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60 free Mount Everest trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Mount Everest trivia quiz covers the highest mountain on Earth from every angle. The easy questions are the ones every armchair explorer knows: which countries it straddles, who made the first ascent, its local names and roughly how tall it is. From there it moves into the survey story, from the Great Trigonometrical Survey's 500-kilogram theodolites and the Bengali mathematician who first computed the height to the 2020 joint measurement. The harder end is for mountaineering fans and geography buffs: Mallory and Irvine's disappearance, the 1922 first climb above 8,000 metres, the Swiss expedition that nearly beat the British, the first oxygen-free ascent, the first winter ascent, the 1996 disaster, the helicopter that landed on the summit, the spider that lives at 6,700 metres and the limestone at the top that was once a sea floor. Records for most ascents, first woman and youngest climbers are here too. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries for the mountain, its expeditions and its climbers before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. If you enjoy this one, try our Himalayas, Nepal and world geography quizzes next.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which two countries share the summit of Mount Everest on their border?
Nepal and China
The mountain lies in the Mahalangur Himal sub-range of the Himalayas.
Q 02What official height for Everest did Nepal and China jointly announce in December 2020?
8,848.86 m
The two countries had argued for years over whether to measure the rock head or the snow cap.
Q 03What is Mount Everest called in Nepali?
Sagarmatha
The name is usually translated as goddess of the sky or the head in the great blue sky.
Q 04What does the Tibetan name for Everest, Qomolangma, literally mean?
Holy mother
The name was first recorded in the 1721 Kangxi Atlas.
Q 05Under what temporary label did the British survey know Everest before it was named?
Peak XV
Kangchenjunga, then thought to be the world's highest, was Peak IX in the same numbering.
Q 06After whom was Everest named, at the suggestion of Andrew Waugh in the 1850s?
A former Surveyor General of India
George Everest himself objected, saying the name could not be written in Hindi or pronounced by Indians.
Q 07How did Sir George Everest pronounce his own surname?
EEV-rist
The modern pronunciation of the mountain differs from the man's.
Q 08In which year did the Royal Geographical Society officially adopt the name Mount Everest?
1865
Late-19th-century cartographers wrongly believed a native name for it was Gaurishankar, a different peak.
Q 09Which Indian mathematician was the first to identify Everest as the world's highest peak, in 1852?
Radhanath Sikdar
He was working from Dehradun on trigonometric data gathered by James Nicolson.
Q 10How much did each giant theodolite used by the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India weigh?
500 kg
Each one needed 12 men to carry it.
Q 11Why was Everest publicly declared to be 29,002 feet in 1856 rather than the calculated 29,000?
To avoid looking like a rounded estimate
The exact 29,000-foot result looked suspiciously neat, so two feet were added.
Q 12What is the closest sea to Everest's summit, almost 700 km away?
Bay of Bengal
Tim Macartney-Snape's team climbed the mountain's entire height from that coastline in 1990.
Q 13What kind of rock forms the summit of Everest?
Ordovician limestone
Samples near the top contain fragments of trilobites, crinoids and ostracods, remains of a former sea floor.
Q 21The summit of Everest has been described as being about the size of what?
A dining room table
It is capped with snow over ice over rock, and the snow layer varies from year to year.
Q 22Who made the first documented ascent of Everest on 29 May 1953?
Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary
They reached the top at 11:30 am local time and buried sweets and a small cross in the snow.
Q 23Who led the 1953 British expedition that put the first climbers on the summit?
John Hunt
His first pair, Bourdillon and Evans, got within 100 m of the top before oxygen problems forced them back.
Q 14What is the yellowish-brown marble layer between about 8,200 and 8,600 m on Everest called?
The Yellow Band
It forms the upper part of the North Col Formation and weathers to its distinctive colour.
Q 15Which two tectonic plates collide to push Everest upward?
Indian and Eurasian
One estimate puts the vertical uplift at about 4 mm a year, with the summit drifting northeast.
Q 16What creature found at 6,700 m on Everest may be Earth's highest permanent resident?
A jumping spider
Euophrys omnisuperstes probably feeds on insects blown up by the wind.
Q 17Which bird did George Lowe of the 1953 expedition report seeing fly over Everest's summit?
Bar-headed goose
Choughs have been spotted as high as the South Col at 7,906 m.
Q 18Roughly what fraction of sea-level air pressure exists at Everest's summit?
One third
That leaves only about a third as much oxygen to breathe, which is why most climbers use bottles above 8,000 m.
Q 19Above what altitude does Everest's so-called death zone begin?
8,000 m
A 2008 study found most deaths there happen during descent from the summit.
Q 20What was the highest wind speed recorded at Everest's summit, in February 2004?
280 km/h
The peak reaches into the jet stream, and winds commonly hit 160 km/h.
Q 24Which nationality was Edmund Hillary?
New Zealander
He was knighted within days of the ascent and later devoted much of his life to helping the Sherpa people of Nepal.
Q 25What was Edmund Hillary's occupation when he was not climbing?
Beekeeper
His father sold honey and his mother bred and sold queen bees.
Q 26Beginning in 1960, Hillary devoted himself to helping Nepal's Sherpa people through which organisation?
The Himalayan Trust
He was appointed a Knight of the Garter in 1995.
Q 27Which country's 1952 team took Tenzing Norgay to a record 8,595 m a year before his successful climb?
Switzerland
He and Raymond Lambert set a new altitude record on the Southeast Ridge.
Q 28On which date in 1924 did George Mallory and Andrew Irvine disappear during their summit attempt?
8 June
Whether they reached the top before dying remains one of mountaineering's great debates.
Q 29In which year was George Mallory's body found on the North Face?
1999
The Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition found it in a snow basin below the traditional site of Camp VI.
Q 30What famous three-word answer did Mallory reportedly give when asked why he wanted to climb Everest?
Because it's there
The New York Times printed the quote in March 1923 under the headline that climbing Everest was work for supermen.