1.
Colorado State Highway 7
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State Highway 7 in the U. S. state of Colorado is a state highway. The northwestern segment of the highway is part of the Peak-to-Peak Scenic Byway and furnishes an access route to Estes Park, Colorado and Rocky Mountain National Park. In its southeast portion it skirts the end of the Denver Metropolitan Area, providing an access route connecting Boulder, Lafayette and Brighton with Interstate 25. The western terminus is at the junction of U. S. Highway 36 at N. St. Vrain, the eastern terminus is at Interstate 76 exit 25 in Brighton. The portion between Lyons and Boulder, where it is concurrent with US36, is unsigned, the highway is two lanes along the entire route except for portions in the cities and towns. South of Lyons it is concurrent with U. S.36 along the base of the foothills to Boulder and it is also concurrent with State Highway 119 on 28th Street within Boulder. East of I-25 it jogs one mile south, then due east as 160th Avenue through Brighton to Interstate 76 in the part of Brighton. The route was established in the 1920s and it began at Estes Park and traveled south to Lyons south to Boulder. It then continued to its terminus at U. S. Highway 87 east of Lafayette, the route was paved from Boulder to Lafayette in 1932 and from Estes Park to Lyons in 1936. In 1939, the route was extended southeast to Brighton, where it met U. S. Highway 6, this extension was paved by 1946
2.
Summit
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A summit is a point on a surface that is higher in elevation than all points immediately adjacent to it. Mathematically, a summit is a maximum in elevation. The topographic terms acme, apex, peak, and zenith are synonymous, the UIAA definition is that a summit is independent if it has a prominence of 30 metres or more, it is a mountain if it has a prominence of at least 300 metres. This can be summarised as follows, A pyramidal peak is an exaggerated form produced by ice erosion of a mountain top, Summit may also refer to the highest point along a line, trail, or route. In many parts of the western United States, the term refers to the highest point along a road, highway. For example, the highest point along Interstate 80 in California is referred to as Donner Summit while the highest point on Interstate 5 is Siskiyou Mountain Summit, geoid Hill List of highest mountains Maxima and minima Nadir Summit accordance Peak finder
3.
Topographic prominence
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It is a measure of the independence of a summit. A peaks key col is a point on this contour line. By convention, the prominence of Mount Everest, the Earths highest mountain, is taken to equal the elevation of its summit above sea level, if the peaks prominence is P metres, to get from the summit to any higher terrain one must descend at least P metres. Together with the convention for Mount Everest, this implies that the prominence of any island or continental highpoint is equal to its elevation above sea level, for every ridge connecting the peak to higher terrain, find the lowest point on the ridge. The key col is defined as the highest of these cols, the prominence is the difference between the elevation of the peak and the elevation of the key col. The following mental exercise may illustrate the meaning of topographic prominence, imagine you are standing at the top of a peak and imagine that an imaginary sea level rises to your feet. Now slowly lower the sea level and an imaginary island appears beneath your feet. Your island will grow and will merge with other islands that emerge, the parent peak may be either close or far from the subject peak. The summit of Mount Everest is the parent peak of Aconcagua at a distance of 17,755 km, the key col may also be close or far from the subject peak. The key col for Aconcagua is the Bering Strait at a distance of 13,655 km, the key col for the South Summit of Mount Everest is about 100 m distant. Prominence is interesting to many mountaineers because it is a measurement that is strongly correlated with the subjective significance of a summit. Peaks with low prominences are either subsidiary tops of some higher summit or relatively insignificant independent summits, peaks with high prominences tend to be the highest points around and are likely to have extraordinary views. Only summits with a sufficient degree of prominence are regarded as independent mountains, for example, the worlds second-highest mountain is K2. While Mount Everests South Summit is taller than K2, it is not considered an independent mountain because it is a subsummit of the main summit, many lists of mountains take topographic prominence as a criterion for inclusion, or cutoff. John and Anne Nuttalls The Mountains of England and Wales uses a cutoff of 15 m, in the contiguous United States, the famous list of fourteeners uses a cutoff of 300 ft /91 m. Also in the U. S.2000 feet of prominence has become a threshold that signifies that a peak has major stature. This generates lists of peaks ranked by prominence, which are different from lists ranked by elevation. Such lists tend to emphasize isolated high peaks, such as range or island high points, one advantage of a prominence-ranked list is that it needs no cutoff, since a peak with high prominence is automatically an independent peak
4.
Topographic isolation
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The topographic isolation of a summit is the minimum great-circle distance to a point of equal elevation, representing a radius of dominance in which the peak is the highest point. It can be calculated for small hills and islands as well as for major mountain peaks, the following sortable table lists the Earths 40 most topographically isolated summits. The nearest peak to Germanys highest mountain, the 2, 962-metre-high Zugspitze, the distance between the Zugspitze and this contour is 25.8 km, the Zugspitze is thus the highest peak for a radius of 25.8 km around. Its isolation is thus 25.8 km, because there are no higher mountains than Mount Everest, it has no definitive isolation. Many sources list its isolation as the circumference of the earth over the poles or – questionably, after Mount Everest the Aconcagua, highest mountain of the American continents, has the greatest isolation of all mountains. There is no land for 16,534 kilometres when its height is first exceeded by Tirich Mir in the Hindu Kush. Mont Blanc is the highest mountain of the Alps, the geographically nearest higher mountains are all in the Caucasus. The Kukurtlu, which rises near the Elbrus, is the peak for Mont Blanc. com Canadian Mountain Encyclopedia peakbagger. com peaklist. org peakware. com World Mountain Encyclopedia summitpost. org
5.
Longs Peak
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Longs Peak is a high and prominent mountain summit in the northern Front Range of the Rocky Mountains of North America. The 14, 259-foot fourteener is located in the Rocky Mountain National Park Wilderness,9.6 miles southwest by south of the Town of Estes Park, Colorado, United States. Longs Peak is the northernmost fourteener in the Rocky Mountains and the highest point in Boulder County, the mountain was named in honor of explorer Stephen Harriman Long and is featured on the Colorado state quarter. Longs Peak can be seen from Longmont, Colorado, as well as from most of the northern Front Range Urban Corridor. Longs Peak is one of the most prominent mountains in Colorado, the peak is named for Major Stephen Long, who is said to be the first to spot the great mountains on behalf of the U. S. Government on June 30,1820. Together with the nearby Mount Meeker, the two are referred to as the Twin Peaks. As the only fourteener in Rocky Mountain National Park, the peak has long been of interest to climbers, the easiest route is not technical during the summer season. It was probably first used by indigenous people collecting eagle feathers. The first recorded ascent was in August 23,1868 by the party of John Wesley Powell via the south side. The East Face of the mountain is 1,675 feet steep and is surmounted by a 1,000 feet steep sheer cliff known as The Diamond. Another famous profile belongs to Longs Peak, to the southeast of the summit is a series of rises which, the photo shows the beaver climbing the south of the mountain. In 1954 the first proposal made to the National Park Service to climb The Diamond was met with an official closure, the Diamond was first ascended by Dave Rearick and Bob Kamps that year, by a route that would come to be known simply as D1. This route would later be listed in Allen Steck and Steve Ropers influential book Fifty Classic Climbs of North America, the easiest route on the face is the Casual Route, first climbed in 1977. It has since become the most popular route up the wall, the oldest person to summit Longs Peak was Rev. William Col. Billy Butler, who climbed it on September 2,1926, his 85th birthday. In 1932, Clerin “Zumie” Zumwalt summited Longs Peak 53 times, on June 6,2016, a group of US Special Forces were rescued after members of the team suffered from altitude sickness. Longs Peak has one remaining glacier named Mills Glacier, the glacier is located around 12,800 feet at the base of the Eastern Face, just above Chasm Lake. A permanent snowfield, called The Dove, is located north of Longs Peak, Longs Peak is one of fewer than 50 mountains in Colorado that have a glacier. Trails that ascend Longs Peak include the East Longs Peak Trail, the Longs Peak Trail, the Keyhole Route, Clarks Arrow, only some technical climbing is required to reach the summit of Longs Peak during the summer season, which typically runs from mid July through early September
6.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
7.
Colorado
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Colorado is a state in the United States encompassing most of the Southern Rocky Mountains as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of the Great Plains. Colorado is part of the Western United States, the Southwestern United States, Colorado is the 8th most extensive and the 21st most populous of the 50 United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the population of Colorado was 5,540,545 on July 1,2016, the state was named for the Colorado River, which Spanish travelers named the Río Colorado for the ruddy silt the river carried from the mountains. The Territory of Colorado was organized on February 28,1861, Colorado is nicknamed the Centennial State because it became a state in the same year as the centennial of the United States Declaration of Independence. Colorado is noted for its landscape of mountains, forests, high plains, mesas, canyons, plateaus, rivers. Denver is the capital and the most populous city of Colorado, residents of the state are properly known as Coloradans, although the term Coloradoan has been used archaically and lives on in the title of Fort Collins newspaper, the Coloradoan. Colorado, Wyoming and Utah are the states which have boundaries defined solely by lines of latitude and longitude. The summit of Mount Elbert at 14,440 feet elevation in Lake County is the highest point in Colorado, Colorado is the only U. S. state that lies entirely above 1,000 meters elevation. The point where the Arikaree River flows out of Yuma County, Colorado and this point, which holds the distinction of being the highest low elevation point of any state, is higher than the high elevation points of 18 states and the District of Columbia. A little less than one half of the area of Colorado is flat, East of the Rocky Mountains are the Colorado Eastern Plains of the High Plains, the section of the Great Plains within Nebraska at elevations ranging from roughly 3,350 to 7,500 feet. The Colorado plains were mostly prairies, but they have many patches of forests, buttes. Eastern Colorado is presently covered in farmland and rangeland, along with small farming villages. Precipitation is fair, averaging from 15 to 25 inches annually, corn, wheat, hay, soybeans, and oats are all typical crops, and most of the villages and towns in this region boast both a water tower and a grain elevator. Irrigation water is available from the South Platte, the Arkansas River, and a few other streams, however, heavy use of ground water from wells for irrigation has caused underground water reserves to decline. As well as agriculture, eastern Colorado hosts considerable livestock, such as cattle ranches. Roughly 70% of Colorados population resides along the edge of the Rocky Mountains in the Front Range Urban Corridor between Cheyenne, Wyoming, and Pueblo, Colorado. This region is protected from prevailing storms that blow in from the Pacific Ocean region by the high Rockies in the middle of Colorado. The Front Range includes Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Loveland, Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Greeley and other townships, on the other side of the Rockies, the significant population centers in Western Colorado are the cities of Grand Junction, Durango, and Montrose
8.
Rocky Mountain National Park
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The park is situated between the towns of Estes Park to the east and Grand Lake to the west. The eastern and westerns slopes of the Continental Divide run directly through the center of the park with the headwaters of the Colorado River located in the northwestern region. The main features of the park include mountains, alpine lakes, the Rocky Mountain National Park Act was signed by then–President Woodrow Wilson on January 26,1915, establishing the park boundaries and protecting the area for future generations. The Civilian Conservation Corps built the main route, named Trail Ridge Road. In 1976, UNESCO designated the park as one of the first World Biosphere Reserves, in 2016, more than four and a half million recreational visitors entered the park, which is an increase of about nine percent from the prior year. The history of Rocky Mountain National Park began when Paleo-Indians traveled along what is now Trail Ridge Road to hunt, Ute and Arapaho people subsequently hunted and camped in the area. In 1820, the Long Expedition, led by Stephen H. Long for whom Longs Peak was named, approached the Rockies via the Platte River. Settlers began arriving in the mid-1800s, displacing the Native Americans who mostly left the area voluntarily by 1860, lulu City, Dutchtown, and Gaskill in the Never Summer Mountains were established in the 1870s when prospectors came in search of gold and silver. The boom ended by 1883 with miners deserting their claims, the railroad reached Lyons, Colorado in 1881 and the Big Thompson Canyon Road—a section of U. S. Route 34 from Loveland to Estes Park—was completed in 1904. The 1920s saw a boom in building lodges and roads in the park, prominent individuals in the effort to create a national park included Enos Mills from the Estes Park area, James Grafton Rogers from Denver, and J. Horace McFarland of Pennsylvania. The national park was established on January 26,1915, Precambrian metamorphic rock formed the core of the North American continent during the Precambrian eon 4. 5–1 billion years ago. During the Paleozoic era, western North America was submerged beneath a sea, with a seabed composed of limestone. Concurrently, in the period from 500–300 million years ago, the region began to sink while lime, eroded granite produced sand particles that formed strata—layers of sediment—in the sinking basin. About 300 million years ago, the land was uplifted creating the ancestral Rocky Mountains, fountain Formation was deposited during the Pennsylvanian period of the Paleozoic era, 290–296 million years ago. Over the next 150 million years, the uplifted, continued to erode. Wind, gravity, rainwater, snow, and glacial ice eroded the mountains over geologic time scales. The Ancestral Rockies were eventually buried under subsequent strata, the Pierre Shale formation was deposited during the Paleogene and Cretaceous periods about 70 million years ago. The region was covered by a deep sea—the Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway—which deposited massive amounts of shale on the seabed
9.
Boulder County, Colorado
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Boulder County is one of the 64 counties of the U. S. state of Colorado of the United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 294,567, the most populous municipality in the county and the county seat is Boulder. Boulder County comprises the Boulder, CO Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the Denver-Aurora, Boulder County was one of the original 17 counties created by the Territory of Colorado on November 1,1861. The county was named for Boulder City and Boulder Creek, so named because of the abundance of boulders in the area. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 740 square miles. Longs Peak, the parks highest summit at 4,345 meters elevation, is located in Boulder County, the population density was 392 people per square mile. There were 119,900 housing units at a density of 162 per square mile. The racial makeup of the county was 88. 54% White,0. 88% Black or African American,0. 61% Native American,3. 06% Asian,0. 06% Pacific Islander,4. 67% from other races, and 2. 18% from two or more races. 10. 46% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race,26. 30% of all households were made up of individuals and 5. 50% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.47 and the family size was 3.03. In the county, the population was out with 22. 90% under the age of 18,13. 40% from 18 to 24,33. 60% from 25 to 44,22. 30% from 45 to 64. The median age was 33 years, for every 100 females there were 102.20 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 101.70 males, in 2014, the median income for a household in the county was $69,407, and the median income for a family was $94,938. Males had an income of $65,489 versus $48,140 for females. About 7. 0% of families and 14. 6% of the population were below the poverty line, Boulder County is divided into three districts each represented by a commissioner elected county-wide. The three commissioners comprise the county Board of Commissioners and represent the county as a whole, each commissioner must reside in their respective district and may be elected to a maximum of two four-year terms. The Board of County Commissioners are full-time public servants and approve the budget for the entire County government. The Board also oversees the management of 10 County departments and the operations of the county
10.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
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