Mount Everest Is Not the Tallest Peak in the World, This Volcano Is

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 6, 4:19AM EST · Published May 28, 10:29AM EDT

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Mount Everest Is Not the Tallest Peak in the World, This Volcano Is — © Thinkstock

The peak of Mount Everest, where 11 people have died in the last week, is 29,035 feet above sea level. That makes it, according to almost every measure, the world’s tallest mountain. However, some geologists dispute the label.

“Feet above sea level” is an inaccurate way to measure the height of a mountain, according to many experts, because it does not show how tall a mountain is from its base to its peak. Based on that standard, Mauna Kea is 32,808 feet tall when measured from its base below the Pacific Ocean to its peak 13,796 feet above the ocean’s surface. According to research published at Geology.com, “tall” should be defined as “the total vertical distance between their base and their summit”. By that measure, Mauna Kea would be, without dispute, the “world’s tallest mountain.”

Mauna Kea is a dormant volcano on the Island of Hawaii, the largest island of the 50th State. It was last active about 5,000 years ago, according to the U.S. Department of the Interior’s U.S. Geological Survey. It is the only Hawaiian volcano once covered by glaciers.

Mauna Kea has another distinction. It is home to the world’s largest observatory.

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Known as the Mauna Kea Observatories, it is part of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. Its ability to gather light from space is about 60 times that of the Hubble Space Telescope. The Mauna Kea Observatories is run by astronomers from eleven nations. Other than its height the observatory has another distinction. The University of Hawaii writes, “The atmosphere above the mountain is extremely dry — which is important in measuring infrared and submillimeter radiation from celestial sources – and cloud-free, so that the proportion of clear nights is among the highest in the world.”

Mount Everest, a challenge to thousands of mountaineers since Sir Edmund Percival Hillary and Nepalese Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay reached the summit on 29 May 1953, is not, by one measure accepted by geologists, the tallest mountain in the world at all. Mauna Kea is. It also has the distinction of being among the highest points in every state.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.