Joseph HeinrichSoftware engineer
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Oct 22, 2026Visualization

The Last 849 Metres

See how fourteen peaks differ above 8,000 metres.

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How to explore

This page follows fourteen mountain summits that meet two recorded thresholds: at least 8,000 metres of elevation and at least 500 metres of topographic prominence. It shows how closely ranked peaks can still differ in shape, location, and climbing history.

  1. Start with one summit

    Choose Mount Everest or another peak. The same selection stays highlighted throughout the page.

  2. Change the measure

    Compare the small amount above 8,000 metres, then switch to prominence to see how independently each summit rises.

  3. Find the recorded coordinates

    Choose a dot to see where the summit sits and which other peak in this set is nearest in a straight line.

  4. Move through the years

    Change the cutoff year to count how many first ascents had been recorded by that point.

Elevation
The recorded height of a summit above mean sea level, shown here in metres.
8,000-metre line
The shared elevation threshold used to select and compare these peaks.
Topographic prominence
The vertical rise from the highest saddle that connects a summit to higher ground.
First ascent
The first successful, documented attainment of a summit; this page uses the date recorded in Wikidata.
Side Quest / VisualizationChoose a peak, switch between height above 8,000 metres and topographic prominence, locate the same summit on a coordinate map, and move through the dated sequence of first ascents.

Fourteen peaks · one high threshold

The last
849 metres

See how the world's fourteen highest independent peaks differ above 8,000 metres.

Every peak in this set reaches a height where a difference of a few dozen metres changes its rank. Height alone does not show how separate a summit is, where it sits, or when its first ascent was recorded.

8,848.86 m

Mount Everest

8,000 m line848.86 mseparates the line from the highest summit
01 · Choose a peak

Start with one summit.

Choose any ranked peak. The same selection stays highlighted in the comparison, map, and first-ascent record below.

02 · Compare height and prominence

Height and independence tell different stories.

Choose a measure to reorder all fourteen peaks. The bright bar shows metres above the 8,000-metre line or topographic prominence; selecting a row changes the peak used in every view.

03 · Find it on the map

All fourteen sit inside one band of high Asia.

Each dot uses the recorded latitude and longitude. Choose a dot to change the selected peak; the map does not draw borders or climbing routes.

N74.6° E88.1° E
04 · Move through first ascents

The recorded sequence spans fourteen years.

Move the year to count peaks whose first successful ascent is dated by then. Choose a peak chip to carry it back through the other views.

10 of 14 peaks have a first ascent dated 1956 or earlier in this snapshot.

1950
1951
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
What this can and cannot show

Four measures describe a peak. None describes the whole climb.

This is a static Wikidata snapshot retrieved October 22, 2026. It keeps the best-ranked elevation and prominence statements, Earth coordinates, country and range labels, and dated first-ascent events for peaks that meet the query rules. Wikidata is edited by contributors and can be incomplete or change. The page does not rank danger, difficulty, deaths, route quality, or present conditions.

14 entities · no runtime requests · snapshot 2026-10-22

A pinned Wikidata Query Service snapshot is verified and reduced locally into fourteen records. The client imports the compact result and makes no runtime request.

Why this exists

The question

A shared 8,000-metre baseline, paired with prominence, coordinates, and first-ascent dates, will make the small height differences among the fourteen independent eight-thousanders easier to understand without implying that elevation measures climbing difficulty.

What to try

Choose a peak, switch between height above 8,000 metres and topographic prominence, locate the same summit on a coordinate map, and move through the dated sequence of first ascents.

Method and limits

About the data

The source is a Wikidata Query Service snapshot retrieved October 22, 2026. The checked-in 1,363-byte SPARQL query has SHA-256 `0707b91faee9eb50ab4be23b0e7ec995888f3c9ba452d3adae98625024f19615`. It selects Earth entities recorded as a mountain or a subclass of mountain, requires best-ranked elevation and topographic-prominence statements in metres, keeps elevations from 8,000 to under 9,000 metres, and requires at least 500 metres of prominence. It also requests coordinates, mountain-range and country labels, and the earliest dated significant event recorded as a first ascent. Those rules return fourteen entities.

The normalized 3,057-byte checked-in source snapshot has SHA-256 `5b9f6e6140cd4352e1a4ed81e5846d4879f368aef4922edf2ccb9b415c4ef4f7`. A standard-library Python builder verifies its bytes, hash, exact entity set, descending elevation order, query bounds, dates, and coordinate ranges. It changes the displayed country label from “People's Republic of China” to “China,” calculates metres above 8,000, and uses the haversine formula with a 6,371.0088-kilometre mean Earth radius to find the nearest other peak in this fourteen-peak set and the straight-line distance between the western and eastern endpoints. Repeated builds produce the same 4,741-byte browser snapshot at SHA-256 `1951659235283d25bf49c0f6c4f05a7ee51578121851d862da06515dded77a8f`. The page imports this file and makes no runtime request.

Wikidata is a collaborative knowledge base, not an official mountaineering register. Statements, labels, dates, and coordinates may be incomplete, disputed, rounded, or changed by contributors. The 500-metre prominence rule is an explicit query filter used to define this view; it is not a universal definition of a mountain. Nearest distances connect recorded summit coordinates and ignore terrain and routes. Elevation and prominence do not measure danger, difficulty, weather, deaths, route conditions, or the time required to climb.

Skills used

  • Data analysis
  • Data engineering
  • Statistical reasoning
  • Visualization
  • Information design
  • Interaction design
  • Visual design
  • Creative coding
  • Product thinking
  • Editorial storytelling
  • Accessibility
  • Performance
  • Systems design

What the data shows

  1. Mount Everest rises 848.86 metres above the shared 8,000-metre line. Shishapangma rises 27 metres above it, so the full fourteen-peak ranking fits within a vertical span of 821.86 metres.
  2. Mount Everest and Lhotse are about 3 kilometres apart between their recorded summit coordinates, yet their recorded prominences are 8,848.86 metres and 610 metres. Similar elevation does not mean equal topographic independence.
  3. The western and eastern endpoints in the snapshot, Nanga Parbat and Kanchenjunga, are about 1,532 kilometres apart in a straight line. All fourteen recorded coordinates fall between 27.7° and 35.9° north.
  4. First-ascent dates in the snapshot run from Annapurna I in 1950 through Shishapangma in 1964. Ten of the fourteen are dated 1956 or earlier.

Sources

Wikimedia Foundation and Wikidata contributors · Creative Commons CC0 1.0Wikidata Query Service — pinned fourteen-peak query ↗Wikidata · Creative Commons CC0 1.0Wikidata data access ↗Wikidata · Creative Commons CC0 1.0Wikidata licensing ↗