You'd think we'd have a simple answer by now. It’s the biggest mountain on Earth, after all. But if you ask a geologist, a surveyor from the 1950s, or a modern GPS expert how many feet tall is Mount Everest, you’re actually going to get a few different numbers.
It’s growing. It’s shrinking. It’s shifting.
Most people just want the number for a trivia night or a school project. The "official" number recognized by both Nepal and China is 29,031.69 feet. That’s the height as of the most recent joint measurement in 2020. If you grew up reading older textbooks, you probably remember 29,028 feet. That three-foot difference might not seem like much when you're nearly six miles up in the sky, but in the world of international diplomacy and high-stakes science, it was a massive deal.
Why the Height of Everest Keeps Changing
Geography is messy. We like to think of mountains as these static, permanent monuments, but the Himalayas are basically a construction site. The Indian tectonic plate is constantly shoving itself under the Eurasian plate. This means the mountain is technically being pushed upwards by about 5 to 10 millimeters every year.
So, why isn't it 30,000 feet tall yet?
Erosion. Wind. Gravity. Huge slabs of rock occasionally fall off. Then you have earthquakes. In 2015, a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit Nepal. Geologists actually feared the mountain might have shrunk. Some satellite data suggested the peak dropped by an inch or two because the crust settled. This uncertainty is exactly why the 2020 expedition happened.
Teams from Nepal and China climbed the mountain during a global pandemic—literally while the rest of the world was in lockdown—just to place a GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) receiver on the summit. They had to account for the "snow cap" versus the "rock head." If you measure the snow, it's taller. If you measure the rock, it's shorter. They settled on measuring the snow height because, honestly, standing on the rock at the summit is almost impossible without digging through several feet of packed ice.
The Problem with Sea Level
To figure out how many feet tall is Mount Everest, you have to know where "zero" is. But the ocean isn't flat. The earth isn't a perfect sphere; it’s an oblate spheroid, kinda like a squashed orange.
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Gravity varies depending on where you are. This affects what we call the "geoid," which is basically a model of global mean sea level used to measure precise elevations. If your model of sea level is off by a few feet, your mountain height is off by a few feet. Nepal used to rely on a sea-level datum from the Bay of Bengal, which is over 400 miles away. Modern tech uses gravity-based models that are way more accurate, but even those have a tiny margin of error.
A History of Measuring a Giant
The first time someone tried to figure out the height was back in the 1850s. The Great Trigonometrical Survey of India was a gargantuan task. They didn't even call it Everest back then; it was just "Peak XV."
Radhanath Sickdhar, a Bengali mathematician, was the guy who crunched the numbers. Using theodolites (telescopes for measuring angles) from over 100 miles away, he calculated the height at exactly 29,000 feet. Legend has it they added two feet to the result—making it 29,002 feet—just so people wouldn't think it was a rounded-off guess. They wanted it to look precise.
By 1954, an Indian survey came up with the famous 29,028 feet (8,848 meters). That number stuck for decades. It’s the one stuck in the heads of every Gen X and Millennial climber. But then 1999 rolled around, and a National Geographic expedition used GPS technology to suggest the mountain was actually 29,035 feet.
Imagine the confusion. For twenty years, different maps showed different heights. It wasn't until the 2020 measurement that the two countries bordering the peak finally agreed on the 29,031.69-foot figure.
Is Everest Really the Tallest?
Here is where it gets annoying for the purists. If you define "tallest" as the point furthest from the center of the Earth, Everest loses. That title goes to Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador. Because the Earth bulges at the equator, Chimborazo’s summit is actually closer to space than Everest’s.
If you measure from the base to the peak (the actual height of the mountain structure itself), Mauna Kea in Hawaii wins by a landslide. Most of it is underwater. From the sea floor to the top, it's about 33,500 feet. Everest only gets the crown because we’ve collectively decided that "above sea level" is the only metric that counts for bragging rights.
Life at 29,000 Feet
At the summit, the air pressure is about one-third of what it is at sea level. There is so little oxygen that your body’s cells literally start to die. Climbers call the area above 26,247 feet (8,000 meters) the Death Zone.
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You aren't just tired. You're dying.
Your brain can swell (HACE), your lungs can fill with fluid (HAPE), and your judgment disappears. People have been known to sit down for a "quick rest" and never get up because their brain can't process the cold. When you're standing at 29,031 feet, you are breathing "thin air" that hasn't been filtered by much of anything. It’s raw, it's freezing, and it's temporary. You get maybe 20 minutes at the top before you have to leave, or you're not coming back down.
The Impact of Climate Change on the Peak
While the rock is being pushed up by tectonics, the ice is thinning. Recent studies on the South Col Glacier—the highest glacier on the mountain—show that it’s losing ice at an alarming rate. We’re talking about ice that took 2,000 years to form thinning out in just 25 years.
This matters for the height. If the snow and ice cap at the summit melts significantly, the "official" height of 29,031 feet will be wrong again. We might eventually reach a point where we have to report the rock height and the snow height separately every year, like a weather report.
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How to Visualize 29,031 Feet
It's a hard number to wrap your head around.
- It is roughly 20 Empire State Buildings stacked on top of each other.
- If you fell from the top (and air resistance didn't exist), you'd have over a minute of freefall before hitting sea level.
- Commercial airplanes fly at about 30,000 to 35,000 feet. When you’re at the summit, you are nearly at the cruising altitude of a Boeing 747.
Practical Insights for the Curious
If you're planning to see the mountain or just want to be the smartest person in the room regarding its geography, keep these points in mind:
- Trust the 2020 Data: Use 29,031.7 feet (or 8,848.86 meters) for any modern documentation. Anything else is technically outdated.
- The Nepal/China Border: The border actually runs right through the summit point. You can technically stand in two countries at once at the highest point on Earth.
- Best Viewing: You don't have to climb it to see it. Most travelers head to Kala Patthar in Nepal or the Rongbuk Monastery in Tibet for the best views. Ironically, you can't see the summit very well from Everest Base Camp because the Lhotse-Nuptse ridge blocks the view.
- Geology is Fluid: Understand that "height" is a snapshot in time. With the Indian plate moving north at about 2 inches a year, the entire Himalayan range is a work in progress.
The quest to find out exactly how many feet tall is Mount Everest has transformed from a 19th-century mathematical puzzle into a high-tech satellite operation. It remains the ultimate yardstick for human ambition and planetary scale. Whether it grows or shrinks by a few inches in the next decade doesn't really change the awe it inspires, but for those who live to measure the world, those inches mean everything.
Next Steps for Exploration:
If you want to see the height for yourself without the $50,000 climbing permit, look into the Everest Base Camp (EBC) trek on the Nepalese side. It takes you to about 17,598 feet—still higher than any mountain in the contiguous United States—and provides the most intimate look at the topography of the Khumbu region. For a more accessible view, mountain flights from Kathmandu offer a "eye-level" look at the 29,031-foot peak in about an hour.