KATHMANDU: Nepal's government has ordered a new measurement of Mount Everest to determine exactly how high the world's highest mountain is, an official said on Wednesday. Nepal has continued to recognize the decades-old measurement of 29,028 feet (8,448 meters). However, there have been other claims recently by China and western climbers.
Land reforms ministry spokesman Gopal Giri said that the government decided last week during its annual budget speech to take the new measurement. The plans are being put in place this week and the work will entail placing a device on the peak that will measure the height using satellite technology , he said. Stations will be set up in three different locations using the global positioning system.
"China, in its border talks with Nepal, has always been asking (us) to measure the rock height without snow of Mt Everest," said Giri . During recent Nepal-China border talks, Beijing claimed that Everest measured 8,844 metres. Giri made it clear that as Nepal is technologically capable of completing the process on its own, there is no need to depend on the measurement that was taken long ago by a foreigner. The task would take two years, he said. An American expedition in 1999 said it used GPS satellites to determine the peak to be 29,035 feet (8,850 meters).
Everest has been climbed by thousands of people since it was first conquered by New Zealander Edmund Hillary and his Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay in 1953.
Everest is popularly known as 'Sagarmatha' or head of the sky among the Nepalese people while the Tibetans call it 'Jhomolungma' . In 1856, British India government officially recognized its height as 8,840 metres, making it world's highest mountain. Later in 1955, an Indian survey team determined the height at 8,848 metres.