Everest

The highest point on Earth's surface. 8,849 metres of rock and ice on the border between Nepal and Tibet, named for a British surveyor who never saw it. Locals know it as Sagarmāthā in Nepal and Chomolungma in Tibet — both names mean closer to "mother of the world" than anything in English. The mountain has been climbed by thousands and killed hundreds. It does not become easier with familiarity.

The first confirmed summit came in 1953, when Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay reached the top via the Southeast Ridge from Nepal. Their route — through the Khumbu Icefall, up the Western Cwm, across the Lhotse Face, over the South Col, and along the summit ridge past the Hillary Step — remains the standard line today. The North Ridge from Tibet, attempted by George Mallory in the 1920s, was first completed by a Chinese team in 1960. Mallory's body was found at 8,155 metres in 1999. Whether he reached the summit before he died is a question the mountain has not answered.

Above 8,000 metres the air holds a third of the oxygen at sea level. The body begins to die. Climbers call this the death zone, and the name is literal — every hour spent there shortens the time the body can recover. Most summits happen in May, in a brief window between winter storms and the monsoon. The line of climbers ascending the Hillary Step in good weather is a photograph that has come to define the modern era. It is also the reason Everest is no longer the test it once was. The mountain has not changed. The relationship has.

For the climber who reaches the top, the world below is an undeniable curve. Tibet stretches northward into haze. Nepal falls away in green and grey terraces. The summit is the size of two pool tables. There is nowhere left to climb.