I had no idea the US was voxel based - no wonder everyone seems so strange over there!
The north east mountains are beautiful, old, wilderness. So crazy in places you can’t even predict the weather. And if you’re bragging about size, maybe try remembering the US is not the world.
Why is mauna kea measure from the bottom of the ocean but non of the ofhers are. Specifically everest
Mount Everest isnt near the ocean so there is no part of it below sea level. No idea what exactly defines the “base” of a mountain but I guess thats the crucial point.
It’s so cute when Americans talk about mountains.
The Sierra Nevadas are no joke. If you drive through them in wintertime you are absolutely taking a risk, not only because you’re driving on windy (if well-maintained) mountain highways, but you may get stuck in snow despite your chains and will freeze to death.
If you are lucky, a CHP or forest ranger may see you and help you out.
Heaven forbid you have engine trouble or run out of fuel.
I live in the Sierras and always keep a change of clothes, 72 hours of food and water (plus filter), a small pack, fishing gear and a radio in my car. You never know what could happen. I’ve had quick fishing trips turn into unplanned overnighters and had snow or fallen trees or wildfires block roads at all times of the year. We have exactly 2 roads into and out of our little valley.
DO NOT TAKE SHORTCUTS THROUGH THE SIERRAS!
STICK TO ESTABLISHED TRAILS!
Ours are older and were taller.
The geographical feature that you have no control over is for losers.
What’s that? Can’t hear you, I’m a mile above sea level and breathing the freshest god damn air on Earth.
Up? Where all my smog goes?
Nice try, skylanders. I’m going underground, where the real fresh air is hiding.
How do you know our Deep Anthems?! Reveal your treasonous source, skylander!
Mountains in East Coast are generally older while mountains in West Coast are generally taller
Appalanchians are over 500 million years old. They need to sit down and rest more.
I love love love listening to my Western friends complaining about how much more difficult Appalachian trails are. See this creek bed? That’s the trail. No pansy switchbacks to keep the grade nice. If there’s a headwall, we’re going straight to the lip.
A triple crowner once told me the hardest of the three trails physically is by far the AT, but it is the easiest logistically. The easiest physically is the CDT but is the most dangerous because of the logistical difficulties. The PCT is the nice middle ground
They’re both gorgeous. Why do we have to pit two queens against one another?
Because one is prettier and it’s not even close
Not everyone likes huge Mountains, smaller ones are perfectly fine, even preferred!
Yeah that’s why the Olympics are the crown jewel of the US
I love the ones that won’t hold a pencil under them.
The thing about mountains is that they’re all big when you’re at the bottom of them
Mountains get so big because they have no natural predators.
- Ken M.
A decent number of the Appalachians have roads that go near the top.
So does Pikes Peak in Colorado, all the way up 14,000 feet.
That just means they have better engineers and braver drivers, or the mountains are older and they had more time
braver drivers,
I used to joke that there were no bad drivers in WV, you either learned how to drive or you fell twenty feet off the road and got impaled by a tree. Unfortunately, since I was a kid we’ve put guard rails on a lot of those places.
I’ve lived in several places, all FLAT. Whenever I visit a mountainous place like Denver, it always seems so weird that there are these mountains always looming over me. At least you always know which way is west.
I grew up in hill country and I cannot for the life of me understand how people live in the flatlands. It makes me physically uncomfortable.
Same. It’s disorienting.
Oh god, same. I’m a mountain kid, the plains make me agoraphobic as hell. I tried living in the Midwest. I literally was slowly going insane, the landscape and the people were driving me crazy. I’m not kidding, I had to come home and restart my prescription.
Praire madness is so damn real. I thought it was made up. NO. I love my mountains, I can’t live without them.
Flat lands are like the liminal spaces of lands
They are the backrooms of geography
I love my Cascades and the Rockies are majestic and impressive, but the Appalachians are basically the wizened old crones of mountains. They’re weird and mysterious. They’re full of forests and traditions and stories. They demand respect.
Also, listen, folks from the eastern Midwest are barely used to hills then having to drive through them is scary.
I’m in Minnesota and I get super carsick just driving in Wisconsin. I’ve gone up the mountain on Orcas island in Washington and it was very beautiful but I actually thought I was gonna hurl. It feels just like those pirate ship carnival rides. I really don’t know how people ride those without getting sick.
However the small mountains (more like big hills tbh) along the north shore of Lake Superior are fine and don’t make sick at all for some reason.
Pallisade head! I love the north shore. Moved away and miss it quite a bit
Ah, yes. The Old Gods of Appalachia.
The Nepalese: Oh you Americans are so cute.
It’s true, got no mountains here. Go vacation somewhere else.
Going crazy trying to figure out where you’re standing for that angle. From the south west?
Pretty sure I’m at the top of Jackson slide on colden looking at Algonquin.
Actually maybe cruciflyer
The Appalachians have been mountains longer than North America has been a continent
And prominence of many is still impressive. And there’s Mount Washington, where it’s so crazy you can’t predict the weather 15 minutes out.
And the white man brought inbreeding to those hallowed peaks and expects it to be celebrated
They’re the bones of the world dawg. It’s why there’s so much spooky scary shit here (I live in Appalachia.)
Not just the bones of the world, they’re older than bones.
Older than trees.
Older than bones.
Drones from land masses that don’t exist anymore.
There is rock in the Appalachian mountains without coal seams, because many formed in places before the land biomass that made coal and oil existed.
They contain layers of fossils from ancient whales back to small crustaceans.
480 million years ago trilobites were being heft out of the sea by the Appalachians.
The Appalachians existed for 20 million years before bearing witness to a million year long meteor shower from the L-chondrite debris that gave the earth temporary rings.
This is th e best comment I’ve read on lemmy for a long time. Fascinating info and well written. Thanks for taking the time.
They’re older than Saturn’s rings
To the extent that a portion of the mountain chain that formed the Appalachian Mountains is in Europe. The Appalachians were a part of the Central Pangean mountain system, which makes them older than the Atlantic Ocean.
They’ve seen some shit.
And as old as that is, sharks are older than the mountains.
Sharks are older than the North Star. Not as in Polaris wasn’t pointing north yet when the sharks evolved, but as in it hadn’t formed yet.
That’s kind of awesome to think about.
I’m picturing myself on Pangea. The mountains in front of me are taller than the Himalayas today. These are the Appalachians. Oh no, a dinosaur! Look out, duck! Huh, that’s not a duck that’s a QUETZALCOATLUS! Everybody run! How can we outrun a QUETZALCOATLUS?!?!?! AAAHHHHHH.
Isn’t it beautiful?
Wikipedia says they date back 480 million years, during the Ordovician period. I think the atmosphere would have been pretty breathable, but plants wouldn’t conquer the land in a serious way for at least another 60 million years or so, with bugs following them. Nothing saw those mountains. If you time-traveled to the Pangean mountains, you would be the only being to ever observe them in their formative years. Eons would pass before the first plant set root at their feet. The sterile and desolate emptiness would be beyond human experience.
but plants wouldn’t conquer the land in a serious way for at least another 60 million years or so
…
Eons would pass before the first plant set root at their feet.Pretty sure the mountains will still be there. Spoiler alert. I started at the end of the book.
you would be the only being to ever observe them in their formative years.
…
The sterile and desolate emptiness would be beyond human experience.That’s badass though. Except that we might be returning to that sterile and desolate emptiness here shortly.
Also, don’t forget that fungi, algae, and lichen colonized dry land before the plants arrived, paving the way for them by eating rocks and pooping dirt.
The couple of people who’ve been on the moon have seen that kind of emptiness
I think the atmosphere would have been pretty breathable
HELLA breathable bruh…
And through it all, the mountains can all agree…trump is the biggest piece of shit they’ve ever heard of.