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Nepal to fix Mt Everest height
KATHMANDU, JUN 08 -
In an effort to claim Mt. Everest as its own, Nepal is all set to send a survey team for the first time to take the measurement of the world’s highest peak by next spring. It has never measured Mt Everest’s height since it was recognised as the world’s highest peak in 1808.
A 20-member civil servant team headed by Lila Mani Poudel from the Department of Survey will ascend Mt Langtang next week as a warm-up to climbing Mt. Everest.
Nepal and China recognised the snow and rock heights of Mt Everest in the fourth meeting of boundary talks in the Capital in the second week of April. The Chinese side accepted Nepal’s claim that the snow height of Mt. Everest is 8,848m while the Nepali side recognised the Chinese claim that the rock height of the mountain is 8,844.43m. Both sides have agreed to the two heights.
The team will hold a three-day training in Kathmandu from Wednesday. “We are doing this because it will boost our moral in dealing with the Chinese side,” a senior government official told the Post.
On Oct. 9, 2005, after months of measurements and calculations, the PRC’s State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping officially announced the height of the Everest as 8,844.43 meters (29, 0117. 16 ft).
In the meeting, both sides agreed to settle all boundary errors by December and prepared 52 sets of maps through GPS for signing the fourth protocol.
This is not the first time that the height of Mt. Everest has stirred controversy. Since the first accent in 1953 by Sherpa Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, its exact height has been disputed ever since the first measurement was made in 1856. The globally accepted height of 8,848 m was first recorded by an Indian survey team in 1865 with the mountain’s snowcap height.
In May 1999, an American team used GPS technology to record a height of 8,850 m - a figure that is now used by the US National Geographic Society - although it has not been officially accepted.
Posted on: 2010-06-09 07:21
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