High and Mighty

How high is high? Mt. Everest has always been one standard, as the world’s highest peak. But that distinction was cast in doubt early this year when University of Washington scientists stunned the mountaineering world. Using satellite technology, they recalculated the second-highest peak, K2 in Pakistan, to be 29,064 feet, or 36 feet higher than Everest. Now, however, an Italian team has used similar satellite measurements to put Everest right back where it should be: in first place at 29,108 feet.

Mt. Everest, in the Nepalese Himalayas, first was discovered to be the summit of the world at 29,002 feet above sea level by the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India in 1852. Originally designated Peak XV by British surveyors, it later was named for Sir George Everest, a director of the Great Trigonometrical Survey.

Everest subsequently was calculated to be 29,028 feet, and that was the height recorded in history books when it was first climbed by a British expedition in 1953, by Swiss the following year and by Americans in 1963. Until the University of Washington computation, K2 has been listed at 28,250 feet. The Italian team that came up with the new height for Everest also rechecked K2 and found it to be 28,268 feet above sea level.

U.S. mountaineers are willing to accept the new measurements by the Italian survey team led by 90-year-old Ardito Desio. Desio is a respected scientist who also was the leader of the Italian expedition that made the first ascent of K2 in 1954. Bradford Washburn, a distinguished American mountaineer and cartographer, said, “The controversy would seem to be settled the way we always thought it would be settled--in favor of Everest.”

K2 indisputably is one of the world’s most beautiful mountains, more striking in many ways than Mt. Everest. But there can be only one highest--and Everest was, and is, highest.