How big is the Mountain?

The next question is from Natalya at St. Edmund School. How big is the Mountain?

Well, I have been pondering a response for quite some time. The easy answer is 8,848 meters or 29,029 feet above sea level. This is about the same height that the large passenger airplanes fly at....so when you are outside looking up at the sky, and you see a plane as a speck high up in the sky, and you can see a condensation trail, that is about how high the mountain is.

Except your question wasn't how "high" is Mt. Everest, you asked how "big" is the mountain....and that can be answered in other ways.

The "biggest" mountain in the world is not Mt. Everest, but Mt. Logan here in Canada, as it has the largest circumference at 125km. Yes, right here in our own back yard. The picture at the very top of my blog page is of King Peak, one of the several peaks that form Mt. Logan, which I climbed last year.

There are also mountains that are "taller" than Mt. Everest. From base camp at about 17,500 feet above sea level to it's summit at 29,029 feet above sea level, Mt. Everest is only about 11,500 feet "tall". Mauna Kea, an active volcano on the island of Hawaii, stands 13,796 feet above sea level, which is already "taller" than Mt. Everest, but if you go below sea level to it's base, that mountain is actually a whopping 33,465 feet tall. If Mauna Kea's base was at sea level, it's summit would be about 4,400 feet higher than Mt. Everest.

But Mt. Everest has the distinction of being the "highest" mountain in the world, and it is still growing about 4mm a year, and being pushed NW from 3 to 6 mm per year, as India continues to push into Asia.