How high Nepal’s treks really are in feet, measured against America’s peaks

Most altitude advice is written in metres, and most Americans think in feet, so the numbers slide past without meaning anything. Put them on the same scale and two things jump out. The four-day Mardi Himal trek from Pokhara reaches its upper viewpoint at about 14,760 ft — higher than Mount Whitney, the tallest summit in the lower 48. And Island Peak, one of the most climbed trekking peaks in Nepal, stands at about 20,305 ft, within five feet of Denali. The more useful thing to understand, though, is why having stood on a 14,000-footer tells you much less than you would think about how you will handle a week in the Himalaya.

The same scale, side by side

Here is every number on one ladder. The American summits use the figures their land managers publish today; the Nepal figures are the high points of our own itineraries, converted and rounded to the nearest ten feet, because the metre figures they come from are rounded too.

Two readings surprise almost everyone. The first is how low the starting point is: Kathmandu is about 690 ft below Denver, so arriving in Nepal does nothing to your body at all. The second is that one of the most accessible short treks in the country, Mardi Himal, climbs higher than any summit in California or Colorado.

Why “I was fine on Pikes Peak” tells you less than you think

Most people who have been above 14,000 ft in America got there by car, cog railway or a long day hike, stood at the top for an hour, and came down to sleep in a town at a fraction of the height. That is a real exposure to altitude, and it is almost nothing like a trek. On the way to Everest Base Camp you spend seven nights sleeping above 11,000 ft, four of them higher than Pikes Peak’s summit, and sleeping is when altitude catches up with people — breathing slows, oxygen drops further, and the headache that was a nuisance at noon becomes the reason you cannot eat at breakfast.

The CDC’s guidance is built around exactly that distinction. Altitude illness can affect anyone going to 8,000 ft or higher. Above 9,000 ft, it advises raising your sleeping elevation by no more than about 1,600 ft a day, and adding an extra day for every 3,300 ft gained. And it warns against going straight from low elevation to sleep above 9,000 ft in a single day — which is precisely what flying into a high mountain airstrip does.

How our own itineraries measure up against that rule

This is the part most operators would leave out. We checked our standard itineraries against the CDC’s 1,600-ft-a-day guideline, night by night, and none of them meets it on every single day. Almost no standard route in Nepal does, because the trails, villages and lodges were not placed with a guideline in mind. What matters is what surrounds the big days.

Here is the counter-intuitive result. The highest trek on this page is the most carefully paced one, because it has to be: its biggest single-night gain is about 2,720 ft and both of its big days sit next to a rest day. The short treks climb faster.

Two practical conclusions. First, a short trek is not automatically a gentle one: Poon Hill’s second day is the biggest single jump in sleeping height on this whole page, and although it only takes you to about 9,400 ft, that is just past the line the CDC draws for a first-day climb. In our experience most walkers are fine there, and the ones who are not feel it that night. Second, if you have had altitude trouble before, tell us before you book. Adding a night to break up the biggest day is straightforward and costs far less than turning back.

Choosing a trek by the altitude you already know

Treat this as a starting point for a conversation, not medical advice:

If you want the full picture of symptoms, prevention and the medication question, our complete altitude sickness guide covers it. What this page is for is simpler: knowing, in the units you think in, how high you are actually going.

US elevations from the National Park Service (Mount Whitney, NAVD88; Mount Rainier), the US Forest Service (Pikes Peak) and the 2015 Denali survey accepted by USGS and the National Geodetic Survey. Nepal high points are from our own published itineraries. Ascent guidance from the CDC Yellow Book’s chapter on high-altitude travel. This is general information, not medical advice.