California does have the tallests mountain in the contiguous US. It sure as fuck isn’t Mount Shasta.
Mount Whitney stands 14.5k feet tall, and it’s way more fucking badass in Appearance.
Many of Colorado’s mountain summits also stand taller than Shasta, and are multitudes more majestic in appearance.
As for iconic, the Appalachian mountains may not be known by individual name, they are the boy band of mountains in terms of fame in the US. Mount Washington is also extremely iconic. I hadn’t even heard of Shasta till this post. St. Helens is also extremely well-known.
For those wondering, Denali is the tallest mountain in the US, as well as the tallest mountain on land in the world.
EDIT: so for clarification - Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world, at close to 9k meters. When you measure it base-to-peak, however, Denali measures out at 5,486 meters, while Everest is only 5,200 meters.
Something notable is that though Denali is stated as the tallest mountain on land, it seems Rakaposhi in Pakistan has a base-to-peak measure of 6,000 meters. It also is the only mountain whose peak descends to base without interruption apparently.
It claims mountaineer lives on the regular too. A few years ago two different climbers were lost on the mountain at the same time. I wondered how depressing it would be if they found each other, thinking they were saved, only to learn that the other person was lost too.
I had to pull out Google map’s topographic view for this. From base camp to peak, Rakaposhi is only 4,300 meters.
However, if you measure from the Hunza river - which Rakaposhi directly descends all the way down to - the descent looks to be approximately 5,920 meters. That is interesting.
Thanks for mentioning the Appalachians. I’m going to geek out on them a little bit now. The Appalachians may not be as big now as the the Rockies but they were plenty big enough to hold up westward expansion for a couple hundred years. Why aren’t they tall? Because they are old. Why aren’t they as long as some other ranges? Because they are old.
How old? They began forming more than 1.2 billion years ago and peaked during the formation of Pangea 500-300 million years ago. Were they bigger? When Pangea was breaking up they were as tall as the Himalayas and the Alps are today. Longer? The Highlands of Scotland were part of the Appalachians, the Little Atlas mountains in Morocco were part of the Appalachians. At their longest they spanned 3 modern continents and acted as a continental divide for a Supercontinent.
What were animals doing when they were forming? Land animals didn’t exist, sea animals were just beginning to evolve bones. Why is there so much coal under the Appalachians? The organisms that break down plant material didn’t exist yet. Ancient forests (not modern tree based forests, trees didn’t exist yet, liverworts, mosses, rhododendron, and ferns) were buried whole with no decomposition. All of the carbon held in those forests was trapped under a massive amount of earth for hundreds millions of years.
As I understand it, there are many weird aspects about measuring mountain height. From base to peak, Donali is 18k feet.
My overall understanding on how that is specifically determined is out of my understanding. I’m guessing other mountains which are taller have their bases in the ocean which puts them into a different ‘category’. Denali just happens to be completely land-based.
California does have the tallests mountain in the contiguous US. It sure as fuck isn’t Mount Shasta.
Mount Whitney stands 14.5k feet tall, and it’s way more fucking badass in Appearance.
Many of Colorado’s mountain summits also stand taller than Shasta, and are multitudes more majestic in appearance.
As for iconic, the Appalachian mountains may not be known by individual name, they are the boy band of mountains in terms of fame in the US. Mount Washington is also extremely iconic. I hadn’t even heard of Shasta till this post. St. Helens is also extremely well-known.
For those wondering, Denali is the tallest mountain in the US, as well as the tallest mountain on land in the world.
EDIT: so for clarification - Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world, at close to 9k meters. When you measure it base-to-peak, however, Denali measures out at 5,486 meters, while Everest is only 5,200 meters.
Something notable is that though Denali is stated as the tallest mountain on land, it seems Rakaposhi in Pakistan has a base-to-peak measure of 6,000 meters. It also is the only mountain whose peak descends to base without interruption apparently.
EDIT 2:got my numbers mixed up, fixed some info.
Mt. Rainer in Washington is 14.4k and is one bad looking motherfucker as well.
Most glaciated in the lower 48 too 😎
It claims mountaineer lives on the regular too. A few years ago two different climbers were lost on the mountain at the same time. I wondered how depressing it would be if they found each other, thinking they were saved, only to learn that the other person was lost too.
And we live in constant, vague fear of its inevitible eruption and our subsequent demise.
Not just eruption, it is PRIMED for a total sector collapse like Mt. St. Helens.
And that is why I forced my friends to take a map of the lahar hazard zones with them when they were buying a house in Pierce County.
the Green river and Tacoma are FUCKED when that day comes
Oh for sure dude. It’s gon’ be BAAAAAD. The alarms in Orting might give them 5 minutes to run up the hill but downstream is still hosed.
Depending on how you define “base”, Rakaposhi might be taller coming in at 19,357 ft.
I had to pull out Google map’s topographic view for this. From base camp to peak, Rakaposhi is only 4,300 meters.
However, if you measure from the Hunza river - which Rakaposhi directly descends all the way down to - the descent looks to be approximately 5,920 meters. That is interesting.
I like tall mountains, but prominence is way more important to make a mountain seem special
Thanks for mentioning the Appalachians. I’m going to geek out on them a little bit now. The Appalachians may not be as big now as the the Rockies but they were plenty big enough to hold up westward expansion for a couple hundred years. Why aren’t they tall? Because they are old. Why aren’t they as long as some other ranges? Because they are old.
How old? They began forming more than 1.2 billion years ago and peaked during the formation of Pangea 500-300 million years ago. Were they bigger? When Pangea was breaking up they were as tall as the Himalayas and the Alps are today. Longer? The Highlands of Scotland were part of the Appalachians, the Little Atlas mountains in Morocco were part of the Appalachians. At their longest they spanned 3 modern continents and acted as a continental divide for a Supercontinent.
What were animals doing when they were forming? Land animals didn’t exist, sea animals were just beginning to evolve bones. Why is there so much coal under the Appalachians? The organisms that break down plant material didn’t exist yet. Ancient forests (not modern tree based forests, trees didn’t exist yet, liverworts, mosses, rhododendron, and ferns) were buried whole with no decomposition. All of the carbon held in those forests was trapped under a massive amount of earth for hundreds millions of years.
I was with you until you started talking about Denali. What do you mean by that?
As I understand it, there are many weird aspects about measuring mountain height. From base to peak, Donali is 18k feet.
My overall understanding on how that is specifically determined is out of my understanding. I’m guessing other mountains which are taller have their bases in the ocean which puts them into a different ‘category’. Denali just happens to be completely land-based.
My brother the entire Himalayas are land locked
I did look into it more. Everest has the highest peak, but when measured base to peak, is 200 meters shorter than Denali.
Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain in the world, if you ignore the water.