Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Difference In Altitude at Equator?

Kurt or Richard: I just got back a few weeks ago from Nepal. First time out of the country, wow, what culture shock! From TV travel shows and pictures I thought Kathmandu was a pristine little village. Was I wrong. Huge as L.A., filthy, smoggy, poverty stricken. From the air the place looks nuked!

I got sick a few miles into the Himalayas, had to come out. It may have been a gallbladder attack, having tests done now, so I'll be going back next year, doing a lot of stuff differently.

I saw a tiny paragraph in Outside magazine that said that 8000 feet at the equator is different than 8000 feet higher north in the hemisphere. The article did not elaborate. I know you are moving faster at the equator, but what would the equator have to do with a difference in the same altitudes?

bob, sorry about the GI. the morning I left Kathmandu I was sick at both ends. pretty rough travelling like that all the way back to London.

Glad it did not happen on the mountain like you had. Are you familiar with the famous story of Devi Unsoeld who died of an abdominal catastrophe on the mountain Nanda Devi that she was named after, and while on expedition with her famous father Willie Unsoeld?

Here is a very simple non-scientific discussion of thinner air nearer the poles so Denali at 20,300 feet "feels" 3,000 feet higher. Some say that the difference is only 1,000.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/denali/extremes/pressure.html

Interesting question.

http://previous.cmc.org/cmc/ta_3_95.html#Pressure
"The troposphere, which contains 80% of the atmospheric mass, only extends to 5 to 11 miles above the surface of the planet. ... The thickness of the troposphere is not uniform over the earth. A combination of centrifugal force and temperature differences make the troposphere thickest at the equator, 10 to 11 miles. It is only 5 to 6 miles thick at the poles. Due to lower temperatures the troposphere is more dense at the poles, and the net result of all contributing forces and factors is that air pressure is pretty much the same planet wide at sea level. At high altitudes this is not true.

Since the air layer over the earth is thinner at the poles, any upward movement from the planet's surface passes through a greater portion of the air layer than the same movement would accomplish at the equator. Thus, for higher altitudes, air pressure at high latitudes is lower than it is at low latitudes."

Here's a quote from h_lankford's reference. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/denali/extremes/pressure.html
"Put Mt. Everest (28 deg North) at the latitude of Mt. McKinley (63 deg North) in the United States and it is likely that no climber would ever have been able to reach the summit breathing the natural air. Everest would feel, physiologically, as if it were an additional 3,000 feet higher. The air would be so thin that even the best climber would have no choice but to use supplemental oxygen. Why? Because of the many factors which affect atmospheric pressure."

This brings to mind the people who climb Mt. Vinson (16,050') in Antartica where the air at the summit is thinner than one would expect for that altitude. And the folks who climb Mt. Kilimanjaro (19,340'), where being near the equator makes the air at the summit less thin and the breathing less difficult than if the summit was farther away from the equator.

Another factor, possibly, is that the earth (like most of us) is fatter in the middle, by about 50 mi. radius, than in the polar dimension. That makes the worlds highest mountain, as measured from the center of the earth, in Equador.

Thanks everyone for the input. That makes sense. From what my ultrasound says, it looks more like an attack of diverticulosis which I didn't know I had. I trained so hard on our local 14'rs that I might have overdone it, every 10 days for 6 weeks I summitted to 14,000' yet was struggling in the Himalayas at 8400' !

h_lankford, somehow I bypassed all the local germs, but I took the new Vicks hand cleaner in the pump that foams. Even when I forgot and brushed my teeth with tapwater ,somehow escaped illness.

Sherry,

I just saw your post. I was in Joshua Tree for the bulk of the Thanksgiving holiday.

I'm sorry to hear you got sick but am glad you're planning to go back. Yes, Katmandu is a bit dirty. The normal mode of operation is to try to get out of there as soon as you can. A face mask like the ones painters use can be a great thing to wear while walking around the streets.

Regarding the altitude question Bob K answered it pretty well above. I can speak from experience with this. Mt. Vinson is 16,067 feet and located very close to the South Pole. It felt more like 19,000 feet on the summit of it. It certainly felt higher than Kilimanjaro at 19,340' or Cayambe 18,996 feet in Ecuador, both of which are near the equator.