Laurie Brown, age 9, of Williamsburg, Virginia, for her question:
Which is the world's highest mountain?
Let's plan a trip to search for it around the world. Let's look for the tallest mountain in North America. It is a giant but we can find taller peaks in South America. Now let's cross the ocean and search through other continents. Perhaps the world's tallest mountain is in Africa or Australia, or maybe in Europe or Asia. Wherever it is, we will have to travel a long, long way to find it.
The highest mountain in Virginia is Mount Rogers, which is 5,729 feet above sea level. This means that if it stood on a beach, its peak would be 5,729 feet higher than the waves. The top of Mount Rogers is more than a mile high. But it is not the world's tallest, or even the tallest mountain in North America. The state of Colorado has almost 50 peaks that stand higher than 14,000 feet. And up in Alaska stands Mount McKinley, the tallest mountain in North America.
Mount McKinley's snowy peak stands 20,300 feet high. It is almost four miles higher than the level of the sea and about four times taller than Virginia's Mount Rogers. But it is not the world's tallest. Down in South America, there are the Andes Mountains and 27 of their peaks are taller than Mount McKinley. The tallest one is called Mount Aconcagua. It stands 22,835 feet above sea level, which is almost half a mile higher than Mount McKinley. But Mount Aconcagua is not the tallest mountain in the world, either.
In Europe, the Alps are supposed to be mighty tall mountains. But they are.not even as tall as the tallest peaks in North America. Our champions are taller than any peaks in Australia taller than the fiery Mauna Loa in Hawaii, taller than Africa's giant Mount Kilimanjaro, standing right beside the Equator. But its snowy top is only 19,586 feet above sea level.
The only place left to search is the continent of Asia. Let's go to India and travel northward until we see a huge range of mountains, lifting long snowy ridges up to the sky. These are the high Himalayas the tallest range in the whole wide world. And one of its peaks is the world's highest mountain. It is Mount Everest and its proud peak stands 29,028 feet above the level of the sea. The World Champion is more than 5 1/2 miles high.
Naturally people wanted to climb the world's highest mountain. But its steep sides are covered with frozen snow and up there the air is too thin to breathe. Many teams of climbers tried and failed to reach the top. But at last, there came a party led by a famous mountain climber named Edmund Hillary. On May 29 in the year of 1953, he reached the summit of Mount Everest and mastered the highest mountain in the world.