The Height of Mountains

[American Alpine Club]

Originally published in Guidebook XIII
Eric Gilbertson was on the summit of Rainier. Or was he? With the differential GPS set up in front of him, he hopped from foot to foot—it was cold up there, but he was also anxious to confirm his suspicions by applying a more rigorous measuring process to the changes he could see with the naked eye. Funded by the AAC Research Grant, he had used an Abney level to measure the relative heights of Columbia Crest, the traditional icecap summit of Rainier where he stood now, as compared to the actual highest point in the summit area—the southwest edge of the crater rim, which was a rock outcrop.
Based on the Abney level, Columbia Crest was distinctly shorter than the southwest rim. With calculations spinning in his head, he noticed the unmistakably dirtier, more trampled quality of Columbia Crest, the way dirt and rocks seemed to muddle the pure snow dome, bringing a wilted quality to the landscape, especially compared to what he could remember seeing in old photographs of Rainier’s summit. He would have to wait to process the data from the differential GPS to be sure exactly by how much the summit had changed. Yet more than the relief of seeing his hypothesis likely confirmed, a bigger question loomed: Were mountains, which so many consider the stalwart indicator of the unmoving, the unchanging, the steady, actually shrinking? And what would it mean if they were?
Eric Gilbertson is a man of many lists and projects. Each of his projects coalesces around peakbagging, and now surveying. The idea to research the current heights of the five remaining icecap peaks in the Lower 48, which includes Rainier, started when Mt. St. Helens eroded off the top 100 highest peaks of Washington list. Gilbertson had discovered that St. Helens had been steadily eroding by four inches each year since 1989, and because of that, St. Helens had technically fallen off the top 100 list around 2021. As an exacting, rigorous person who prizes accuracy above all in his life’s work, Gilbertson was intrigued—were there more discrepancy in the heights of the other top 100 Washington mountains? If his goal was to do all the hundred highest, and be the first to do them all in winter no less, he wanted to do it right.
Before fact-checking the hundred highest list, before measuring the status of the five historical icecap peaks of the Lower 48, Eric and his brother Matthew had been pursuing what they called “The Country High Points Project.” Though the brothers are each respected alpinists in their own right, with several technical first ascents and inclusions in the American Alpine Journal to Eric’s name, they are peakbaggers at heart. Which is why they conceived of the project to get to the highest point of every country in the world, as defined by UN members and observer states, plus Antarctica. Thus, there are 196 highpoints on their list. So far, Eric has gotten to the highest point of 144 countries and Matthew has ticked 97.
Eric says he sees the project as a framework for creating opportunities for really interesting adventures. “[It] kind of requires every kind of skill set you can imagine. It definitely requires high-altitude mountaineering, like K2 is on there and Everest, but it also requires jungle bushwhacking in the Caribbean or hiking through the desert in Chad. There is so much red tape you have to get through—like in West Africa there are so many police checkpoints so you have to navigate those—so many languages you have to speak, logistics to make it interesting, and the other interesting aspect is [sometimes we don’t know which] is the highest mountain, so in comes the survey equipment.”
When, in 2018, the brothers determined the highest point in Saudi Arabia had actually been misunderstood all along, Eric became particularly interested in exactness and discovery, and how these elements added an interesting complexity to getting to the great heights of the world. A lot more was unknown than one might first imagine, given our information-overload culture. Not knowing if the mountain you were climbing was even the highest point in the country added a challenge that seemed to surpass even first ascenting.
Yet Eric is not always flitting across to the farthest reaches of the world. As an associate teaching professor at Seattle University, he is rooted a good portion of the year, so he is constantly finding ways to feed his passion for discovery and peakbaggi...

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The Height of Mountains — American Alpine Club

Funded by the American Alpine Club’s research grants, Eric Gilbertson decides to take a look at climate change and our ice-y peaks.

American Alpine Club (americanalpineclub.org)