World Mountains Quiz — 7 Free Questions

Question 1

At 4,808 m, this is the highest point in the Alps and in Western Europe, and its summit is a friendly border argument between two countries. A road tunnel dug beneath it is still one of the longest in the world, and its first climb in 1786 is seen as the start of modern mountaineering. Can you name this mountain?

Question 2

At 2,962 m, this is its country's highest point, right on the border with a neighbouring Alpine nation. Three cable-car and mountain-railway lines from different valleys reach its summit, which has a weather station and a border crossing. Its German name means roughly 'summit point.' Which mountain fits this description?

Question 3

At 8,091 m, this was the first mountain above 8,000 m ever climbed, in 1950, three years before the world's highest was reached. For every climber who reaches its top, an unusually high number die trying. Its name means roughly 'goddess of the harvests.' Can you name this mountain?

Question 4

At 4,892 m, this is the highest peak of a continent otherwise known for flat ice. No one climbed it until 1966, simply because it is so hard to get to, and the few visitors each year fly in on planes that land on runways of bare ice. It was named after a US congressman. Name this mountain.

Question 5

At 6,893 m, this is the world's highest active volcano and the second-highest mountain in the western half of the world. It sits in one of the driest deserts outside the poles, yet it holds a small crater lake above 6,300 m, one of the highest lakes on Earth. It sits on the border of two countries. Can you name this mountain?

Question 6

At 5,895 m, this is its continent's highest mountain and the tallest peak in the world to stand entirely on its own, not part of a range. It is a sleeping volcano of three cones. Its shrinking summit ice may vanish within decades, and fit hikers can walk to the top with no climbing gear. Which mountain is this?

Question 7

At 4,478 m, this peak is famous for its near-perfect pyramid shape and inspired a well-known theme-park ride. It sits on the border of two countries, and its first climb in 1865 ended in tragedy when four of the seven climbers fell to their deaths on the way down. Which mountain fits this description?

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About World Mountains

Mountains are ranked by more than just raw elevation above sea level, and once you start comparing them a different way, the familiar "world's tallest" list gets a lot more interesting. Mount Everest is the highest point above sea level at 8,849 meters, but measured from its true base on the surrounding ocean floor, Hawaii's Mauna Kea actually stands taller overall, at roughly 10,200 meters base to summit, most of it simply hidden beneath the Pacific. Ecuador's Chimborazo takes the title a third way: thanks to the equatorial bulge created by Earth's own rotation, its summit is the single point on the planet's surface farthest from the Earth's center, ahead of Everest by more than two kilometers, despite being over two and a half kilometers shorter measured from sea level.

The fourteen mountains that exceed 8,000 meters, a group mountaineers call the "eight-thousanders," are almost all clustered within the Himalayas and the neighboring Karakoram range in Nepal, Pakistan, China, and India, meaning a huge share of the planet's highest terrain sits within a relatively compact stretch of Central and South Asia. K2, the second-highest peak on Earth, is widely considered far more dangerous to climb than Everest itself, earning it the grim nickname "Savage Mountain" for its unusually high ratio of climber deaths to successful summits.

Many of the world's most striking peaks are volcanoes rather than the folded, uplifted rock typical of ranges like the Alps or Rockies. Kilimanjaro, Mount Fuji, Cotopaxi, and Mexico's Popocatepetl and Pico de Orizaba are all volcanic in origin, and several remain active today. Ojos del Salado, on the Chile-Argentina border, holds the distinction of being the tallest active volcano on Earth, at 6,893 meters. This volcanic ancestry also explains why so many famous peaks stand in dramatic isolation rather than as part of a connected range, since a single eruption point tends to build a solitary cone rather than a long ridge of neighboring summits.

A number of mountains carry weight far beyond their physical size. Mount Kailash, in Tibet, stands only 6,638 meters tall, modest by Himalayan standards, yet no confirmed ascent has ever taken place, since climbing it is prohibited out of respect for its status as sacred ground across four major world religions. Mount Olympus in Greece, mythological home of the Twelve Olympians, and Mount Sinai in Egypt, traditionally identified as the site where Moses received the Ten Commandments, likewise draw visitors for reasons that have little to do with technical climbing difficulty.

National borders complicate the picture too. Aconcagua, the tallest peak outside Asia, sits in Argentina near the Chilean border, while a genuine handful of major summits, including Everest itself, straddle an international boundary directly across the summit, leaving no single country able to claim the peak entirely on its own. Deciding which country a mountain "belongs to" turns out to be a surprisingly common source of friendly, occasionally serious, international debate.