What is the maximum recorded height of Mount Everest above sea level?

Mount Everest’s officially recognized height is 8,848.86 meters above sea level.

Nepal and China announced this jointly surveyed elevation in December 2020. The figure includes the mountain’s snow and ice cap, whose thickness can change, while the underlying rock height is slightly lower. Everest stands in the Himalayas on the border between Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China.

The mountain is known as Sagarmatha in Nepal and Chomolungma in Tibetan. Its English name honors George Everest, the British Surveyor General of India, even though Everest himself did not conduct the mountain’s survey.

Edmund Hillary of New Zealand and Tenzing Norgay, a Sherpa of Nepal, made the first confirmed ascent on 29 May 1953. Climbing Everest remains dangerous because of avalanches, extreme cold, high winds, and oxygen scarcity in the so-called death zone above 8,000 meters.