Mt. Everest ‘grows’ taller as China, Nepal announce new height

Nepal and China jointly announced the new height of Mount Everest as 8,848.86 metres in a highprofile virtual ceremony, with their Presidents exchanging letters and the Foreign Ministers in attendance, all aimed at showcasing both a deepening strategic relationship and the amicable resolution.

• Everest — also known as Sagarmatha in Nepal and Mount Qomolangma in China — was “an important symbol of the ChinaNepal friendship”, China’s President Xi Jinping said, calling it a “peak of ChinaNepal friendship”.
• The mountain lies on the border between Nepal and Tibet and the summit can be accessed from both sides, although the Nepal route is more popular.
• The project  had “overcome all kinds of difficulties and finally reached a conclusion on the snowcovered height based on the International Height Reference System”

Advantage of China:

• For Nepal and China, the height of Everest wasn’t merely an academic debate.  It also had ramifications for a lucrative tourism industry.  Officials told the Kathmandu Post the slightly higher “snow height” was “one of the key reasons why Nepal had been drawing Everest aspirants in droves”. 
• Ang Tsering Sherpa, former president of theNepal Mountaineering Association, told  that climbers from Nepal “started to swell from 2007 when China started issuing Everest climbing certificates stating the height as 8,844.57 metres against 8,848 metres in certificates issued by Nepal for the same peak”. 
• “Now, there will be a common height,” he said, but it will give China an advantage in the climbing stakes as “climbing Everest through the northern side is much cheaper than climbing from the southern side”. 
• The new height replaced the longassociated 8,848 metreheight, which was, the legacy from 1954, and a measurement carried out by the Survey of India