Where is Everest Base Camp?

There are two Everest Base Camps: one in Tibet and one in Nepal. We look at them in detail in Tibet Everest Base Camp and Nepal Everest Base Camp. But some basic working facts:

The base camp we’re talking about in this blog post is the southern one in Nepal.

Nepal's Everest Base Camp is inside of Sagarmatha National Park. Most of the Everest Base Camp trek, which starts in the mountainside town of Lukla and ends at base camp, is also inside Sagarmatha. 

South Base Camp and most of Nepal's Everest Base Camp trek route are located within Sagarmatha National Park. Sagarmatha is in the Solukhumbu region in the east of the country. You can see its position on the map below.

Map of national parks in Nepal

Sagarmatha National Park is famous for its high peaks, glaciers, steep, forested valleys, elusive snow leopards, and the Sherpa people who live there.

The name Sagarmatha is actually the Nepali name for Mount Everest. It means ‘forehead in the sky’, which is rather more poetic than Everest, which is the surname of the Welsh surveyor who mapped much of the subcontinent in the mid 1800s.

Sagarmatha has been a World Heritage Site since 1979. 

Sagarmatha National Park is home to eight mountains reaching over 7,000 m

Nepal's Everest Base Camp sits at 5,364 m (17,598 ft) above sea level. At this altitude oxygen levels are pretty low, and those of us unused to such rarified air will most certainly feel the impact.

The starting point for the Everest Base Camp route is Lukla, as you already know, which sits at 2,860 m above sea level. This means you ascend roughly 2,500 vertical metres over the course of the Everest Base Camp route! It’s one serious step climber of a route. 

Twins Miguel and Pablo on a marked boulder in base camp

Everest Base Camp is also located at the foot of the Khumbu Glacier, which flows between Mt Everest and the Lhotse-Nuptse ridge. This is the world’s highest glacier.

At the head (top) of Khumbu Glacier is the infamous Khumbu Icefall, a steep part of the glacier that's known to form large crevasses with little warning. Those ascending Mt Everest have to cross the Khumbu Icefall, and most try to do this early in the day when the ice hasn’t yet had a chance to thaw and potentially crack. 

Mt Everest, to remind you, is a whopping 8,848 m (29,029 ft) above sea level. That’s almost 3,500 m higher than Everest Base Camp! But climbers don’t hike to the peak in one go – there are four further overnight staging posts for climbers that help them to acclimatise each step of the way before the final push. 

Finally, if you're thinking of trekking to Everest Base Camp, we think you'll enjoy the video below!