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TIL how tall buildings are
(thelemmy.club)
That's a misleading graph as it starts at 4000m
I think this is more to visualize the size of the ascent on K2, rather than the true size of the mountain.
at 800m the Burj is still at 1/10 of the 2nd tallest mountain.. seems big no?
What's misleading about it?
~~Everest isn’t 8000 meters from the base to peak. It’s 8000 meters at the peak but the foothills are several hundred meters high before you even get to everest. The buildings shown would have to be shown below ground if we really wanted to see them compared to everest’s height.~~
- The buildings are shown as you would see them if they were built at the base of the mountain, to show its size. The sea level is irrelevant for this illustration.
- This isn't Mount Everest.
Then why is the top listed as ~~everest’s height~~ k2’s height (just woke up and can’t read yet), ? It should list height from base to peak, not sea level to peak. It’s misleading this way.
It shows the height above sea level at the base, too.
Well fuck, not only did i misread the mountain but i completely missed the smudge that looks like snow stating the starting height.
I stand corrected. I’m going for coffee so i can look like less of a dipshit today.
Enjoy your coffee, friend!
Buildings and mountain are shown at actual size. The graphic is only comparing prominence.
The misleading part is having the picture labeled as the height of k2 here. The height listed should be its prominence not sea level to peak.
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What's misleading?
It literally tells you the foot of the mountain is already around 4000m above sea level.
Technical question for actual climbers.
How high up can you go by vehicle and still say you 'climbed' the mountain?
Nobody goes on foot from sea level to the top of the mountain, so at what point does the ascent start?
Nobody goes on foot from sea level to the top of the mountain
Tim Macartney-Snape climbed Mount Everest that way. It took him 3 months.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Macartney-Snape#Everest:_Sea_to_Summit_Expedition
The exception that proves the rule.
But thank you, that's pretty interesting.
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If you're not starting on foot from the bottom of the Mariana Trench, you're just a filthy casual.
What if I'm standing on the beach but my balls are all the way inside Challenger Deep?
i thought I would see a dick measuring joke but this is new
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The practical answer is: you drive as far as you legally can.
As a disclaimer, pictured here are the Himalayas, which are at a completely different scale to where I've been, but in my experience there are typically parking spaces/bus stops at the end of public roads. At this point you leave the built up infrastructure and enter nature, and these are often located in a place where the flatter valley ends and a steeper ascent begins. In many cases there are smaller private roads further up to service more remote cabins or farmsteads. Sometimes there are even taxi services that drive you further along using private roads, which can be seen as not fully scaling the mountain yourself. Generally, the closest public parking is considered the starting point and most people will therefore start at the same spot.
I expect that by 2050 it will be common for the 0.01% to land a flying car 100 meters from the summit and then claim to have conquered the peak.
That’s unlikely to happen. Helicopters can’t fly that high, the air is too thin. Similarly, VTOL jets can’t hover at high altitude. You’d need something akin to a SpaceX rocket to manage that.
'flying car'
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For Everest in particular, Base Camp 1 is at about 4000m IIRC, and that's where ascents typically start after some time to acclimate to the already high altitude.
Not a climber but I’m assuming the base of the mountain.
I guess that's what my question is. what is considered 'the base?'
I suppose it varies for each mountain.
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I mean you park the car in the parking lot and then you start at the trailhead. That's really as far as you're allowed to drive up, not like you can drive on the hiking trail
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I very much enjoy the friendship and company of hobby climbers. Professional climbers are, in my experience, 10% incredible and kind people with amazing life stories, 90% self aggrandising spoiled narcissists who think they're invincible, but should instead be dead without the support of dozens of people in their lives, who have never received proper credit or even an honest humble thanks.
Most people who go to do climbs like Annapurna and Everest are already a negative in my book.
Wow the Mia Khalifa is barely a dot on there. I know which one I want to get on top of.
I was going to say I'm very impressed with those buildings actually considering how thin and scrawny they are in comparison, but then I realized 4000m of mountain height from the sea level are technically not visible in this picture.
Context: the foot of Mt. Everest is in itself higher than most mountains. And then on top of all that there is an actual mountain peak you can see on the pictures.
Is the picture to scale in both height and width?
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This makes thebuildings more impressive to me
Can you beat the Aggro Crag?
~~That's why, put a mass accelerator up there to kickstart space launches.~~
~~Yees, maybe not on Mt. Everest. But there are plenty of developed areas with mountains.~~
Mass launchers on Earth would work for things that can sustain large amounts of acceleration. That rules out a lot of things we launch into space. A mass launcher that would be as gentle as a rocket launch would stretch hundreds if not thousands of kilometers and need either a gradual slope or a very wide curve to avoid the side forces. Mass drivers are too good at what they do at their full capacity, and need a lot of room to do it slower.
On the Moon, a mass driver is a no brainer and could launch people in a short run. It's Earth's gravity that's the problem. It sucks.
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In a sci-fi setting I love, they use Kilimandjaro as the base of the space elevator. Would be interesting to see Africa become a space hub.
Billy Brennan: So Mr. Kirby, when you climbed K2, did you base camp at twenty-five or thirty thousand feet?
Paul Kirby: Thirty thousand feet, we were pretty close to the top.
Billy Brennan: You were about a thousand feet above, actually.
Which beast?
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this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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