Mount Everest by the Numbers: Deaths, Cost to Climb, and More Mountain Records

8,848 meters (29,029 feet): Height at the peak.

60 million years: Approximate age of Mount Everest.

$25,000: Cost of a climbing permit per person.

8,000: Height in meters (approximately 26,000 feet) at Mount Everest’s “death zone,” the low-oxygen area above the last camp and before the summit where conditions become increasingly harsh.

1953: The year Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay became the first recorded climbers to reach Everest’s summit.

3: Number of countries visible from the summit (Tibet, India, and Nepal).

6: Number of people who have died on the mountain in 2012.

19: Number of people who died in one year—1996, the deadliest ever on Mount Everest—during a trek chronicled by writer Jon Krakauer in Into Thin Air.

30: Number of minutes before a climber dies after contracting hypothermia on Mount Everest, depending on how fast his or her body temperature drops

40: Record number of people to successfully reach Everest’s summit in one day (May 10, 1993).

200: Approximate number of total climbers who have died on the peak’s treacherous slopes.

4,000: Approximate number of people who have climbed Mount Everest since Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay in 1953

13: Age of Jordan Romero, the youngest climber to reach the summit, in May 2010.

76: Age of the oldest climber to reach the summit, Min Bahadur Sherchan, in May 2008.

21: Record number of successful climbs to the summit by Apa Sherpa