Mount Everest

Everest history - with Danish perspective

Mount Everest, the worlds highest mountain, stands 8850 meters in the Himalayas on the border between Nepal and Tibet. The first undoubted ascent was by Hillary and Tenzing in May 1953 from the South side through Nepal, though it has been speculated that the mountain might have been climbed by Mallory and Irvine from the North the Tibetan side allready in 1924.

The first ascent without bottled oxygen was done by Messner and Habeler in 1978. Other facts about the mountain can be read in the table below.

1852Peak XV is measured to 8.848 meter.
1856Peak XV is named Mount Everest after the leader of the Survey Institute.
1921 First British attempt to climbb Everest.
1922 Second British attempt to climb Everest. Seven sherpas die in the attempt.
1924 George Leigh Mallory and Andrew Irvine attempts to reach the summit and disappers. It is still disputed if the reached the summit and were on their way down from victory
1951 The Dane Klavs Becker Larsen attempts to climb the mountain and reaches short of North Col.
1953May 29th, Mt. Everest is ascended for the first time. Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay reaches the summit.
1975 Japanese climber Junko Tabai reaches the summit of Mt. Everest as the first woman.
1978 Italian Reinhold Messner and Austrian Peter Habeler ascends Mt. Everest without supplementary oxygen.
1980 Reinhold Messner in another first climbs solo to the top of the mountain without oxygen.
1995 Alison Hargreaves becomes the first woman to summit Everest without oxygem bottles.
1995Michael Knakkergård Jørgensen becomes the first Dane to climb Everest
1996The first all Danish expedition visits the mountain, but is stopped from summiting to help in the disastrous storm that kills 8 people from other expeditions
2000Second all Danish expedition puts Mads Granlien and Asmus Nørreslet on the summit.
2001Asmus Nørreslet becomes the first Dane to reach the summit from both sides, Nepal and Tibet.

Contact Bo Belvedere Christensen to arrange a lecture about the Danish Everest expeditions or about one or more of our other expeditions.

Danish Himalayan Society, Phone: (+45) 40258345, bbc@himalaya.dk