Just how tall is Aconcagua? Although it is now common knowledge that Aconcagua, at 6,962 meters, is the highest mountain in the Americas, this was not always the case.
There was a lot of back-and-forth in the 1900s about whether or not Aconcagua was the highest mountain in South America and how tall it was. Near Aconcagua, 400 miles to the north, stands the mountain known as Ojos Del Salado. There was a long-running debate about which of these volcanic mountains was the tallest in the Americas; the volcano is almost as tall as Aconcagua.
While the first ascent of Aconcagua occurred in 1897, the ascent of Ojos Del Salado did not occur until 1937, when two gentlemen from Poland reached the peak. But it was not until 1955 that news broke that an Argentine expedition had ascended the Western Hemisphere’s highest peak that Ojos Del Salado became famous.
The Argentine expedition had ascended another peak by accident, thinking they had just reached the summit of Ojos Del Salado for the first time. This was discovered after considerable research.
The real Ojos Del Salado was really climbed by a Chilean team after reading this article. They asserted that they had attained an elevation of 7,084 meters upon reaching the peak.
This figure was established using an aneroid altimeter, which is notoriously unreliable. However, the press accepted it as fact and published it again. Although Aconcagua was noted as standing at 7,021 meters in the 1920s, this altitude reading placed Ojos Del Salado at a height of around 60 meters higher.
In 1956, a group of Americans went to Ojos Del Salado to establish a clear winner for the higher mountain. The group, headed by H. Adams Carter, used trigonometry to determine that Ojos Del Salado stood at 6,885 meters. We now know this to be incorrect, but it was still significantly closer than any other study at the time.
In the same year, a geodetic survey was carried out on Aconcagua by a group from the University of Buenos Aires, which confirmed the mountain’s height to be 6,959.5 meters.
But rumors persisted right up until the disagreement was finally resolved in 1989. Francesco Stanton of Italy’s University of Padua and the Argentine Institute of Glaciology and Nivology surveyed the two mountains using the newly created GPS technology. Aconcagua measured 6,962 meters, while Ojos Del Salado was 6,900 meters, confirming that Aconcagua was marginally taller.
The altitude of Aconcagua has been subject to various measurements over time. However, more recent and precise measurements using advanced technologies like Global Positioning System (GPS) have led to the official altitude being accepted as 6,960.8 meters (source: Aconcagua Treks). This measurement is recognized by the Argentinean Instituto Geográfico Nacional (source: Grajales).
