Mount Everest looms a little taller now, at least to mapmakers. Climbers and scientists this spring remeasured its peak at 29,035 feet—7 feet higher than its official elevation.
The mountaineers, working with Bradford Washburn of the Boston Museum of Science, carried receivers that pick up signals from Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. The men measured the height of the snow-covered peak but not of the rock below the snow. "The rock summit is still unknown," says Charles Corfield of Palo Alto, Calif., science manager of the team.
Washburn announced the new measurement on Nov. 11, 1999. The National Geographic Society, which helped support the work, has adopted that figure and will include it on maps and globes.
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