Considerations Regarding Elevation and Topographic Prominence
Published: 2026-11-08
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Last updated 2026-11-08 — Several previous posts have debated whether Xiling or Nanling refers to which specific peak, but I’d like to approach the topic from another angle. First, let’s take a familiar example: Mount Everest stands at 8,848 meters, making it the world’s highest peak. K2 reaches 8,611 meters, ranking as the second highest. But anyone who has taken the Everest South Route from Nepal knows they first have to climb up to Everest’s South Summit, ...……
Considerations Regarding Elevation and Topographic Prominence
Several previous posts have debated whether Xiling or Nanling refers to which specific peak, but I’d like to approach the topic from another angle.
First, let’s take a familiar example: Mount Everest stands at 8,848 meters, making it the world’s highest peak. K2 reaches 8,611 meters, ranking as the second highest. But anyone who has taken the Everest South Route from Nepal knows they first have to climb up to Everest’s South Summit, which is 8,749 meters high—over 100 meters higher than K2. So, would you say that’s the world’s second highest peak? And I don’t recall anyone claiming they did a “double Everest traverse” on the South Route, do you?
The key reason is that the South Summit has a topographic prominence of only 10 meters and is located right next to Everest, so people naturally consider it an auxiliary peak of Everest. When descending, after dropping 109 meters from Everest to the “Main Saddle” at 8,739 meters, climbers only need to ascend another 10 meters to “summit” the South Summit.
To calculate topographic prominence, one must first identify the location of the “Main Saddle” (also called a col or pass). From one peak to a neighboring higher peak (or plateau), there may be only one ridge or several different routes—the lowest point of each route is the saddle. Among these various saddles, the one with the highest elevation is the “Main Saddle.” On a contour map, the Main Saddle is found on the “lowest” contour line that fully encloses the peak in question while also enclosing other lower peaks, but not any higher peaks. (Any lower contour lines would surround even higher peaks.) The elevation difference between the peak and its Main Saddle is its topographic prominence. In the diagram below, the three green dots all represent “Main Saddles.”
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Supplementary Material
The inclusion criterion for the World’s 100 Highest Peaks (peaks over 7,200 meters) requires a topographic prominence of over 500 meters (approximately 7% of 7,200 meters). Otherwise, the peak is considered an auxiliary peak of a nearby higher peak and not listed as an independent peak. For the famous 88 U.S. 14ers (peaks at 14,000 feet, or 4,270 meters), the basic inclusion criterion is that the prominence only needs to exceed 300 feet (91 meters)—which proportionally is just about 2.1% of the elevation. This more lenient criterion ensures climbing enthusiasts can still count a meaningful number of major summits. Thus, specific inclusion standards are determined by the communities interested in climbing certain types of peaks, and there are no absolute rules. For ordinary folks, Hebei’s Lingshan might simply be “Lingshan of Hebei.” But Beijing hikers insist on dividing it into Xiling, Zhongling, and Nanling—there’s nothing wrong with that, though it’s better to have an objective set of criteria, or else the debate will never end.
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Alright, now let’s return to Xiling and Nanling.
Many people discussing Lingshan often citea local folk rhyme: “Baihuashan towers to the sky, situated halfway up Lingshan; Xiling soars beyond the heavens, perched right at Lingshan’s crown.” It seems to imply, “Xiling is the highest peak of Lingshan—see, the locals knew all along.”But folk rhymes don’t prove relative elevations. Just like 92 years ago when the British first became interested in Everest, Tibetan guides thought Makalu was the highest peak and led the British expedition toward it. But Mallory, using maps made by India’s colonial survey team, realized that wasn’t the Everest (Qomolangma) they were after. (Refer to my post “Wishing Everyone an Early New Year and Attaching a Long End-of-Year Post—Sorry for Taking Your Time, Hehe.”)
Even 50 years ago, locals in the Lingshan area likely couldn’t determine which peaks were higher or lower. Unless someone climbed each peak with a barometer to measure elevation—or didn’t even need to climb high and used the trigonometric method developed by the Persian Biruni over a thousand years ago to calculate mountain heights (see the diagram below)—there was no way to know the true elevations of these peaks. So, at most, we could say the folk rhyme guessed right, or that it’s a modern rhyme crafted based on new scientific data. Either way, this rhyme doesn’t prove how the names originated or what their actual relative elevations are.
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The point of saying all this is to highlight that tracing the historical evolution of mountain names isn’t easy—it requires extensive historical documentation. Many current discussions rely on hearsay and circular reasoning. Imagine, before the Nanling theory became widespread, if someone had written a new folk rhyme lumping in all the East, West, South, North, and Central Lings—that might have led everyone to believe those names had existed “since ancient times.” Actually, such efforts have already begun: the “Lingshan Main Peak” stele now standing atop Dongling is already staking a claim to being the main peak of Lingshan. Regular tourists even think that this cable car-accessible peak “has always been” the main peak (even though it’s lower than the western Lingshan). It’d really be something if someday someone erected a “Lingshan Main Peak” stele on Hebei’s Shicheng Peak, setting up a headline-grabbing showdown.
Since verifying peak names is no easy task, and meanwhile many people assign different names to these peaks for various reasons, we can only sit back and watch how things evolve. But hikers should keep a mental satellite map in mind (see the diagram below, where colors indicate elevation from red through orange, yellow, green, to blue). You’ll see that the eastern extension of Hebei’s Xiao Wutai Mountain Range leads to the currently disputed stretch of Xiling and Nanling (the upper-middle part of the colored image), and further east lies Lingshan within the boundary of Beijing’s Qingshui Town (top-right of the image; the reddish-orange area slightly to the right and below is Baihuashan). These two reddish-orange landforms are both “Lingshan” (this statement also warrants verification)—one in the west, inside Hebei, and the other in the east, within Beijing. Because they are relatively independent (i.e., the lower Beijing Lingshan has a topographic prominence of at least several hundred meters, meaning it’s not an auxiliary peak of Hebei Lingshan), they can be referred to separately as West Lingshan and East Lingshan.
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Additionally, when talking about the three peaks within Hebei’s Lingshan, we should understand the concept of “topographic prominence.” Aside from knowing that the two peaks at the northwest and southwest corners are both lower than the central Shicheng Peak, you should also know that the topographic prominence of both these peaks is very low. Unless someone has an “ulterior motive,” there’s really no need to label the northwest one as Xiling or the southwest one as Nanling—they’re merely auxiliary peaks of the highest Shicheng Peak. However, if someone does have an “ulterior motive,” they might as well start calling Shicheng Peak “Zhongling” and promote a Five-Ling Traverse or Reverse Five-Ling Traverse next time they organize a trip.
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