I’ve been silently fuming for years about the dumbing down of the elevation of Sierra Blanca, the tallest mountain in southern New Mexico that was once listed as 12,003 feet in elevation.
I grew up in Ruidoso, with Sierra Blanca looming to the west and towering over any other mountains south of Interstate 40. It’s not that it’s just the tallest, it is clearly its massive presence when viewed from almost any angle. But some unidentified bureaucrat (likely with the U.S Geological Survey) concluded sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s, that the top if mountain was actually 22 feet lower. That placed it below the more impressive 12,000-foot mark at a wimpy 11,981 feet.
You can read my original probing journalistic post about this tragic development, which I wrote about two years ago. Here’s the link:
Consider Wheeler Peak, the tallest point in New Mexico 13,161 feet. And note that I don’t call it the highest “mountain.” What it lacks is “grandeur.”
Essentially, Wheeler peak is just a high point on a ridge, as shown below:
Now this is a real mountain peak, which has “grandeur”:
Sierra Blanca is a pretty interesting mountain geologically. It is, according to various publications and studies an “ancient and complex volcano” which during the last ice age actually had a glacier on its northeast side. It is estimated to be between 36 and 28 million years old and contains numerous geological formations.
The glacial cirque is 900 feet deep — reaching almost to the mountain’s summit — and half a mile wide.
So why, you ask, am I bringing all this up? I just finished reading a recent article in the National Geographic entitled “Have we been judging the size of mountains all wrong?” It basically says that just considering a mountain’s height is not enough to gauge its “grandeur.”
The subject of mountain “grandeur” was considered by a Yale University student, Kai XU, when he saw 13,652-foot high Mount Tom in the Sierra Nevada range and found it “more extraordinary than any view could impart.”
He came up with the calculation of “jut,” which not only measures a mountain’s height, but it’s height compared to the surrounding landscape and its steepness. Here’s a link to the article, if you want to read more about the subject:
Have we been measuring mountains all wrong? | National Geographic
Essentially “jut” means how abruptly does a mountain face “jut into the sky.”
After applying his formula to major mountains around the world, he placed 29,032-foot Mount Everest — the tallest peak in the world at — as 46th in terms of its “jut.” And the most impressive example of “jut” in the world? Annapurna Fang, also in the Himalayas, at almost 4,000 feet lower.
One excellent example of this calculation in the United States is Grand Teton in Wyoming, which has a significant “jut” because of how it rises abruptly from the flat Snake River valley floor from virtually no foothills and great steepness.
On the other side of the equation, Dome Argus in the Antarctic has a height of 13,428 feet, but as the National Geographic article says “you could stand on top of it and not necessarily recognize it as a mountain” because of the generally flat terrain surrounding and leading up to it for miles.
So if you compare the pictures above of Mount Wheeler and Sierra Blanca, it’s clear which one has more “jut.” And it would be even “juttier” if we could just recover those 22 feet of elevation that the USGS erased.
If you want to look at the list of mountains that have “jut,” go to the website:
There is a search function and indeed, Sierra Blanca has a “jut” of 422, compared to Wheeler Peak’s wimpy “jut” of 288.
And speaking of “jut,” look at our Organ Mountains just east of our home in Las Cruces. Rising to 9,012 at their highest point, they won’t make to the top of any “highest mountain” list. But with near vertical faces and no foothills, they’ve certainly got “jut.” In fact, peakjut.com lists the Organ Needle “jut” at 407, again more impressive than Wheeler Peak.
And pardon me if I drift off into another thought. There was a 1979 skit on Saturday Night Live in which Bill Murray, posing as a Mexican game show host, posed the question “Quien es Mas Macho” while comparing Latino movie stars or sports figures. So comparing Sierra Blanca and Wheeler Peak, I think it’s clear that Sierra Blanca “es Mas Macho.”
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