Mount Everest by the Numbers: Deaths, Cost to Climb, and More Mountain Records
The world’s tallest mountain just claimed three more climbers. The Daily Beast on Everest’s key numbers.
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Japanese mountaineer Takao Arayama, 70, in blue, scales Mt. Everest, the world's highest peak, Nepal, Wednesday, May 17, 2006. (Kenji Kondo / AP Photo)
8,848 meters (29,029 feet): Height at the peak.
60 million years: Approximate age of Mount Everest.
$25,000: Cost of a climbing permit per person.
8,000: Height in meters (approximately 26,000 feet) at Mount Everest’s “death zone,” the low-oxygen area above the last camp and before the summit where conditions become increasingly harsh.
1953: The year Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first recorded climbers to reach Everest’s summit.
What it looks like atop Mount Everest.
3: Number of countries visible from the summit (Tibet, India, and Nepal).
6: Number of people who have died on the mountain in 2012.
19: Number of people who died in one year—1996, the deadliest ever on Mount Everest—during a trek chronicled by writer Jon Krakauer in Into Thin Air.
30: Number of minutes before a climber dies after contracting hypothermia on Mount Everest, depending on how fast his or her body temperature drops
40: Record number of people to successfully reach Everest’s summit in one day (May 10, 1993).
200: Approximate number of total climbers who have died on the peak’s treacherous slopes.
4,000: Approximate number of people who have climbed Mount Everest since Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953.
13: Age of Jordan Romero, the youngest climber to reach the summit, in May 2010.
76: Age of the oldest climber to reach the summit, Min Bahadur Sherchan, in May 2008.
21: Record number of successful climbs to the summit by Apa Sherpa.