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Background

The Denali (Mount McKinley) is the third most prominent mountain on earth.

According to wikipedia It has a height of 6,191 meters, a prominence of 6,144 meters, and a "col" of 6,191 - 6,144 = 47 meters. Totally checks out!

I assume the lowest point on the "mountain ridge" connecting the two peaks must be somewhere in the Panama Canal, or at least it cannot be higher than that. From what I found, the highest place in the Panama canal is Gatun Lake.

According to wikipedia, Gatun Lake has a surface elevation of 26m. This is less than the 47 I found for the "col" between Denali and Aconcagua.

So where do the 47m come from?

donquixote
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    Wikipedia also has: "The key col of Denali in Alaska (6,194 m) is a 56 m col near Lake Nicaragua (unless one accepts the Panama Canal as a key col; this is a matter of contention). [...] Note that, for the purposes of this article, man made structures such as the Panama Canal are not taken into account. If they were, the key col would be along the 26 m Gaillard Cut and Denali would have a prominence of 6,168 m." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topographic_prominence – Jean-Marie Prival Aug 14 '21 at 07:42
  • Good find! This also implies that there must be an elevation along the Panama canal that they had to dig through that is higher than 56m. – donquixote Aug 17 '21 at 20:57
  • @Jean-MariePrival If you want to create a reply with this info, I will accept it. Any additional factoids you want to include in there are welcome :) – donquixote Aug 17 '21 at 20:59

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Perhaps due to Gaillard Cut/Culebra Cut (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culebra_Cut). I presume this is probably an artificial reduction in height of the col.

Ian
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