This is a list of

mountain A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually highe ...

peaks ordered by their

topographic prominence In topography, prominence (also referred to as autonomous height, relative height, and shoulder drop in US English, and drop or relative height in British English) measures the height of a mountain or hill's summit relative to the lowest contou ...

Terminology

The prominence of a peak is the minimum height of climb to the summit on any route from a higher peak, or from sea level if there is no higher peak. The lowest point on that route is the col. For full definitions and explanations of ''topographic prominence'', ''key col'', and ''parent'', see

. In particular, the different definitions of the parent of a peak are addressed at length in that article. ''Height'' on the other hand simply means elevation of the summit above sea level. Regarding parents, the ''prominence parent'' of peak A can be found by dividing the island or region in question into territories, by tracing the runoff from the key col ( mountain pass) of every peak that is more prominent than peak A. The parent is the peak whose territory peak A resides in. The ''encirclement parent'' is found by tracing the contour below peak A's key col and picking the highest mountain in that region. This is easier to determine than the prominence parent; however, it tends to give non-intuitive results for peaks with very low cols such as Jabal Shams which is #110 in the list. Note that either sort of parent of a typical very high-prominence peak such as

Denali Denali (; also known as Mount McKinley, its former official name) is the highest mountain peak in North America, with a summit elevation of above sea level. With a topographic prominence of and a topographic isolation of , Denali is the th ...

will lie far away from the peak itself, reflecting the independence of the peak. Most sources (and the table below) define no parent for island and landmass highpoints; others treat Mount Everest as the parent of every such peak with the ocean as the "key col".

Prominence table

The following table lists the Earth's 125 most topographically prominent summits. Of these, China has the most: 16. Close behind it are

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

, with 13, and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

with 12.

Additional peaks

The list of peaks that follows is not complete, but the peaks are all notable. Note that island high points (whose prominence is equal to their elevation) can be found at the

List of islands by highest point This is a list of islands in the world ordered by their highest point; it lists islands with peaks by elevation. At the end of this article continental landmasses are also included for comparison. Island countries and territories listed are tho ...

; hence most are not included below. Some well-known peaks listed here do not score highly by prominence. All peaks with a prominence of more than 1,500 metres rank as an

Ultra adopted by British military intelligence in June 1941 for wartime signals intelligence obtained by breaking high-level encrypted enemy radio and teleprinter communications at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. ' ...

. For a complete listing of all 1,524 peaks with prominence greater than this level, see the lists of Ultras. In the table, the prominence parent is marked "¹", and the encirclement parent "²". Where a single parent is listed, the different definitions agree.

Notes

*.By convention, cols created by human activity are not counted. Therefore, the

Suez Suez ( ar, السويس '; ) is a seaport city (population of about 750,000 ) in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez (a branch of the Red Sea), near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, having the same bou ...

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Co ...

and other canals are ignored in these calculations. Cuts that lower the natural elevations of mountain passes are also ignored. Towers, monuments and similar on the peaks are also ignored.

References

External links