Peaks and Valleys
A tour in three dimensions of our planet's highest and lowest spots
As we travel across Earth's surface, its features often seem vividly vertical.
Crags, cliffs, chasms, escarpments, gorges, trenches – tectonic forces have conspired with erosion to smash continents together, to erect saw-toothed mountain ranges, to carve deep canyons, to pry open abyssal ocean trenches.
A distance of 12.3 vertical miles separates Earth's highest point – Mount Everest – and its lowest – the Pacific Ocean's Challenger Deep. But from a planetary perspective, these ups and downs are puny: if Earth were small enough to hold in our hand, it would be smoother than a billiard ball.
Regardless, our planet's peaks and valleys represent some of its most hostile, remote, and beautiful environments. These extreme locations continue to hold a strange allure to explorers and adventurers. To those of us who are adventurers of the armchair type, and who are unlikely to experience these vertiginous locales first-hand, we present this virtual tour of Earth's highs and lows.
Asia
Mt. Everest
29,029 feet | 8,848 meters
The highest point on Earth. First climbed by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay in 1953, Everest's summit has been reached by nearly 4,500 people and sometimes experiences traffic jams. Yet it remains a potentially deadly mountain: on average five climbers die on Everest each year.
K2
28,251 feet | 8,611 meters
K2 is the second highest point on our planet. Straddling the China-Pakistan border, it is considered a much more difficult climb than Everest. Fewer than 400 people have summited K2, and at least 82 people have died in the attempt.
Kangchenjunga
28,169 feet | 8,586 meters
Once thought to be Earth's highest mountain, Kangchenjunga was first successfully climbed in 1955 by a British expedition. Then and subsequently, climbers stop just short of the summit out of respect for the monarchs of Sikkim, who consider the mountain sacred. It is Earth's third highest point.
Lhotse
27,940 feet | 8,516 meters
Lhotse (right) is literally overshadowed by Everest, its nearest neighbor. It was first successfully climbed in 1956 by a Swiss team, and is the world's fourth highest mountain.
Yarlung Tsangpo Canyon
7,440 feet | 2,268 meters
Himalayan superlatives are not limited to heights. At the eastern end of the range, a series of rivers course through spectacular gorges, of which this is the deepest – not only in the Himalaya but in the world. The Yarlung Tsangpo is a tributary of the Brahmaputra River.
Dead Sea
-1,412 feet | -403.5 meters
Thousands of miles westward, the shores of this body of water comprise the lowest land on the surface of the Earth. The saltiness of the Dead Sea's water makes swimmers highly buoyant.
The Americas
Aconcagua
22,838 feet | 6,961 meters
Aconcagua boasts at least three "ests" – highest point in South America, highest in the western hemisphere, highest in the southern hemisphere. Despite its height, the Argentine peak's most common summit approach is considered non-technical.
Chimborazo
20,548 feet | 6,263 meters
Ecuador's tallest mountain gains a more impressive superlative due to its proximity to the equator: its summit is the farthest point on the surface of the Earth from its center. The reason: Earth, like us armchair adventurers, has a bulge around its middle.
Laguna del Carbón
-344 feet | -105 meters
South America's lowest point is this dry lakebed in southeastern Argentina. It's perhaps not surprising that low points are basins within desert areas. If these regions received more rainfall, surface water would eventually carve a path to the sea, which would ultimately rush in and flood them.
Denali
20,146 feet | 6190 meters
The tallest mountain in North America looms majestically within its Alaska national park. It was first summited in 1913.
Mt. Whitney
14,505 feet | 4,421 meters
The highest point in the 48 contiguous United States is in California's Sierra Nevada mountains and overlooks Death Valley to the east.
Badwater Basin
-279 feet | -85 meters
Three valleys over and only 85 miles eastward is North America's lowest point.
Mt. Mitchell
6,684 feet | 1,856 meters
The highest point in the eastern United States is in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and is in close proximity to the highest parking lot in the eastern U.S.
Africa & Europe
Kilimanjaro
19,341 feet | 5,895 meters
This dormant volcano in Tanzania is Africa's highest point. Its renowned and much-studied "snows" are disappearing as Earth's climate warms.
Lake Assal
-509 feet | -155 meters
A highly saline lake in the northern Rift Valley of east Africa is the lowest point on the continent. Salt has been mined here for centuries.
Caspian Sea
-92 feet | -28 meters
A couple thousand miles north of Lake Assal is Europe's lowest place – the shore of the Caspian Sea. This view shows its northern portion, because the Caspian's southern shores are in Asia.
Mt. Elbrus
18,510 feet | 5,642 meters
This volcanic peak in the Caucasus mountains is Europe's – and Russia's – highest point. Technical skills are not required to climb Elbrus, but 15 to 30 people die on it each year, due mainly to poor preparation and severe weather.
Mont Blanc
15,774 feet | 4,808 meters
Although not as tall as Elbrus, Mont Blanc is far better known and is the highest point in western Europe. It straddles the French-Italian border and is a popular hiking, mountaineering, and skiing destination.
Australia & Antarctica
Mount Kosciuszko
7,310 feet | 2,228 meters
Australia is known for a variety of extremes, but not for its alpine wonders. Kosciuszko's summit can be scaled by hikers of modest skills.
Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre
-30 feet | -9 meters
This shallow lake in the Outback of south-central Australia periodically fills and evaporates as rains come and go. Originally named after the first European to see it, a second, indigenous, name was added in acknowledgement that human eyes saw it long before it was "discovered" by Mr. Eyre.
Vinson Massif
16,050 feet | 4,892 meters
The highest point in Antarctica emerges from the ice near the base of the Antarctic Peninsula. An American expedition summited the mountain in 1966.
The Pacific
Mauna Kea
13,803 feet | 4207 meters
The summit of this, the highest point in Hawaii, is modest by mountaineering standards, but by other measures the massive volcano is inarguably the world's most impressive mountain. Measured from the seafloor on which it rests, it is over 33,000 feet tall; its volume is in excess of 770 cubic miles.
Challenger Deep
-35,755 feet | -10,898 meters
This deepest point on the Earth's seabed is a canyon within the larger canyon of the Mariana Trench, an arc-shaped chasm beneath the western Pacific Ocean where the Pacific Plate does a slow-motion dive beneath the much smaller Mariana Plate. In 1960 Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard successfully challenged the Deep aboard the submersible Trieste.
Summing up the summits, below are the relative heights of the peaks featured in this story...plus a to-scale plunge to the abyssal Challenger Deep.
