Mountain · Ecuador
Chimborazo
Chimborazo is an ice-covered volcano in Ecuador whose summit is the point of the Earth's surface that lies farthest from the planet's centre. That makes it the mountain closest to space.
Picture credit: Eduardo Navas (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Cristian Ibarra Santillan (CC BY 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is Chimborazo?
Chimborazo is part of the Cordillera Occidental (Andes).
You will find it in: Ecuador.
Summit: 1.469° S, 78.817° W
The story behind it
Earth is not a perfect ball: it spins, and that spin pushes the planet outward around the equator. Chimborazo stands only about one degree south of the equator, right where the bulge is biggest, so its summit sits roughly 6384 kilometres from the centre of the Earth, about two kilometres farther out than the top of Everest. In June 1802 Alexander von Humboldt tried to climb it and turned back near 5 875 metres, higher than any European was recorded to have reached before. Edward Whymper, with the guides Jean-Antoine Carrel and Louis Carrel, finally reached the top on 4 January 1880. The mountain carries four named summits, and the highest of them is called Whymper. Its last eruption was around the year 550, so the volcano has been quiet through the whole of written Ecuadorian history.
Find it on the globe
Chimborazo is there as a small peak with its own shape — a horn, a ridge, a volcano — standing on the surface. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How high is Chimborazo?
It stands 6 263 metres above sea level, the highest mountain in Ecuador. That is far below Everest, yet its summit is still the farthest point from the centre of the Earth.
Where is Chimborazo?
In the Ecuadorian Andes, in the Cordillera Occidental, roughly one degree south of the equator and close to the city of Riobamba.
Why is Chimborazo farther from Earth's centre than Everest?
Because the spinning planet bulges at the equator, so the ground there already starts thousands of metres farther out. Chimborazo's summit lies about 6384 kilometres from the centre, roughly two kilometres more than Everest's.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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