Challenges and Dangers

Avalanches are the biggest killers. Avalanches are caused by unstable snow slipping. Crystals cause the most unstable snow because its six points connect with the other crystals. Another dangerous type of snow is known as depth hoar, or sugar snow. Any snow on top of these types of snow just slides away, causing an avalanche.

While up on Everest, you'll probably have bad health conditions at least one point in time. The conditions are because of the lack of oxygen to the brain. This can cause mental problems, exhaustion, and sleeplessness, vomiting, diarrhea, and dehydration. Something that they use to help control the vomiting is a lomotil pill.

The weather here is a problem because of frost bite and freezing cold temperatures. The temperature had once been -35F. Frost bite, or when skin freezes, happens very often on Everest, but wearing appropriate clothes when you go can help reduce it. Soaking it in antibiotics helps get rid of it, but it isn't practical on Mt. Everest. Sometimes the affected areas are amputated.

Proper Clothing, Tools, and Food

The smartest thing to do is to wear a lot of layers. These help to capture warmth, and are the best insulators.

For clothes, materials like polypropylene, wool, synthetic, and GoreTex make good layers. Headgear helps to keep the warmth from escaping the body through the head. For footwear, liner, wool, and vapor barrier socks are best.

The best tools to use are: an ice axe, climbing harnesses, ski poles, and general mountaineering tools.
If you want to lose weight, climb Mount Everest! Some have lost 25 pounds or even a third of their body weight. This is because of a low balance of food. The main food you will probably eat is soup and snacks. Soup will give you water. While up there, you'll burn more calories than you will gain. You need to get carbohydrates, and you can get those from stew, rice, and noodles.

Altitude

Normally, you'd die of suffocation at the height that the climbers are at, so how do they do it? Well, they gradually gain height and their bodies get used to it. They carry their loads up to the next camp, and then go back down and sleep.

Air Pressure

Air pressure is one of the greatest challenges while climbing Everest. The air pressure gets greater the higher the elevation is. This combined with the bitter cold makes the climb near the summit the most challenging part of the whole climb. With Everest's summit at 29,035 ft., it has the greatest elevation out of any mountain in the world.

Fun Facts

• The first two people to climb Everest were Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, but they have found a guy named George Mallory's body. If he did climb Everest, it was 29 years before Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay.
  
• The mountain was named after Sir George Everest.
  
• Mount Everest is said to be the dirtiest mountain because the expeditions leave their trash there. Someone made a special expedition up to Mt. Everest just to clean it up.
  
• Mt. Everest is the tallest mountain.
  

Deaths and Conquers