Santa Fe's altitude

[gusl]

I was looking at June temperatures for Santa Fe, and they were no warmer than Seattle. Strangely, Google won't tell me Santa Fe's altitude precisely. I only get the ballpark figure of "7000feet" (~2133m). It would be a record for me. My highest yet was in '96/'97: 1800m at Les Collons, Switzerland; Navacerrada is ~1900m (but the mountain wasn't as high); Whistler is 670m. Since I never felt altitude-sick, I think dryness is more of a concern.

Oh never mind, Valle Nevado is higher (I guess we hung out at ~2900m). This was 1993. My 4-yo brother was altitude-sick, and I felt it too, but I was ok.

Comments

[stepleton.livejournal.com]

You can always search for airports in a city to get a bunch of samples of elevations.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_wirehead_/]

yeah, Santa Fe is somewhat cool because of the high altitude. NM is definitely dry, but it should be better in June than in the middle of the winter. you'll carry a water bottle everywhere you go, like everyone else in the state. and everyone has hand lotion bottles all over the house. :)

[bhudson.livejournal.com]

Altitude sickness tends to kick in at about 8,000' for the most vulnerable (who's vulnerable isn't particularly well understood). So it's unlikely you'd have any trouble from altitude at just 7,000'. Cabin pressure in a commercial airplane varies between 6,000' and 8,000'.

[rdore.livejournal.com]

According to the geography section of the wikipedia article, the Santa Fe capital building is at an altitude of 7199ft (2199m). The article also notes that Santa Fe is the answer to the standard trivia question what is the highest U.S. state capital.

For me personally, I think the highest altitude I've been (not in a plane) is Park City, Utah (roughly the same altitude as Santa Fe). Though I've been skiing in the Swiss Alps a long time ago, and might very well have been higher at some point.

According the Wikipedia list of 50 most populous urban areas, there are four with altitude over 1km, Bogota (2640m), Mexico City (2240m), Johannesburg (1753m), and Tehran (1200m). The highest major city in the world is probably La Paz, Bolivia (3640m, area pop. ~1.6 mill). Lhasa, Tibet, is slightly higher, but only has a population of about 250k. The highest town is probably the mining town of La Rinconada, Peru, which is at an elevation around 5100 meter and has a population of about 7k (according to WP this has recently risen as high as 30k). There are probably some small villages in Tibet which are higher.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

Bonus question: what's the furthest you've been from the center of the Earth?

[rdore.livejournal.com]

If planes are allowed, the answer is in an airplane somewhere over the South China Sea. On land, I'm pretty sure the answer is Mount Faber in Singapore.

[gustavolacerda.livejournal.com]

As for me, I've been on several planes crossing the equator.

I recently found out about Mt. Chimborazo in Ecuador, the furthest point from the centre of the Earth.