Top of the Mountain Trivia Quiz

Answer: Climb the highest mountain on each continent

Richard Bass climbed the Seven Summits: Denali (McKinley) in North America, Aconcagua in South America, Blamc in Europe, Kilimanjaro in Africa, Erebus in Antarctica, Kosciusko in Australia and of course Everest in Asia (when he was 55 years old). Since his climb, most Seven Summit lists now consider the islands of the South Pacific to be part of Australia and have replaced Kosciusko with Puncak Jaya, the highest mountain in Papua, Indonesia.

The first man to climb this new list was Patrick Morrow in 1986.

Answer: Transmit live pictures

In 1983, David Breashears lugged his camera equipment up Everest and transmitted live video from the summit. He and his camera equipment later accompanied Richard Bass to the top of Everest during Bass's ascent of the Seven Summits in 1985. The Emmy-award-winning Breashears worked on numerous films involving the Himalayas, including "Seven Years in Tibet" and the IMAX film "Everest".

Answer: Reach the top of Everest in winter

Although pictures of ascents of Everest show snow and ice, these expeditions almost always take place in the late spring, when the weather isn't as brutal. Although the weather is warmest in summer, monsoons from the Indian Ocean bring stormy weather that makes it difficult to climb.

The possibility exists that some of the native climbers (Sherpas) may have also reached the summit in winter, but the Polish team was the first to be documented as doing so.

Answer: Paraglide down the mountain

Frenchman Jean-Marc Boivin had previously set a record by paragliding from Camp IV on Everest (24,900 feet/7,600 meters) in 1979, but in 1988, he made a 60 feet/18 meter run from the top slopes of Everest to launch his paraglider, and he reached Camp II (19,400 feet/5,900 meters) in eleven or twelve minutes (depending on the source). Boivin's adventurous spirit eventually led to his death; he died from internal injuries while making a jump from Angel Falls in Venezuela in 1990.

Answer: Reach the summit without supplemental oxygen

As there is two-thirds less oxygen on top of Mount Everest than there is at sea level, climbing Everest without supplemental oxygen was thought to be impossible until the Italian Messner and Austrian Habeler accomplished it in 1978. In 2008, a team of medical researchers took their own blood samples near the summit of Everest and found that their blood oxygen levels were the lowest ever recorded in living humans. So, besides intrepid adventurers, Everest also attracts scientists looking to understand the effects of diminished oxygen on the human body.

Incidentally, in 1980, Messner was also the first person to reach the top of Everest on a solo ascent, a feat he also accomplished without oxygen.

Answer: She was the first woman to reach the summit.

Junko Tabei was the leader of a team of Japanese women who had a treacherous climb up Everest in May of 1975. Their camp was hit by an avalanche, burying several of the women including Tabei, and they had to be dug out by their Sherpa guides. Twelve days later, Tabei was the first of the team to summit Everest. Tabei downplayed her experience, however; rather than focus on being the first woman to summit the mountain, she pointed out that she was the 36th person to climb Everest.

In 1992, she also became the first woman to conquer the Seven Summits, the highest point on each continent.

Answer: Ski down Everest

Yuichiro Miura was "The Man Who Skied Down Everest", according to the 1975 Academy Award-winning documentary, but his 1970 descent down Everest has been mockingly labeled "The man who fell down Everest", since Miura only skied a small section before pulling a parachute and sliding several thousand feet down the mountain. Davo Karnicar didn't use a parachute, and he remained on his skis from the summit to the base camp.

Besides skiing down Everest, Karnicar also skied down the Seven Summits, the highest peak on each continent. Miura may not have the skiing title, but he did go on to briefly hold the record as the oldest man to summit Mount Everest in 2003 (at age 70) and in 2008 (at age 75).

Answer: They were married on top of Everest.

The couple had kept their plans secret from their families and friends in case they weren't both able to summit. They were only on top of Everest for ten minutes, which allowed for a brief ceremony and pictures; the couple later had a more formal ceremony on solid ground.

Besides being married on top of Everest, their marriage was also symbolic because they were from different castes and ethnic groups, which was unusual in Nepal. Moni Mulepati was also the first non-Sherpa Nepalese woman to climb Everest.

Answer: Land a helicopter on top of Everest

In May of 2005, Delsalle took off from base camp in an unmodified turbo-engine helicopter and flew to the top of Mount Everest. He touched down on the summit and remained there for a couple of minutes in a hover landing without shutting down, and he repeated the feat the following day. Skeptics have questioned whether Delsalle actually landed on Everest. The video of the event was edited; the video from the ground showed him flying around Everest and then the video from his helicopter showed him being on top of the mountain. There wasn't clear video showing him coming in for a landing on Everest. Additionally, those who had climbed Everest and were familiar with the terrain didn't think that the terrain pictured in the video from the helicopter was Everest - "where is the trash?" wrote one blogger.

Interestingly, although Delsalle had the record for the highest helicopter landing (as of that date), he didn't get the record for the highest helicopter flight - that record belonged to another Frenchman, Jean Boulet, who flew his Lama helicopter to an altitude of 40,800 feet (12,500 meters) in 1972. Apparently, the altitude knocked the other "l" out of the helicopter's name - certainly, it was a "Llama" helicopter...

Answer: He was blind.

Erik Weihenmayer was born with a disease that left him totally blind by the age of thirteen, but he never let his disability slow him down; besides mountaineering, he participated in running, rock climbing, skydiving and cycling, among other activities. He was the first blind person to summit Mount Everest and also the first blind person to climb the Seven Summits, the highest point on each continent.

Some other people with disabilities who have conquered Everest include Gary Guller, who in 2003 made it to the top of the mountain with only one arm, and Mark Inglis, a double-amputee who reached the summit in 2006. However, the achievement of Inglis' Everest summit on prosthetic limbs was overshadowed by controversy involving the death of another climber, David Sharp. Sharp died from hypothermia on Everest, 1500 feet below the summit, after being passed by numerous climbers, including Inglis' party who passed Sharp on both their ascent and descent while Sharp lay dying. The incident ignited a debate over climbing ethics, with some climbers maintaining that there isn't a lot that can be done to help a gravely ill person at that elevation. Sir Edmund Hillary disagreed, stating that he would have tried to help the climber, even if it meant forfeiting his attempt at the summit.