Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Quest for New Line-of-Sight Record for Mt. Whitney

Four years ago, Dr. John H. Samson, Professor of Physics at Loughborough University in the UK took what I consider to be an amazing photograph. He took a picture of San Gorgonio--190 miles away! You can see his photo here on Dr. Samson's Flickr site, or here on my personal SmugMug site. Dr. Samson's San Gorgonio photo currently holds the US record for the longest line-of-sight, identifiable feature in the 48 states. (Over 200-mile records are in Alaska from Mt. McKinley). Another photo with a Digital Elevation Map (DEM) is here.


The longest line-of-sight record, so far in the US (but not photographed), is 192 miles, set by Commander C.L. Garner of the Coast and Geodetic Survey in 1933. He sighted Mt. Shasta from Mt. St. Helena (north of San Francisco), which was 192 miles. He did this with a 12-inch-mirrored heliotrope instrument. You can read about this accomplishment here, written by Dr. Andrew Young.


I think these records can be broken by a Mount Whitney climber. There is a mountain in Nevada, Troy Peak (11,298 ft.), 195 miles, at 51 degrees true north (37 degrees magnetic north), which is waiting for one of our summiters to photograph! I thought I had viewed it a few years ago, but now I have my doubts, and I certainly do not have a photograph. Come to think of it, someone on the board may already have a photo of Troy Peak and not know it. If we can prove the identity in the photo, it will be written up as the new US record for the lower 48 states. Jonathan de Ferranti of the UK is waiting for someone here to prove it. See his write-up here.

Note: Related discussion is here.

For you Whitney veterans, 51 degrees true north (37 degrees magnetic north) puts the line of sight right over Gamblers Special Peak (11,960 ft.).

i'll give a shot this weekend! It's forcasted to be partly cloudy though

-lance

Lance, there is a big catch...

You will need PERFECT seeing conditions to see 195 miles away! It probably would take Troy Peak with the Sun behind it at sunrise.

I think it would be an incredible feat to capture such a photo.

How would one go about figuring line of site distance? I have a picture i took from the top of Mount Bachelor in Oregon looking south. You can clearly see Mt Shasta and many peaks in between the two. Thanks, Gary

google earth can give you a really good distance. Just pick two points with the line tool and it'll tell you.

-lance

Looks like my distance between Mt Bachelor and Mt Shasta is about 188 miles (per google earth). It was a beautiful clear winter day when I took the photo. If I can find the negative (35mm) I will scan and post the pic.

Gary

duelmen3, your Google line got you pretty close. If you obtain the latitude and longitude for both peaks, there are Internet calculators that can give you very precise figures. I happen to have my own database, with most of Oregon's peaks, including Bachelor Mountain, plus most of California's mountains. The database uses spherical trigonometry for the calculations, and shows 179 miles for the distance between the two peaks. It also shows the line-of-sight at 188 degree true north (172 degrees magnetic north) from Bachelor to Shasta. It also shows there is no other mountain exactly in between, which is important to know when you are pointing your camera to a peak 179 miles away!

I hope you can post the photo. Thanks for your report.

Wayne - would the 179 miles be the line-of-sight, and the 188 miles be the length of the arc? Or is the difference between the two due to measurement method?

so i took a picture from whitney at 51 degrees, more or less. With the condition i don't think it got as far as you wanted. Once i figure out how to post it i will. Darned new fangled internet doo-dad...

-lance

gregf, I do lots of line measurements on my maps for rough figures. So, it is the method. The smaller the scale, and shorter the distance, the better or more precise the line measurement can be. But when you have precise latitude and longitude coordinates, the calculations are exact, depending on how many decimal places you use, especially over long distances. And, of course, maps are flat (which apparently fools the flat-earth advocates), but hand-drawn topo-map lines are not able to account for the earth's curvature. The calculations I use are for line of sight on our ellipsoid sphere. Dr. Andrew Young has a good write-up, which you can click on HERE.

Hiked to the top of Mt Lassen on Labor Day and took lots of photos up there, not the least of which was Mount Rose near my home in the Reno area. Mount Rose is 115 miles from Mount Lassen according to the GPS calculator. I had to fuss with the contrast on photo #2 to bring out the peak a little bit more. Use your zoom feature to see it good. You also can see the Moonlight Fire in my panorama vid.

Cya
http://www.hikeofyourlife.com/Lassen.html

Nice photo, CYA. Mt. Rose climbers can also see Mt. Shasta 186 miles away in clear weather.

Sierra Snail recently came close to taking a photo of the elusive Troy Peak from the top of Mt. Whitney, but a couple of his fellow summiters blocked the view. Maybe next time...

Troy Peak at 195 miles away in Nevada is 14 degrees to the left of Keynot Peak, or 6 degrees left of Mt. Inyo. The record books are waiting for the photographer and his or her photo!

The "distance to the horizon" article by Andrew Young was fascinating. Especially this part which is mind-boggling:

"In conditions that produce superior mirages, there are inversion layers in which the ray curvature exceeds that of the Earth. Then, in principle, you can see infinitely far — there really is no horizon."

Therefore, the real prize should go to the first person who can photograph their butt off in the distance. There are many challenges I see in trying this -- for example, mountains may block the view. Obviously then your best chance for success is to get on top of a super tall mountain where the view is unobstructed and the air is cleaner. The next challenge is in hauling the requisite high-powered telescope up to the top (with a camera attached). Unfortunately, this may require multiple trips. However, you may be able to get by with a lower powered telescope if you are able to gain a lot of weight so your butt has a better chance of being spotted. However, no matter how big it is, finding your butt may be a challenge if it blends in to the background; so I suggest wearing brightly colored pants (orange??).

Rumor has it that this is already possible in Texas.

Wayne -

I'll give it a try on 9/29/07. If the weather favors a good view do you think that an average Canon digital camera will be able to capture the image?

Wayne, or others -

TWO QUESTIONS:

1- Does 51 degrees true north mean 51 degrees east of true north (and 37 degrees east of magnetic north)? And,

2- does my GPS give me true north or magnetic north?

Thanks Tony

Tony, you would need a lot of pixels. A number of Canons shoot over 7 megapixels which would probably do the job.

Your GPS is most likely set for True North. My Garmin can be set for Magnetic North with declination offsets, but I leave it on True North and use my compass for the magnetic readings.

The True North readings are east of True North.

Desert haze and white-light scattering are serious obstacles over that vast expanse of Nevada, let alone cloud cover. It would be a rare day to have the visibility to see 195 miles in that direction, but I certainly wish you the best! If Troy Peak happened to be visible, and there are no mountains high enough to block it between Whitney and its summit, all you would see is a faint shadow of a mountain. It is a real challenge, and certainly worthy of the record books--Guiness World Records watch out!

I will say, that flying over that part of Nevada, I have clearly seen the Sierra Crest in the Whitney area. Good luck, Tony!

Tony, since you'll be using your GPS, here are the coordinates for Troy Peak (11,298 ft.), which will point your GPS exactly to Troy Peak.

WGS84 Datum: 38d 19.157m North, 115d 30.079m West

NAD27 Datum: 38d 19.400m North, 115d 29.940m West

The "d" stands for degrees, and the "m" for minutes.

Be sure you input the correct datum into your GPS (although at 195 miles the difference is negligible).

For you who use Google Earth, you can Google over the mountain and check it out. Just pop in the coordinates, and Google will take you right there. Have fun!

Another calculator for determining the direction between two points.

http://www.bestfit.com/webtools/GeoInverse.aspx

Note: Input of angular quantities is DD.MMSSssss (DD - degrees, MM - minutes, SSssss - seconds.

Western longitudes must be negative.