitudes. Instead of just hiring them as porters, the Swiss expedition brought a Sherpa on board as part of a tanning. team to try to make the summit. They broke the 1924 altitude record, but they didn't quite reach the peak. In 1953, all of the pieces finally came together. A British expedition was going to use the route on the south face, work closer with Sherpas, and utilize what they learned from the previous expeditions. This expedition was led by British Army Colonel John Hunt. The plan was similar to the previous attempts, get to a high base camp, and then make three attempts at the summit, with three

different pairs of climbers on three different days. The first team to try to get to the summit was Charles Evans and Tom Bordland. They came within 100 meters of the peak. The second attempt was made by the New Zealander Edmund Hillary and the Sherpa from the 1952 Swiss expedition, Tenzig Norge. They managed to reach the summit at 11.30 a.m. on May 29, 1953. They spent about 15 minutes at the summit taking photos before beginning the descent back down.

News of the accomplishment arrived in London on the morning of June 2nd, just hours before the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. There was debate and controversy for a couple of years about which of the two men actually stood at the summit first. Neither of them ever said anything when news reached the world. However, Norgae eventually confessed in his biography in 1955 that Hillary had been there a few steps before him. Once Everest had been summited, it was then a matter of people doing it with various qualifiers. The next four people to the summit were all Swiss in 1956. In 1960, a Chinese team managed to become the first to reach the summit from the North Face. In 1975, Junco Tabi of Japan became the first woman to reach the summit.

In 1978, Reinhold Messner of Italy and Peter Halber of Austria made the first descent without the use of supplemental oxygen. And that year, Franz Operg of Austria was also the first to reach the summit solo. In 1980, Messner later became the first person to Solo Everest without oxygen. and also that year Polish team became the first to summit in the middle of the winter. Since then, the number of people reaching the summit of Everest has exploded. As of January 2021, 6,014 people have reached the summit of Mount Everest. Kami Rita Shurbka of Nepal has reached the summit a record 25 times.

American Jordan Romero reached the summit at the age of 13 years and 10 months old in 2010, the youngest person ever to do it. In 2013, Uriji Romira of Japan became the oldest person to reach the summit at the age of 80. Many people are complaining that the challenge of climbing one of the world's most difficult summits is now gone. If you're willing to spend enough money, usually between $30,000 and $100,000, you two can take a stab at climbing the world's tallest mountain. There have literally been traffic jams at the top of Mount Everest as people had to wait in line to reach the summit. To date, 309 people have died climbing Mount Everest. which means your odds of dying are about 5%.

It's certainly gotten safer over time, but every year people still die, and many of those bodies are still on the mountain because they're too difficult to return. If you're one of those who wonder why people feel the need to climb Mount Everest, it's probably because the old joke is true. It's because it's there. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiever. I wanted to give a big thanks to everyone who supports the show on Patreon.

your support helps me put out a new show every day. And if you're interested in everything everywhere daily merchandise, Patreon is currently the only place where it's available. And if you'd like to talk to other listeners of the show and get notified to future episodes and projects, please join my Facebook group or Discord server. Links to everything are in the show notes.