Lhotse

Where is Lhotse?

Lhotse is part of the Mahalangur Himal, Himalayas.

You will find it in: Nepal, China.

Summit: 27.962° N, 86.933° E

The story behind it

Everest and Lhotse are joined by a high saddle called the South Col, and that saddle sits so high that Lhotse rises only 610 metres above it — less than any other eight-thousander. Climbers heading for Everest spend days on the Lhotse Face, an enormous sheet of blue ice, before the two routes finally part near the top, so half an Everest expedition is really a climb up Lhotse. The first people to stand on the summit were the Swiss climbers Fritz Luchsinger and Ernst Reiss, in May 1956. One side of the mountain still keeps its secret: the huge north-east face has never been climbed by anyone. And the middle summit, Lhotse Middle, was one of the last named points above 8 000 metres anywhere on Earth to be reached — a Russian team got there in 2001, forty-five years after the main peak.

Find it on the globe

Lhotse is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.

It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.