Geology of Mount Everest

The Himalayan range, topped by 29,035-foot (8,850-meter) Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world, is one of the largest and most distinct geographic features on the earth's surface. The range, running northwest to southeast, stretches 1,400 miles (2,300 kilometers); varies between 140 miles and 200 miles wide; crosses or abuts five countries-India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan, and People's Republic of China; is the mother of three major rivers-Indus, Ganges, and Tsampo-Bramhaputra rivers; and boasts over 100 mountains higher than 23,600 feet (7,200 meters)-all higher than any mountains found on any other continent.
 The sedimentary and metamorphic rock layers on Mount Everest gently tilt northward while granite basement rocks are found on Nuptse and below the mountain.

            

The Himalayas Created by the Collision of 2 Plates

The Himalayas and Mount Everest are young geologically speaking. They began forming over 65 million years ago when two of the earth's great crustal plates-the Eurasian plate and the Indo-Australian plate-collided. The Indian sub-continent steamed northeastward, crashing into Asia, folding and pushing the plate boundaries, and steadily shoving the Himalayas over five miles high. The Indian plate, moving forward about 1.7 inches a year, is being slowly pushed under or subducted by the Eurasian plate, which obstinately refuses to move, forcing up the Himalayan range and the Tibetan Plateau, both rising from 5 to 10 millimeters a year. Geologists estimate that India will continue moving northward for almost a thousand miles over the next 10 million years.

Light Rocks are Pushed Up as High Peaks

Heavier rock is pushed back down into the earth's mantle at the point of contact, but lighter rock, like limestone and sandstone is pushed upward to form the towering mountains. At the tops of the highest peaks, like Mount Everest, it is possible to find 400-million-year-old fossils of sea creatures and shells that were deposited at the bottoms of shallow tropical seas that are now over 25,000 feet above sea level.

"The Summit of Mt. Everest is Marine Limestone"

The great nature writer John McPhee wrote about Mount Everest in his book Basin and Range: "When the climbers in 1953 planted their flags on the highest mountain, they set them in snow over the skeletons of creatures that had lived in the warm clear ocean that India, moving north, blanked out. Possibly as much as twenty thousand feet below the seafloor, the skeletal remains had turned into rock. This one fact is a treatise in itself on the movements of the surface of the earth. If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to one sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone."