Measuring Mountains

For all the change in the world, some things seem immutable. The sun rises in the East. A mile is 5,280 feet long. Two pints make a quart. Mt. Everest is the highest in the world.

Ah, well, so much for Mt. Everest--perhaps. University of Washington scientists, using lasers and a navigation satellite, have recalculated the height of K2 to be 29,064 feet above sea level, or 36 feet higher than Mt. Everest. K2, on the border of China and Pakistan about 900 miles northwest of Everest, may be even taller; scientists over-compensated for one possibly flawed measurement.

Until now, K2 was believed to be 28,250 feet. But the scientists are unwilling to declare that Everest is no longer the world’s apex. That conclusion cannot be reached, they say, until the same sophisticated means are used to remeasure Everest, on the border of China and Nepal.

K2 may be a mundane name--consisting of a 19th-Century surveyor’s coordinates--but K2 is not a mundane mountain. A striking pyramid, it stands alone and unchallenged at the head of the Baltoro Glacier, and generally is a more formidable climb than Everest. Everest is a somewhat obscure peak flanked by other giants like Lhotse and Nuptse. An Italian team made the first ascent of K2 in 1954--a year after Everest was first climbed.

No one should rush to rewrite the record books until Everest’s height has been recalculated. Even then the figures will change sometime, for geologists tell us that the Himalayas are a relatively young range--and still rising inch by inch.