The World's Highest Marathon Starts at 5,356 Metres — Right Where Climbers Rope Up for the Khumbu Icefall
Every May, around 250 runners toe a start line at Everest Base Camp and run a full 42.195km marathon through the thinnest air on the planet — a stretch most trekkers spend two weeks walking.
Everest Base Camp is where most people's trek ends. For roughly 250 runners each May, it's the starting line. The Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon — recognised as the highest marathon on Earth — begins at 5,356m, at the edge of the Khumbu Icefall where climbing expeditions rope up for their summit push, and finishes 42.195km later in the Sherpa trading town of Namche Bazaar.
Key facts
- Full marathon starts at Everest Base Camp, 5,356m, and finishes in Namche Bazaar at 3,550m.
- Entries are capped at roughly 250 runners across all categories, to limit impact on the trail and ecosystem.
- Held every year on 29 May — the anniversary of Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary's first Everest ascent in 1953.
- First run in 1985; relaunched for Everest's 2003 Golden Jubilee and renamed the Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon from 2004.
A marathon that starts where the mountain turns dangerous
Most Everest Base Camp trekkers arrive at 5,356m exhausted, take their photos and turn around. The marathon's start line is the exact same spot — the flat, glacier-ice staging ground where mountaineers check their crampons and harnesses before entering the Khumbu Icefall, one of the most dangerous sections of the entire Everest climbing route. Runners don't go up into the Icefall; they turn the other way, dropping back down the trekking trail toward Namche, retracing in a matter of hours the route it took most of them roughly a week and a half to walk up.
Three races, three starting lines
| Category | Start | Start elevation | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Extreme ultramarathon | Everest Base Camp | 5,356m | 60km |
| Full marathon | Everest Base Camp | 5,356m | 42.195km |
| Half marathon | Dingboche | 4,395m | 21km |
| Finish (all categories) | Namche Bazaar | 3,550m | — |
The full marathon drops roughly 1,800 vertical metres over its distance. Runners aren't just fighting the thin air of a start line above 5,000m — where a jog is a genuine cardiovascular event even for elite athletes — they're descending a rocky, high-altitude trekking trail still busy with yak trains, porters and the same wide-eyed trekkers who took a week and a half to walk up it.
Why it exists
The race was pioneered in 1985 by Jan Turner and Tony Hunt, then relaunched in 2003 as the "Golden Jubilee Everest Marathon" to mark 50 years since Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary's first ascent of Everest on 29 May 1953. From 2004 it took its current name, the Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon, and has run most years since — postponed only once, to October 2015, after that spring's devastating earthquake. It remains held on 29 May, tying the race permanently to the date Everest was first climbed.
What this means for trekkers
What this means for you
You don't need to be a runner to relate to this. Most Everest Base Camp trekkers cover the Base Camp-to-Namche stretch over three or four gentle, descending days with long tea-house lunches. Marathon runners do the same drop before dinner, at altitudes that leave most first-time visitors breathless standing still. If you're planning your own trek and want an honest read on what "fit enough" really means above 5,000m, our EBC fitness check is a better starting point than any generic training plan. And if that start-line view has you sold, remember Base Camp itself won't show you the summit — only a short climb to Kala Patthar will.
Registration for the Tenzing Hillary Everest Marathon opens through the event's official organisers each year, and the small field fills fast among trail runners chasing bragging rights on the world's highest certified course. For everyone else, the same trail — Base Camp to Namche, minus the sprint — is exactly the route walked on our 14-day Everest Base Camp trek, at a pace that actually lets you enjoy it.
Source: Wikipedia — Everest Marathon.
Cover photo: Pexels LATAM via Pexels (Pexels License).
来源： Wikipedia — Everest Marathon
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