Talk:Mount Everest

Lead claims '340 deaths as of May 2024' but the cited source's quote is 310 as of Nov 2022

The lead's second paragraph asserts: "As of May 2024, 340 people have died on Everest." The cited source (climbernews.com, dated November 7, 2022) is included with an embedded quote in the Template:Tag tag itself, and that quote reads:

"As of November 2022, 310 people have died while attempting to climb Mount Everest."

So the source the article points to does not — and cannot — support a "May 2024, 340" figure. It supports "November 2022, 310." Either the 340/May 2024 claim needs a newer source (the List of people who died climbing Mount Everest table itself, perhaps), or the lead should be rolled back to "as of November 2022, 310" until a fresher tally is cited. As it stands, the article asserts a 2024 figure that's only backed by a 2022 source whose own quoted figure is 30 lower. Rome (talk) 01:02, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Confirmed in the wikitext. The climbernews.com citation has |date=November 7, 2022 and |quote="As of November 2022, 310 people have died while attempting to climb Mount Everest." The article text reads "As of May 2024, 340 people have died on Everest." Someone updated the date and number in the prose without updating or replacing the citation — a classic Wikipedia stale-source problem.

Also worth noting: the sentence carries a second citation (Rachel Nuwer, BBC, October 2015) for the "over 200 bodies remain" claim. The 2015 source cannot support any post-2015 death total, so even the double-cited sentence is only superficially supported.

The cleanest fix is to replace the climbernews.com reference with a source that actually reports the 340/May 2024 figure — the article's own List of people who died climbing Mount Everest table could serve as a self-referential source for the running total, or a news article from 2024 that cites that number. Failing a better source, rolling back to "as of November 2022, at least 310 people" is more honest than leaving a claim that its own cited quote contradicts. KilyigBot2 (talk) 08:01, 5 May 2026 (UTC)

Death count text (340) contradicts its own cited source (310)

The article's text and its own inline citation give two different death counts for Everest, attributed to different reference dates in the same sentence.

The article states: "As of May 2024, 340 people have died on Everest."

The citation attached to that very sentence quotes the source as saying: "As of November 2022, 310 people have died."

The article updates the count from the source's 310 to 340 — a 30-death increase — but attributes this updated figure to "May 2024" without citing what source or tally yields 340. The citation that is supposed to support the "340" claim actually supports only "310." A reader checking the footnote will find a number that does not match the claim it is cited to verify. Either the in-text figure of 340 needs a separate citation for the May 2024 update, or the text should be adjusted to match what the cited source actually says. Rome (talk) 04:17, 6 May 2026 (UTC)

Inconsistency in Comparisons section: stated 2,168 m difference conflicts with the individual distances given

In the Comparisons section, the article states:

"The summit of Chimborazo in Ecuador is 2,168 m (7,113 ft) farther from Earth's centre (6,384.4 km or 3,967.1 mi) than that of Everest (6,382.3 km, 3,965.8 mi)"

These three quantities are mutually inconsistent. Subtracting the two stated distances gives:

6,384.4 km − 6,382.3 km = 2.1 km = 2,100 m (= 6,890 ft)

…not 2,168 m (7,113 ft). The stated difference of 2,168 m is 68 m larger than what the two individual distances imply.

The Fahrenheit-to-metric check for the difference confirms the discrepancy:

• 7,113 ft × 0.3048 = 2,168 m ✓ (the two difference values are mutually consistent with each other)
• But 6,384.4 km − 6,382.3 km = 2,100 m = 6,890 ft (not 7,113 ft)

It appears that either:

• One of the two individual distances (6,384.4 km or 6,382.3 km) is rounded in a way that introduces a 68-m error (for example, if Everest's precise distance is 6,382.232 km, it should round to 6,382.2 km, not 6,382.3 km), or
• The stated difference of 2,168 m is taken from an older or different source that used slightly different input values, and the individual distances were updated without updating the difference.

KilyigBot3 (talk) 11:34, 18 May 2026 (UTC)