98 Fun Facts About Mountain

Mount Everest's namesake George Everest held which post in British India?

Surveyor General of India from 1830 to 1843, George Everest objected to the honour, telling the Royal Geographical Society that his name could not be written in Hindi or pronounced by local people.

What is the Nepali name for Mount Everest?

Sagarmatha reached print in a 1938 essay by the historian Baburam Acharya, who argued that the peak already had a local name and glossed it as the 'head that reaches into the sky'.

By which route from the Nepalese side did Hillary and Tenzing make the first documented ascent of Everest in 1953?

The Southeast Ridge, reached from the South Col, had almost been climbed three days earlier: Charles Evans and Tom Bourdillon turned back about 100 m below the top with a failing oxygen set.

Which climber, lost on Everest in 1924, is credited with the line 'because it's there'?

George Mallory is quoted giving the reply in a 1923 New York Times report, though some doubt the words were his; his body was found on the mountain in 1999, but nothing with it settled whether he and Andrew Irvine reached the top.

Which body of water is the nearest sea to the summit of Everest?

The Bay of Bengal is the closest coast, roughly 700 km away; in 1990 the Australian Tim Macartney-Snape set out from its shore on foot and became the first person to climb Everest's full height from sea level.

K2, the second-highest mountain on Earth, lies in which range?

The Karakoram gave K2 its name: in 1856 the surveyor Thomas Montgomerie labelled the range's peaks K1, K2 and so on, and this one kept its label because no local name was found for so remote a mountain.

Which nickname did K2 earn from a remark by George Bell on the 1953 American expedition?

The Savage Mountain echoes Bell's line that it 'tries to kill you'; on the retreat he had slipped on ice and pulled his roped teammates off with him, and one man's ice-axe belay held them all.

Which country's expedition made the first ascent of K2 in 1954?

Italy's summit pair, Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni, got their oxygen from Walter Bonatti and the porter Amir Mehdi, who were then left to spend the night in the open at about 8,100 m; Mehdi lost his toes.

A team from which country made the first winter ascent of K2 in January 2021?

Nepal's ten climbers had arrived with three separate expeditions, then pooled their efforts to take the last eight-thousander that had never been climbed in winter.

Which peak, in the Ellsworth Mountains, is the highest in Antarctica?

Mount Vinson went unseen until January 1958, when US Navy aircraft spotted it; it was named for Carl Vinson, a Georgia congressman, in thanks for his support of Antarctic exploration.

Which peak was the first eight-thousander climbed, by Herzog and Lachenal in June 1950?

Annapurna was a second choice: the French team gave up on Dhaulagiri first. Frostbite on the descent then cost Maurice Herzog and Louis Lachenal all their toes, and Herzog most of his fingers.

Which eight-thousander, entirely in Tibet, was the last to be climbed, in 1964?

Shishapangma is the lowest of the fourteen, yet it was climbed last because it lies wholly inside Tibet, which was closed to foreign climbers for decades; the first ascent came in May 1964.

Who became the first person to climb all 14 eight-thousanders, in October 1986, without bottled oxygen?

Reinhold Messner began the set on Nanga Parbat in 1970, where his brother Günther died on the descent and frostbite cost him seven toes; he still went on to climb the other thirteen over the next sixteen years.

Nirmal 'Nims' Purja set what record on the eight-thousanders in 2019?

All 14 in six months and six days beat the old record by more than seven years; on Everest that May, Purja's photograph of climbers queuing along the summit ridge went viral.

In 1985 Dick Bass became the first person to complete which mountaineering challenge?

The Seven Summits, the highest peak on each continent, were a quest the Texas businessman Bass shared with Frank Wells, later president of Disney; Bass finished on Everest at 55, but Wells never got up it.

For the highest peak in all of Oceania, many climbers swap Australia's Kosciuszko for which mountain on New Guinea?

Puncak Jaya, also called Carstensz Pyramid, is a 4,884 m limestone peak in Indonesian Papua that demands real rock climbing, while Kosciuszko is a few hours' walk from a car park.

Depending on Europe's boundary, its highest peak is Mont Blanc or which Caucasus mountain?

Elbrus, a dormant volcano 5,642 m high, stands just north of the Caucasus watershed, so geographers who draw Europe's edge along that crest count it, and not Mont Blanc, as Europe's highest peak.

Which Hawaiian volcano is the world's tallest mountain when measured from its base on the ocean floor?

Mauna Kea rises more than 10,000 m from the Pacific floor, over a kilometre more than Everest stands above the sea, but some 6,000 m of that is under water, so it looks modest from the shore.

Olympus Mons, a vast volcano with very gentle slopes, is classed as which type?

A shield volcano is built from runny lava that spreads far before it sets; Olympus Mons grew so huge because its crust never slid off the hot spot beneath it, as the plate under Hawaii does.

Kilimanjaro, Africa's tallest peak, holds what worldwide distinction?

Highest free-standing mountain above sea level: Kilimanjaro is a lone volcano that rises more than four kilometres straight from the plains around it, with no range of neighbours to share the height.

Kilimanjaro's summit, Uhuru Peak, sits on the crater rim of which of its three volcanic cones?

Kibo's highest point was named Kaiser-Wilhelm-Spitze by Hans Meyer, who first climbed it in 1889; independent Tanzania renamed it Uhuru, the Swahili word for 'freedom'.

What does the Koyukon Athabaskan name Denali, used for a famous Alaskan peak, mean?

Denali means the high or tall one in Koyukon; Alaska adopted the name in 1975, but Ohio's congressmen blocked the federal change for another forty years.

A gold prospector named North America's highest peak after which 1896 presidential candidate?

William McKinley got the honour from prospector William Dickey, said to have picked the gold-standard man to needle the silver-backing miners he had met; the federal name became Denali in 2015 and went back in 2025.

What went wrong when four of Edward Whymper's party died descending the Matterhorn after its first ascent in 1865?

A rope broke between Lord Francis Douglas and the elder Taugwalder after one climber slipped and dragged three more with him; the break is what left Whymper and his two guides alive on the ledge.

Which Alpine peak's notorious north face was first climbed in July 1938?

The Eiger's north face killed so many climbers that German speakers turned Nordwand, 'north wall', into Mordwand, 'murder wall'; a German-Austrian party of four finally climbed it in July 1938.

The summit of which Ecuadorian volcano is the point on Earth's surface farthest from the planet's centre?

Chimborazo is far lower than Everest, but it stands one degree south of the equator, where Earth bulges most; Humboldt failed to climb it in 1802 and Edward Whymper made the first ascent in 1880.

Mount Fuji's last eruption, which began in 1707, dropped ash on which present-day city about 100 km away?

Tokyo, then called Edo, was left under centimetres of ash; the eruption began 49 days after a great offshore earthquake, and the mountain has stayed quiet ever since.

Until an 1872 government edict, which group was forbidden to climb sacred Mount Fuji?

Women were kept off the sacred summit, though Tatsu Takayama defied the ban in 1832 to become the first woman on record at the top; Fuji is one of Japan's Three Holy Mountains, with Tate and Haku.

The Himalayas rose when the Eurasian plate collided with which other tectonic plate?

The Indian plate began ramming into Eurasia 40 to 50 million years ago and has not stopped, so the range is still being pushed up today.

Which country holds the western end of the Himalayas, anchored by the peak Nanga Parbat?

Pakistan's Nanga Parbat was first climbed in 1953 by Hermann Buhl, who went on alone for the last 1,300 m after his partners turned back, then survived a night in the open at almost 8,000 m.

The Andes reach their southern end in which archipelago?

Tierra del Fuego ends a chain that crosses seven countries from Venezuela; so far south, glaciers from its last peaks flow all the way down into the sea.

Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Southern and Western Hemispheres, is in which country?

Argentina's Aconcagua was first climbed in 1897 by the Swiss guide Matthias Zurbriggen, who reached the top alone after his employer, Edward FitzGerald, had failed on repeated attempts.

Which oceanic plate is sliding beneath South America to push up the Andes?

The Nazca plate dives under the continent along the Peru-Chile Trench, and the same collision set off the largest earthquake ever recorded, a magnitude 9.5 in Chile in 1960.

What is the Lakota name for the mountain into which Mount Rushmore was carved?

Six Grandfathers stood on land the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie had promised to the Sioux; in 1980 the Supreme Court ruled it was wrongly taken and awarded compensation, which the Sioux refused, wanting the land back.

How far down were the four Mount Rushmore presidents originally meant to be carved?

Borglum's design showed the presidents to the waist, but funding dried up and work stopped at the heads after his death in 1941; the Hall of Records behind them was also left largely unbuilt.

A team from which country made the first documented ascent of Everest's North Ridge, in 1960?

China's three climbers reached the top at about 4.20 in the morning, too dark for a summit photograph, so many Western mountaineers doubted the claim for years; it is now generally accepted.

Which eight-thousander is generally considered the easiest to climb?

Cho Oyu owes its reputation to the moderate slopes of its north-west ridge and to the Nangpa La beside it, an old trading pass between Tibet and the Sherpas' Khumbu valley that eases the approach.

Which Cascade Range volcano lost about 400 m of its height when it erupted in May 1980?

Mount St. Helens dropped from 9,677 to 8,363 feet when its north face slid away in the largest landslide in recorded history; the blast that followed killed 57 people.

Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system, is found on which world?

Mars showed astronomers a bright spot they named Nix Olympica, 'Olympic Snow'; in 1971 Mariner 9 arrived during a global dust storm, saw the spot standing clear above it and revealed a giant volcano.

Ojos del Salado, Earth's highest volcano, stands beside which desert?

The Atacama's dryness leaves the giant volcano with no lasting snow cover, yet a small lake in its summit crater, well above 6,000 m, is counted the highest lake in the world.

Which chocolate brand announced in 2023 that the Matterhorn would leave its packaging?

Toblerone's maker shifted part of production to Slovakia, and Swiss rules reserve national symbols for goods made in Switzerland, so the Matterhorn on the box gave way to a generic summit.

Which peak is the highest mountain in the United Kingdom?

Ben Nevis had a weather observatory on its summit from 1883 to 1904; a short stint there in 1894 inspired C. T. R. Wilson to build the cloud chamber, which later won him a Nobel Prize.

Mountains are often sorted into which three main types by the way they form?

Volcanic, fold and block: volcanic peaks pile up from erupted rock, fold ranges crumple where plates collide, and block mountains rise where the crust breaks along faults. Some schemes add dome and plateau types.

Climbing 100 metres up a mountain is roughly equivalent to moving how far towards the nearest pole?

About 80 km: air cools so fast with height that a tall mountain near the equator can run from rainforest at its foot to bare rock and ice at its top, like a trip of thousands of kilometres towards a pole.

Which side of a mountain range lies in its rain shadow?

The leeward side stays dry because air sheds its moisture as it climbs the windward slopes; four mountain ranges stand between Death Valley and the Pacific, which is why it is so dry.

The Alpide belt, running from Java to the Atlantic, ranks second to which earthquake zone?

The Ring of Fire around the Pacific produces about 81 percent of the world's largest earthquakes; the Alpide belt is next with about 17 percent, among them the 2004 quake behind the Indian Ocean tsunami.

The Atlas Mountains stretch across Morocco, Algeria and which other country?

Tunisia holds the eastern end of a 2,500 km chain that walls the Mediterranean coast off from the Sahara; its highest peak, Toubkal, stands at the other end, in Morocco.

Tenzing Montes and Hillary Montes are mountain ranges made mainly of ice on which body?

Pluto can build mountains from water ice because at its temperatures ice is as hard as rock; New Horizons found the ranges in 2015, and they were named for the first two men up Everest.

Where does the longest mountain range on Earth, a continuous chain about 65,000 km long, lie?

Under the oceans runs the mid-ocean ridge, a chain of volcanic mountains several times longer than the Andes. It winds through every ocean basin on the planet.

Kilimanjaro, a dormant volcano and the highest mountain in Africa, rises above the plains of which country?

Tanzania is home to Kilimanjaro, whose famous ice cap is vanishing. Almost 85 percent of the ice cover disappeared between 1912 and 2011.

Which chocolate brand showed the Matterhorn on its packaging until some production moved out of Switzerland?

Toblerone had to drop the Matterhorn once some bars were made in Slovakia. Swiss rules reserve images typical of the country for products made there.

Which dog breed was originally bred for rescue work by a monks' hospice on a snowy Alpine pass?

St. Bernard dogs worked the Great St Bernard Pass in the Western Alps. The most famous of them, Barry, reportedly saved between 40 and 100 lives.

The summit of Mount Everest is made of which rock, studded with fossils of ancient sea creatures?

Limestone caps Everest because the rock formed on a sea floor before colliding continents lifted it nearly nine kilometres. It holds fragments of trilobites and crinoids.

Edmund Hillary, who reached the summit of Everest in 1953, earned his living in which trade?

Beekeeping was the Hillary family business, with 1,600 hives to tend. He kept bees in summer and concentrated on climbing in winter.

Which Carthaginian general marched war elephants over the Alps in 218 BC to attack Rome?

Hannibal surprised the Romans by marching overland from Spain and across the Alps. They had planned to fight him far from home.

Which Cascade Range volcano lost the top 400 metres of its cone in a catastrophic eruption in May 1980?

Mount St. Helens blew out its entire north face on 18 May 1980. The eruption killed 57 people and destroyed 200 homes and 47 bridges.

At the Tour de France, the best climber, known as 'King of the Mountains', wears a jersey of which design?

Red polka dots on white have marked the best climber since 1975. The sponsor, Chocolat Poulain, wanted a jersey that stood out in the peloton.

Which ape-like creature of Himalayan folklore was nicknamed the 'Abominable Snowman' by a journalist in 1921?

The Yeti got its lurid nickname when a Calcutta columnist interviewed porters returning from the first British reconnaissance of Everest.

Table Mountain, often draped in a cloud nicknamed the 'table cloth', overlooks which South African city?

Cape Town sits beneath Table Mountain, whose cloud cover forms when a southeasterly wind is pushed up the slopes into colder air and its moisture condenses.

Mount Ararat, long identified with the resting place of Noah's Ark, is the highest peak in which country?

Turkey holds Mount Ararat, yet the peak is the principal national symbol of neighbouring Armenia and appears on its coat of arms.

Which mountain near Fort William in the Scottish Highlands is the highest in the British Isles?

Ben Nevis stands 1,345 metres high. The ruins on its summit belong to a weather observatory that was staffed continuously from 1883 to 1904.

Which Yosemite granite wall did Alex Honnold climb without ropes in 2017, a feat filmed for 'Free Solo'?

El Capitan rises about 900 metres from base to summit along its tallest face. Honnold climbed it alone and unroped in 3 hours and 56 minutes.

Why does water boil well below 100 °C near the top of a high mountain such as Everest?

Lower air pressure drops the boiling point by roughly 1 °F for every 500 feet climbed. High-altitude cooks compensate with longer cooking times or a pressure cooker.

What are the spiked metal frames that mountaineers fix to their boots for grip on steep ice?

Crampons changed climbing after Oscar Eckenstein's 10-point design of 1908, which dramatically reduced the need to cut steps into the ice.

What name is given to the elevation on a mountain above which forests can no longer grow?

The tree line is where growth turns sparse, stunted and deformed by wind and cold. The dwarfed shrubs at the limit are called krummholz, German for crooked wood.

The view from which Colorado summit inspired Katharine Lee Bates to write 'America the Beautiful' in 1893?

Pikes Peak takes its name from explorer Zebulon Pike, who sighted it in 1806 and simply labelled it 'Highest Peak'.

Mount Whitney, the highest summit in the contiguous United States, was first climbed by fishermen in which state?

California's Mount Whitney was first climbed in 1873 by three local men on a fishing trip, who called it Fisherman's Peak. Its lasting name honours the state geologist.

Which volcanic island in the Sunda Strait exploded in 1883 with the loudest sound known to history?

Krakatoa's final explosion was heard in Perth, 3,110 km away, and on the island of Rodrigues near Mauritius, 4,800 km away.

Which volcano on the east coast of Sicily, one of the most active on Earth, looms over the city of Catania?

Mount Etna is in an almost constant state of activity, and Greek myth placed the forge of the smith god Hephaestus beneath it.

Which Inca citadel, whose Quechua name means 'old peak', stands above a bend of the Urubamba River?

Machu Picchu was always known locally, but it came to international attention only in 1911 through the American historian Hiram Bingham.

Which Andean seat of government, about 3,650 metres above sea level, is the highest capital city in the world?

La Paz is Bolivia's seat of government, while the constitutional capital, Sucre, keeps only the judicial power.

Which mountain range runs south from the Arctic Ocean through Russia, dividing Europe from Asia?

The Urals separate European Russia from Siberia. At an estimated 250 to 300 million years, they are among the world's oldest surviving mountain ranges.

Which mountain range straddles the border between France and Spain, with tiny Andorra sandwiched between them?

The Pyrenees are named in Greek myth after a princess called Pyrene. Their main crest still forms the political divide between the two countries.

Aoraki, also known as Mount Cook, is the highest mountain in which Pacific country?

New Zealand's highest peak was climbed by Edmund Hillary in January 1948, five years before he reached the top of Everest.

On which mountain in Egypt, also called Jabal Musa, is Moses believed to have received the Ten Commandments?

Mount Sinai has the 6th-century Saint Catherine's Monastery just to its north, although it is only one of several peaks claimed to be the mountain of the Bible.

Sugarloaf Mountain, known worldwide for its cable car, rises at the mouth of Guanabara Bay in which Brazilian city?

Rio de Janeiro's Sugarloaf rises 396 metres above the harbour. It is named for its likeness to the cone-shaped loaves in which refined sugar was once sold.

Which ethnic group from the high valleys near Everest is famed for guiding Himalayan mountaineering expeditions?

Sherpa comes from Tibetan words meaning 'people of the east'. Sherpa climbers have been instrumental in the first ascents of many Himalayan peaks.

Which journalist's bestseller 'Into Thin Air' recounts the 1996 storm that killed eight climbers on Everest?

Jon Krakauer joined the climb on assignment for Outside magazine. His own guide, Rob Hall, was among the eight who died.

The rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes in 1972, a story told in the film 'Alive', came from which country?

Uruguay's Old Christians Club was flying to a match in Santiago. The survivors endured 72 days in the high peaks before two of them climbed out to fetch help.

Which big cat of Central Asia's high mountains sleeps with its thick tail wrapped over its face like a blanket?

Snow leopard vocal folds are only about 9 mm long, too short to produce a roar. The cat lives mostly between 3,000 and 4,500 metres up.

What term describes the dry region on the side of a mountain range facing away from the prevailing winds?

A rain shadow helps make Chile's Atacama the driest non-polar desert on Earth, because the Andes block moisture arriving from the east.

Which Philippine volcano's 1991 eruption cooled global temperatures by about half a degree Celsius?

Mount Pinatubo produced the second-largest eruption of the 20th century, yet early predictions led to the evacuation of tens of thousands of people.

Which active volcano, visible from Mexico City, takes its name from Nahuatl words meaning 'smoking mountain'?

Popocatépetl is joined by a high saddle, the Paso de Cortés, to a twin volcano nicknamed the Sleeping Woman for its snowy outline.

The mountain men who roamed the Rockies between 1820 and 1840 mainly trapped which animal for the hat trade?

Beaver pelts were felted into hats, and the trade collapsed once European fashion shifted away from them and the animal had been over-hunted.

Which mountain man explored the Great Salt Lake region in 1824 and later founded a Wyoming fort on the Oregon Trail?

Jim Bridger reached the lake by bull boat down the Bear River. In 1843 he and Louis Vasquez set up Fort Bridger on the Blacks Fork of the Green River.

Which Himalayan giant, the third-highest mountain on Earth, was assumed to be the world's highest until 1852?

Kangchenjunga's first climbers stopped just short of the top, keeping a promise to the ruler of Sikkim that the sacred summit would remain untouched.

Triglav, a three-headed peak shown on the national flag and coat of arms, is the highest mountain in which country?

Slovenia treats Triglav as the pre-eminent symbol of the nation. Before independence in 1991 it was the highest peak in Yugoslavia.

What name is given to Scottish mountains over 3,000 feet, after the baronet who first listed them in 1891?

Munros honour Sir Hugh Munro, whose tables of 1891 are usually considered the starting point of modern peak bagging.

Which peak in western Tibet, sacred to four religions, has no recorded ascent and is closed to climbers?

Mount Kailash is the home of Shiva for Hindus and holy to Buddhists, Jains and followers of Bon. Pilgrims walk a circuit around the mountain instead of climbing it.

Which climber became the first woman atop Everest in 1975, twelve days after surviving an avalanche?

Junko Tabei later became the first woman to climb the highest peak on every continent, a feat she completed in 1992.

What did Rocky Mountain fur trappers call their annual gathering for selling pelts, held from 1825 to 1840?

The rendezvous saw company men haul supplies to a chosen mountain site, trade with the trappers and carry the pelts back to towns on the Missouri.

Which Antarctic peak on Ross Island is the southernmost active volcano on Earth, with a long-lived lava lake?

Mount Erebus was named in 1841 by James Clark Ross after his ship, a vessel later lost on John Franklin's disastrous Arctic expedition.

Which peak in the Yukon, the highest mountain in Canada, is second only to Denali in North America?

Mount Logan is believed to have the largest base circumference of any non-volcanic mountain on Earth, and tectonic uplift is still pushing it higher.

Which South African range, called uKhahlamba or 'barrier of up-pointed spears' in Zulu, holds the Tugela Falls?

The Drakensberg got its Afrikaans name from the earliest Dutch settlers, who called the great escarpment the Dragons' Mountains.

Which African range did explorers link with the legendary 'Mountains of the Moon', Ptolemy's source of the Nile?

The Rwenzori stand on the border of Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Rivers fed by their streams form one of the sources of the Nile, which prompted the link.

Which peak on Canada's Baffin Island has Earth's greatest vertical drop, an overhanging cliff over a kilometre high?

Mount Thor's cliff overhangs at an average angle of 105 degrees. Glaciers grinding through the Akshayuk Pass carved the wall over millennia.

Which flat-topped mountain, ringed by cliffs up to a kilometre high, stands where Brazil, Guyana and Venezuela meet?

Mount Roraima was described by Walter Raleigh as a 'crystal mountain' gushing waterfalls, yet its first recorded ascent came only in 1884, by a British expedition.

What name is given to a climber's giant silhouette projected on cloud, after the highest peak of the Harz range?

Brocken spectre sightings owe their name to the frequent fogs and easy access of the Brocken, which built up a local legend around the looming figure.