Two Kilometres Past Everest
Everest is the highest mountain above sea level. But Earth bulges at the equator — and a volcano in Ecuador, sitting on that bulge, reaches farther into space than any other point on the planet.
Sea level is not the same distance from the centre everywhere
Earth’s spin flattens it: sea level at the equator sits 21.4 km farther from the centre than at the poles.
The curve shows how far sea level sits from Earth’s centre at each latitude. It is almost flat near the equator and drops steadily toward the poles.
The coloured stems are the two mountains. Everest’s is the longer one, but it starts from 28°N, where sea level is already about 4.7 km lower. Chimborazo starts almost at the top of the curve.
Latitude beats altitude by about two kilometres
Chimborazo gains more from where it stands than Everest gains from how high it rises.
Standing near the equator puts Chimborazo’s base 4.67 km farther out than Everest’s. Everest’s extra height above sea level wins back only 2.59 km.
Net: roughly 2.1 km in Chimborazo’s favour. (These figures are computed from the WGS 84 ellipsoid; published values run from 2.07 to 2.17 km depending on the model.)
The farthest summits all hug the equator
Rank summits by distance from the centre and the Himalaya drop out; the Andes and East Africa take over.
Every summit on this list above Everest lies within about 17° of the equator. Kilimanjaro, only 5,895 m high, still beats Everest by about 1.7 km.
Huascarán in Peru is 505 m taller than Chimborazo, but at 9°S its base sits lower on the curve. The two finish about 10 m apart.
Selected summits; the full list includes several more Peruvian peaks. Differences use distances rounded to 0.1 km.
Two centuries of pointing instruments at one volcano
In 1802 Chimborazo was thought to be the world’s highest mountain. The record it holds now needed satellites to confirm.
Alexander von Humboldt’s 1802 climb stopped short of the summit, at an altitude that stood as a world record for years. Edward Whymper and the Carrel cousins reached the top in 1880.
In 2016 a French–Ecuadorian GNSS campaign fixed the summit at 6,263.47 m (IGM) and confirmed it is still the farthest point from Earth’s centre.
The mountain Humboldt drew is climbing too
Chimborazo’s plants and ice edge have both moved hundreds of metres upslope since 1802.
“Highest” depends on where you measure from
- Follow the dashed equator. Cayambe, Antisana, Cotopaxi and Chimborazo cluster within 1.5° of it, and all four are among the planet’s farthest-out summits.
- Colour tracks latitude more than height. Sajama (6,542 m) is taller than Chimborazo, but at 18°S it is paler: 1.7 km nearer the centre.
- Check the inset. Kilimanjaro sits on the same bulge in Africa: 5,895 m high, 6,384.0 km from the centre, about 1.7 km beyond Everest.
- Misti, near Arequipa, is only 5,822 m high, yet about as far from the centre as Everest’s summit.
- “Highest” is a choice of reference. Measured from sea level it is Everest; measured from Earth’s centre it is Chimborazo, the summit that reaches farthest into space.
Sources & notes
- Farthest-summit distances. “Summits farthest from the Earth’s center,” Wikipedia compilation (accessed 2026), deriving geocentric distance from summit elevation and latitude on the WGS 84 ellipsoid; values to 0.1 km. Chimborazo 6,384.4 km; Huascarán ~10 m less; Everest 6,382.3 km.
- NOAA. NOAA National Ocean Service, “What is the highest point on Earth as measured from Earth’s center?” — Chimborazo, ~1° south of the equator, is more than 2 km farther from the centre than Everest.
- 2016 survey. Third Geodesic Mission (2016): Instituto Geográfico Militar del Ecuador (IGM), IRD (France), Escuela Politécnica Nacional–Instituto Geofísico. Chimborazo 6,263.47 m (IGM) / 6,268 m (EPN-IG); reported in “Determination of altitudes of the three main Ecuadorian summits through GNSS positioning,” Geodesy and Geodynamics (2022), and by Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur/Géoazur (2016).
- WGS 84. U.S. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, WGS 84 (NIMA TR8350.2): equatorial radius 6,378.137 km, polar 6,356.752 km.
- Everest height. China–Nepal joint survey, announced Dec 2020: 8,848.86 m.
- Vegetation & glaciers. Morueta-Holme et al., “Strong upslope shifts in Chimborazo’s vegetation over two centuries since Humboldt,” PNAS 112(41):12741 (2015): seed plants’ upper limit 4,600 m (1802) → 5,185 m (2012); glacier edge 4,814 m → 5,270 ± 260 m (2013, S & E sides); species’ upper limits up a mean 675 m (51 species); Ecuador +1.46 ± 0.31 °C, 1866–2012 (Berkeley Earth). The use of Humboldt’s historic data was challenged by Sklenář, PNAS (2016); the authors replied that the shifts are robust.
- History. Humboldt’s 23 June 1802 attempt reached ~5,878 m by his own barometric estimate (historians debate the exact height, e.g. M. Horrell, 2019); first ascent by Edward Whymper with Jean-Antoine and Louis Carrel, 4 Jan 1880 (Britannica; Scott Polar Research Institute).
Illustrative & computed figures
- Computed, not measured: the radius-by-latitude curve, the spectrum strip and the 4.67 km / 2.59 km decomposition are calculated from the WGS 84 ellipsoid; they ignore geoid undulations of tens of metres, so the net (2.08 km) differs slightly from published figures (NOAA: “over 2,072 m”; Wikipedia: 2,168 m).
- “Km farther than Everest” bars are differences of distances rounded to 0.1 km, so ties and ±0.1 km are within rounding.
- The map is a hand-drawn schematic: coastlines, borders and peak positions are simplified; every name and number on it comes from the sources above.