Eight-Thousanders
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50 free Eight-Thousanders trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The eight-thousanders, or 8000ers, are the only mountains on Earth whose summits rise more than 8,000 metres above sea level. Everest and K2 are the famous ones, but every peak in the group has its own character and its own history of triumph and tragedy. Up there the air is so thin that every hour counts, and for decades reaching even one of these summits was among the hardest things a person could do. This quiz covers the mountains themselves: where they stand, what their names mean and what makes each one dangerous. It also covers the people who climbed them, from the first ascents of the 1950s and 1960s to the race to collect the whole set, the pioneers of winter and oxygen-free climbing, and the books and films the peaks have inspired. The questions suit armchair mountaineers and seasoned trekkers alike. Some are easy openers about Everest; others will test anyone who has read every expedition account on the shelf. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will come away knowing a little more about the roof of the world.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many mountains on Earth, all of them in Asia, rise more than 8,000 metres above sea level?
14
Only 14 mountains pass the 8,000-metre mark, every one of them in the Himalaya or the range beside it. The first was climbed in 1950 and the last in 1964.
Q 02Which climber from South Tyrol first summited every eight-thousander, finishing in 1986 without bottled oxygen?
Reinhold Messner
Reinhold Messner needed 16 years to collect the full set, starting in 1970. He climbed every one of the peaks without supplementary oxygen.
Q 03What grim name do climbers give the altitude above 8,000 metres, where the body cannot survive for long?
The death zone
The death zone earns its name on the summit of Everest, where each breath holds less than a third of the oxygen at sea level. Bodies there weaken even at rest.
Q 04Which mountain became the first eight-thousander ever climbed when Maurice Herzog's expedition summited in 1950?
Annapurna
Annapurna was climbed on 3 June 1950, three years before anyone stood on Everest. Herzog and Louis Lachenal paid with severe frostbite and lost all their toes.
Q 05Which Sherpa mountaineer stood on the summit of Everest with Edmund Hillary on 29 May 1953?
Tenzing Norgay
Tenzing Norgay had already been to Everest six times before 1953. Afterwards he chose to celebrate his birthday on 29 May, the day of the climb.
Q 06Which country is home to five eight-thousanders, including K2 and Nanga Parbat?
Pakistan
Pakistan has five of the giants, and four of them stand close together around Concordia, a meeting point of glaciers below K2.
Q 07Which Englishman, later branded the wickedest man in the world, joined the first serious attempt on K2 in 1902?
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley was a gifted climber before he became a notorious occultist. His 1902 party spent 68 days on K2 and reached about 6,500 metres.
Q 08Before climbing Everest in 1953, New Zealander Edmund Hillary earned his living in which trade?
Beekeeper
Beekeeper was Hillary's day job: he tended 1,600 hives with his father and brother, keeping bees in summer and climbing in winter.
Q 09Which British climber vanished high on Everest in 1924 and was found on the mountain 75 years later?
George Mallory
George Mallory was found in 1999 at about 8,160 metres. Whether he and partner Andrew Irvine reached the top, 29 years before the first confirmed ascent, is still unknown.
Q 10Which bestselling book by journalist Jon Krakauer recounts the 1996 storm that killed eight climbers on Everest?
Into Thin Air
Into Thin Air began as a magazine job: Krakauer joined a guided climb to report for Outside and found himself in the middle of the disaster.
Q 11The K in K2, a label from a British survey in 1856, stands for which mountain range?
Karakoram
Karakoram gave K2 its name: Thomas Montgomerie sketched the range's two most prominent peaks from 210 km away and labelled them K1 and K2.
Q 12Which country's expedition made the first ascent of K2 in 1954, a year after Everest was first climbed?
Italy
Italy claimed K2 on 31 July 1954, when Lino Lacedelli and Achille Compagnoni reached the top arm in arm at about six in the evening.
Q 13What does the name Nanga Parbat, taken from Sanskrit, mean in English?
Naked Mountain
Naked Mountain comes from the Sanskrit words nagna and parvata. Climbers know the peak by a darker nickname, Killer Mountain, for the many lives it has taken.
Q 21Which Austrian climber reached the summit of Nanga Parbat alone in 1953, on the mountain's first ascent?
Hermann Buhl
Hermann Buhl climbed the last 1,300 metres alone, then survived a night at almost 8,000 metres without bivouac gear. No other eight-thousander was first climbed solo.
Q 22Which nickname did K2 earn after climber George Bell's verdict on a failed American expedition in 1953?
Savage Mountain
Savage Mountain stuck because K2 is far deadlier than Everest: before 2021, roughly one climber had died there for every four who reached the top.
Q 23What is the Tibetan name for Mount Everest, a name often translated as holy mother?
Chomolungma
Q 14Heinrich Harrer's arrest after a 1939 Nanga Parbat expedition began the adventures told in which bestselling memoir?
Seven Years in Tibet
Seven Years in Tibet follows Harrer's escape from a British internment camp in India to Lhasa, where he became the young Dalai Lama's tutor.
Q 15Which climber became the second person to summit every eight-thousander, most of them by new routes or in winter?
Jerzy Kukuczka
Jerzy Kukuczka took less than eight years, about half the time the first man needed, and used bottled oxygen only on Everest.
Q 16Which Basque climber became the first woman to summit every eight-thousander, completing the set in May 2010?
Edurne Pasaban
Edurne Pasaban was the 21st person to finish the set. A rival who claimed it three weeks earlier was later ruled not to have reached one of her summits.
Q 17Which climber became the first woman to reach the summit of Everest, twelve days after surviving an avalanche in 1975?
Junko Tabei
Junko Tabei went on to become the first woman to complete the Seven Summits, the highest peak on every continent.
Q 18Climbers from which country made the first winter ascent of K2 in 2021, the last eight-thousander climbed in winter?
Nepal
Nepal supplied all ten climbers: drawn from three separate teams, they joined forces and stepped onto the summit together on 16 January 2021.
Q 19Climbers from which country made the first winter ascent of any eight-thousander, on Everest in February 1980?
Poland
Poland made winter its speciality: after Everest, all-Polish teams completed eight more first winter ascents of the world's highest peaks.
Q 20An expedition from which country made the first ascent of Manaslu in 1956, alongside Sherpa Gyalzen Norbu?
Japan
Japan sent party after party to Manaslu until Toshio Imanishi and Gyalzen Norbu reached the top on 9 May 1956. The peak's name means mountain of the spirit.
Chomolungma, also romanised as Qomolangma, is the name used on the mountain's northern side. The southern side knows it as Sagarmatha.
Q 24Sir George Everest, namesake of the world's highest mountain, held which colonial post from 1830 to 1843?
Surveyor General of India
Surveyor General of India was the post, but Everest had nothing to do with finding the peak and at first objected to the honour.
Q 25What does the name Kangchenjunga, borne by the world's third-tallest mountain, mean in Tibetan?
Five treasures of the high snow
Five treasures of the high snow suits a mountain with five peaks. Local belief holds that the treasures, among them gold, salt and sacred scriptures, will show themselves only when the world is in peril.
Q 26What did Joe Brown and George Band do on Kangchenjunga's first ascent in 1955 to honour a promise to the local ruler?
Stop short of the summit
Stop short of the summit: on 25 May 1955 the two Britons halted just below the top, having given their word that the peak itself would remain inviolate.
Q 27Kangchenjunga stands partly in which Indian state, a former Himalayan kingdom that joined India in 1975?
Sikkim
Sikkim holds the mountain's eastern flank, and three of its five peaks sit directly on the border. Until 1852 Kangchenjunga was assumed to be the highest mountain in the world.
Q 28Which eight-thousander, the lowest of them all, is the only one standing entirely inside China?
Shishapangma
Shishapangma was also the last of the group to be climbed: a Chinese expedition reached its summit on 2 May 1964.
Q 29Which eight-thousander, whose name means Turquoise Goddess, is widely considered the easiest of the group to climb?
Cho Oyu
Cho Oyu owes that reputation to the moderate slopes of its standard route and a high pass close by. An Austrian party made the first ascent in 1954.
Q 30Which eight-thousander is joined to Everest by the South Col and has a Tibetan name meaning South Peak?
Lhotse
Lhotse is the fourth-highest mountain on Earth, and climbers bound for it follow Everest's route until high on the face, where the two paths split.