Majestic Mountains
Mount Everest is mainly located in Nepal and Tibet and in Nepal it is known as Sagarmatha & as Chomolangma in Tibet. From sea level, it measures uptill 8,850 m (29,035 ft). It lies between 86º55'40" E Longitude to 27º59'16" N, Latitude. Mount Everest is just one of over 30 peaks in the Himalayas that are over 24,000 feet high.
Himalaya is a Sanskrit word meaning, "abode of snow", which is so true. The snowfields which dominate many of the peaks in the Himalayas are permanent. Yes, they never melt (not even in the summer). That means there are glaciers in the Himalayas - lots of them. Mount Everest is permanently covered in a layer of ice, topped with snow. The "top" of the mountain at which the elevation was measured can vary as much as twenty feet or more, depending on how much snow has fallen on its peak.
The Birth of a Mountain
Mountains aren't just big piles of dirt, they're made of solid rock. Believe it or not, the rocks that make up the Himalayan mountains used to be an ancient sea floor. Over millions of years, rivers washed rocks and soil from existing mountains on the Indian subcontinent and nearby Asia into a shallow sea where the sediment was deposited on the floor. Layer upon layer of sediment built up over millions of years until the pressure and weight of the overlying sediment caused the stuff way down deep to turn into rock. Then about 40 million years ago, in a process called "uplifting", the sea floor began to be forced upward forming mountains.
Vegetation
In the mountainous region around Mount Everest, there are four main climatic zones. The lowest is a forested area, with trees that include birch, juniper, blue pines, firs and bamboo. Higher up is a zone of alpine scrub, where plants must remain small and scraggly to survive the harsh wind and cold. Above that is the upper alpine zone, in which only lichens and mosses thrive. Finally, above 5,750 m (18,690 ft) is the Arctic zone, where no vegetation can grow.
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