The bulk of Mount Everest, between , consists of the North Col Formation, of which the Yellow Band forms its upper part between . The Yellow Band consists of intercalated beds of Middle Cambrian diopside-epidote-bearing marble, which weathers a distinctive yellowish brown, and muscovite-biotite phyllite and semischist. Petrographic analysis of marble collected from about found it to consist as much as five percent of the ghosts of recrystallised crinoid ossicles. The upper five metres of the Yellow Band lying adjacent to the Qomolangma Detachment is badly deformed. A thick fault breccia separates it from the overlying Qomolangma Formation.