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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
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South Africa
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South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa, is the southernmost country in Africa. South Africa is the 25th-largest country in the world by land area and it is the southernmost country on the mainland of the Old World or the Eastern Hemisphere. About 80 percent of South Africans are of Sub-Saharan African ancestry, divided among a variety of ethnic groups speaking different Bantu languages, the remaining population consists of Africas largest communities of European, Asian, and multiracial ancestry. South Africa is a multiethnic society encompassing a variety of cultures, languages. Its pluralistic makeup is reflected in the recognition of 11 official languages. The country is one of the few in Africa never to have had a coup détat, however, the vast majority of black South Africans were not enfranchised until 1994. During the 20th century, the black majority sought to recover its rights from the dominant white minority, with this struggle playing a role in the countrys recent history. The National Party imposed apartheid in 1948, institutionalising previous racial segregation, since 1994, all ethnic and linguistic groups have held political representation in the countrys democracy, which comprises a parliamentary republic and nine provinces. South Africa is often referred to as the Rainbow Nation to describe the multicultural diversity. The World Bank classifies South Africa as an economy. Its economy is the second-largest in Africa, and the 34th-largest in the world, in terms of purchasing power parity, South Africa has the seventh-highest per capita income in Africa. However, poverty and inequality remain widespread, with about a quarter of the population unemployed, nevertheless, South Africa has been identified as a middle power in international affairs, and maintains significant regional influence. The name South Africa is derived from the geographic location at the southern tip of Africa. Upon formation the country was named the Union of South Africa in English, since 1961 the long form name in English has been the Republic of South Africa. In Dutch the country was named Republiek van Zuid-Afrika, replaced in 1983 by the Afrikaans Republiek van Suid-Afrika, since 1994 the Republic has had an official name in each of its 11 official languages. Mzansi, derived from the Xhosa noun umzantsi meaning south, is a name for South Africa. South Africa contains some of the oldest archaeological and human fossil sites in the world, extensive fossil remains have been recovered from a series of caves in Gauteng Province. The area is a UNESCO World Heritage site and has termed the Cradle of Humankind
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Western Cape
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The Western Cape is a province of South Africa, situated in the south-western part of the country. It is the fourth largest of the nine provinces in terms of area and population, with an area of 129,449 square kilometres and 5.8 million inhabitants. About two-thirds of these live in the metropolitan area of Cape Town. The Western Cape was created in 1994 from part of the former Cape Province, the Western Cape Province is roughly L-shaped, extending north and east from the Cape of Good Hope, in the southwestern corner of South Africa. It stretches about 400 kilometres northwards along the Atlantic coast and about 500 kilometres eastwards along the South African south coast and it is bordered on the north by the Northern Cape and on the east by the Eastern Cape. The total land area of the province is 129,462 square kilometres and it is roughly the size of England or the State of Louisiana. Its capital city and largest city is Cape Town, and some major cities include Stellenbosch, Worcester, Paarl. The Garden Route and the Overberg are popular tourism areas. The Western Cape is the southernmost region of the African continent with Cape Agulhas as its southernmost point, the coastline varies from sandy between capes, to rocky to steep and mountainous in places. The only natural harbour is Saldanha Bay on the west coast, however a lack of fresh water in the region meant that it has only recently been used as a harbour. But fresh water coming off Table Mountain and Devils Peak allowed the early European settlers to build Cape Town on the shores of this less than satisfactory anchorage, the province is topographically exceptionally diverse. Most of the province falls within the Cape Fold Belt, a set of parallel ranges of sandstone folded mountains of Cambrian-Ordovician age. The valleys between ranges are very fertile as they contain the weathered loamy soils of the Bokkeveld mustones. The far interior forms part of the Karoo and this region of the Province is generally arid and hilly with a prominent escarpment that runs close to the Provinces most inland boundary. The Escarpment marks the edge of South Africas central plateau. The principal rivers of the province are the Berg and Olifants which drain into the Atlantic Ocean, and the Breede and Gourits which drain into the Indian Ocean. The vegetation is extremely diverse, with one of the worlds seven floral kingdoms almost exclusively endemic to the province, namely the Cape Floral Kingdom. These evergreen heathlands are extremely rich in diversity, with at least as many plant species occurring on Table Mountain as in the entire United Kingdom
4.
Orogeny
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An Orogeny is an event that leads to a large structural deformation of the Earths lithosphere due to the interaction between tectonic plates. Orogens or orogenic belts develop when a plate is crumpled and is pushed upwards to form mountain ranges. Orogeny is the mechanism by which mountains are built on continents. The word orogeny comes from Ancient Greek, though it was used before him, the term was employed by the American geologist G. K. Gilbert in 1890 to describe the process of mountain building as distinguished from epeirogeny. Formation of an orogen is accomplished in part by the processes of subduction or convergence of two or more continents. Orogeny usually produces long arcuate structures, known as orogenic belts, generally, orogenic belts consist of long parallel strips of rock exhibiting similar characteristics along the length of the belt. Orogenic belts are associated with zones, which consume crust, produce volcanoes. Geologists attribute the arcuate structure to the rigidity of the descending plate and these island arcs may be added to a continent during an orogenic event. The processes of orogeny can take tens of millions of years, frequently, rock formations that undergo orogeny are severely deformed and undergo metamorphism. Orogenic processes may push deeply buried rocks to the surface, sea-bottom and near-shore material may cover some or all of the orogenic area. If the orogeny is due to two continents colliding, very high mountains can result, an orogenic event may be studied, as a tectonic structural event, as a geographical event, and as a chronological event. The foreland basin forms ahead of the orogen due mainly to loading and resulting flexure of the lithosphere by the mountain belt. The basin migrates with the front and early deposited foreland basin sediments become progressively involved in folding and thrusting. Sediments deposited in the basin are mainly derived from the erosion of the actively uplifting rocks of the mountain range. The fill of many such shows an change in time from deepwater marine through shallow water to continental sediments. Although orogeny involves plate tectonics, the tectonic forces result in a variety of associated phenomena, including magmatism, metamorphism, crustal melting, what exactly happens in a specific orogen depends upon the strength and rheology of the continental lithosphere, and how these properties change during orogenesis. In addition to orogeny, the orogen is subject to other processes, for example, the Caledonian Orogeny refers to the Silurian and Devonian events that resulted from the collision of Laurentia with Eastern Avalonia and other former fragments of Gondwana. The Caledonian Orogen resulted from events and various others that are part of its peculiar orogenic cycle
5.
Cape Fold Belt
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The Cape Fold Belt is a fold and thrust belt of late Paleozoic age, which affected the sequence of sedimentary rock layers of the Cape Supergroup in the southwestern corner of South Africa. It was originally continuous with the Ventana Mountains near Bahía Blanca in Argentina, the Pensacola Mountains, the Ellsworth Mountains, the rocks were laid down as sediments in a rift valley that developed in southern Gondwana, just south of Southern Africa, during the Cambrian-Ordovician Periods. An 8-km-thick layer of sediment, known as the Cape Supergroup, the folded Cape Supergroup formed the northern foothills of this towering mountain range. The weight of the Falkland-Cape Supergroup mountains caused the continental crust of Southern Africa to sag, forming a retroarc foreland system, although the tops of the original Cape Fold Mountains were eroded away, they eroded much slower than the considerably softer Karoo deposits to the north. Thus the Cape Fold Belt erupted from the eroding African landscape to form the ranges of mountains that run for 800 km along the southern and south-western Cape coastline today. In fact, they form the coastline, either sloping steeply directly into the sea, even though the mountains are very old by Andean and Alpine standards, they remain steep and rugged due to their quartzitic sandstone geology making them very resistant to weathering. The Cape Fold Belt extends from about Clanwilliam, to about Port Elizabeth, the Cape Supergroup sediments beyond these points are not folded into mountain ranges, but do, in places, form steep cliffs or gorges, where the surrounding sediments have been eroded away. The mountains, although only of moderate height, are majestic and dramatic and this is due in part to numerous geological factors, The ranges usually have few to no foothills and rise directly from valley floors. The bases of the mountains are usually at or near sea level, the mountains of the Cape Fold Belt are composed of rocks belonging to the Cape Supergroup, which is more extensive than the Fold Belt. The Supergroup is divided into several distinct Groups, the western and southern extents of the Supergroup have been folded into a series of longitudinal mountain ranges, by the collision of the Falkland Plateau into what would later become South Africa. Drilling in the Karoo has established that Cape Supergroup rocks are found below the surface up to approximately 150 km north of their northernmost exposure on the surface, the Cape Supergroup extends eastwards beyond the Fold Belt into the Eastern Cape and northern KwaZulu-Natal, where no folding took place. The initial sedimentation into the valley which developed in southern Gondwana was confined to the western and eastern ends of the rift. Rivers diverted into these early rifts deposited sand and gravel to form the Klipheuwel Group in the west, today the Klipheuwel Group is exposed in several small patches near Lamberts Bay, Piketberg, and to the south-west of Paarl Rock. The Natal Group, which is similar to the Table Mountain Group, is found in several elongated patches near the coast of the northern Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal. It forms the cliffs of Oribi Gorge, and can also be seen in a road cutting between Durban and Pietermaritzburg, particularly at the Marian Hill Toll Plaza. Most of the group has been eroded by numerous rivers creating the ragged plateaus. The sea floor consisted of the Klipheuwel Group in the west, the Natal Group in the east, and eroded pre-Cambrian rocks in between. The first sediments into the initially still shallow, possibly inland, sea were alternating layers of maroon colored mudstones and buff colored sandstones, each mostly between 10 and 30 cm thick
6.
Carboniferous
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The Carboniferous is a geologic period and system that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period 358.9 million years ago, to the beginning of the Permian Period,298.9 Mya. The name Carboniferous means coal-bearing and derives from the Latin words carbō and ferō, and was coined by geologists William Conybeare and William Phillips in 1822. Based on a study of the British rock succession, it was the first of the system names to be employed. The Carboniferous is often treated in North America as two periods, the earlier Mississippian and the later Pennsylvanian. Terrestrial life was established by the Carboniferous period. Amphibians were the dominant land vertebrates, of one branch would eventually evolve into amniotes. Arthropods were also common, and many were much larger than those of today. Vast swaths of forest covered the land, which would eventually be laid down, the atmospheric content of oxygen also reached their highest levels in geological history during the period, 35% compared with 21% today, allowing terrestrial invertebrates to evolve to great size. A major marine and terrestrial extinction event, the Carboniferous rainforest collapse, occurred in the middle of the period, the later half of the period experienced glaciations, low sea level, and mountain building as the continents collided to form Pangaea. In the United States the Carboniferous is usually broken into Mississippian and Pennsylvanian subperiods, the Silesian is roughly contemporaneous with the late Mississippian Serpukhovian plus the Pennsylvanian. In Britain the Dinantian is traditionally known as the Carboniferous Limestone, the Namurian as the Millstone Grit, and the Westphalian as the Coal Measures and Pennant Sandstone. There was also a drop in south polar temperatures, southern Gondwanaland was glaciated throughout the period and these conditions apparently had little effect in the deep tropics, where lush swamps, later to become coal, flourished to within 30 degrees of the northernmost glaciers. Mid-Carboniferous, a drop in sea level precipitated a major extinction, one that hit crinoids. This sea level drop and the unconformity in North America separate the Mississippian subperiod from the Pennsylvanian subperiod. This happened about 323 million years ago, at the onset of the Permo-Carboniferous Glaciation, the Carboniferous was a time of active mountain-building, as the supercontinent Pangaea came together. The southern continents remained tied together in the supercontinent Gondwana, which collided with North America–Europe along the present line of eastern North America, in the same time frame, much of present eastern Eurasian plate welded itself to Europe along the line of the Ural mountains. Most of the Mesozoic supercontinent of Pangea was now assembled, although North China, the Late Carboniferous Pangaea was shaped like an O. There were two major oceans in the Carboniferous—Panthalassa and Paleo-Tethys, which was inside the O in the Carboniferous Pangaea, other minor oceans were shrinking and eventually closed - Rheic Ocean, the small, shallow Ural Ocean and Proto-Tethys Ocean
7.
Quartzite
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Quartzite is a hard, non-foliated metamorphic rock which was originally pure quartz sandstone. Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts. Pure quartzite is usually white to grey, though quartzites often occur in shades of pink. Other colors, such as yellow, green, blue and orange, are due to other minerals, when sandstone is cemented to quartzite, the individual quartz grains recrystallize along with the former cementing material to form an interlocking mosaic of quartz crystals. Most or all of the texture and sedimentary structures of the sandstone are erased by the metamorphism. The grainy, sandpaper-like surface becomes glassy in appearance, minor amounts of former cementing materials, iron oxide, silica, carbonate and clay, often migrate during recrystallization and metamorphosis. This causes streaks and lenses to form within the quartzite, orthoquartzite is a very pure quartz sandstone composed of usually well-rounded quartz grains cemented by silica. Orthoquartzite is often 99% SiO2 with only minor amounts of iron oxide and trace resistant minerals such as zircon, rutile. Although few fossils are present, the original texture and sedimentary structures are preserved. The term is traditionally used for quartz-cemented quartz arenites. Quartzite is very resistant to weathering and often forms ridges. The nearly pure silica content of the rock provides little for soil, therefore, because of its hardness and angular shape, crushed quartzite is often used as railway ballast. Quartzite is a stone and may be used to cover walls, as roofing tiles, as flooring. Its use for countertops in kitchens is expanding rapidly and it is harder and more resistant to stains than granite. Crushed quartzite is used in road construction. High purity quartzite is used to produce ferrosilicon, industrial silica sand, during the Paleolithic quartzite was used, in addition to flint, quartz, and other lithic raw materials, for making stone tools. Quartzite is also found in the Morenci Copper Mine in Arizona, the town of Quartzsite in western Arizona derives its name from the quartzites in the nearby mountains in both Arizona and Southeastern California. A glassy vitreous quartzite has been described from the Belt Supergroup in the Coeur d’Alene district of northern Idaho, in the United Kingdom, a craggy ridge of quartzite called the Stiperstones runs parallel with the Pontesford-Linley fault,6 km north-west of the Long Mynd in south Shropshire
8.
Sandstone
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Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized minerals or rock grains. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar because these are the most common minerals in the Earths crust, like sand, sandstone may be any color, but the most common colors are tan, brown, yellow, red, grey, pink, white, and black. Since sandstone beds often form highly visible cliffs and other topographic features, quartz-bearing sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure, usually related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts. They are formed from cemented grains that may either be fragments of a rock or be mono-minerallic crystals. The cements binding these grains together are typically calcite, clays, grain sizes in sands are defined within the range of 0.0625 mm to 2 mm. The formation of sandstone involves two principal stages, first, a layer or layers of sand accumulates as the result of sedimentation, either from water or from air. Typically, sedimentation occurs by the settling out from suspension. The most common cementing materials are silica and calcium carbonate, which are derived either from dissolution or from alteration of the sand after it was buried. Colours will usually be tan or yellow, a predominant additional colourant in the southwestern United States is iron oxide, which imparts reddish tints ranging from pink to dark red, with additional manganese imparting a purplish hue. Red sandstones are seen in the Southwest and West of Britain, as well as central Europe. The regularity of the latter favours use as a source for masonry, either as a building material or as a facing stone. These physical properties allow the grains to survive multiple recycling events. Quartz grains evolve from rock, which are felsic in origin. Feldspathic framework grains are commonly the second most abundant mineral in sandstones, Feldspar can be divided into two smaller subdivisions, alkali feldspars and plagioclase feldspars. The different types of feldspar can be distinguished under a petrographic microscope, below is a description of the different types of feldspar. Alkali feldspar is a group of minerals in which the composition of the mineral can range from KAlSi3O8 to NaAlSi3O8. Plagioclase feldspar is a group of solid solution minerals that range in composition from NaAlSi3O8 to CaAl2Si2O8. Lithic framework grains are pieces of ancient source rock that have yet to weather away to individual mineral grains, accessory minerals are all other mineral grains in a sandstone, commonly these minerals make up just a small percentage of the grains in a sandstone
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Mountain range
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A mountain range is a geographic area containing numerous geologically related mountains. A mountain system or system of ranges, sometimes is used to combine several geological features that are geographically related. Mountain ranges are usually segmented by highlands or mountain passes and valleys, individual mountains within the same mountain range do not necessarily have the same geologic structure or petrology. They may be a mix of different orogenic expressions and terranes, for example thrust sheets, uplifted blocks, fold mountains, most geologically young mountain ranges on the Earths land surface are associated with either the Pacific Ring of Fire or the Alpide Belt. The Andes is 7,000 kilometres long and is considered the worlds longest mountain system. The Alpide belt includes Indonesia and southeast Asia, through the Himalaya, the belt also includes other European and Asian mountain ranges. The Himalayas contain the highest mountains in the world, including Mount Everest, mountain ranges outside of these two systems include the Arctic Cordillera, the Urals, the Appalachians, the Scandinavian Mountains, the Altai Mountains and the Hijaz Mountains. If the definition of a range is stretched to include underwater mountains. The mountain systems of the earth are characterized by a tree structure, the sub-range relationship is often expressed as a parent-child relationship. For example, the White Mountains of New Hampshire and the Blue Ridge Mountains are sub-ranges of the Appalachian Mountains, equivalently, the Appalachians are the parent of the White Mountains and Blue Ridge Mountains, and the White Mountains and the Blue Ridge Mountains are children of the Appalachians. The position of mountains influences climate, such as rain or snow, when air masses move up and over mountains, the air cools producing orographic precipitation. As the air descends on the side, it warms again and is drier. Often, a shadow will affect the leeward side of a range. Mountain ranges are constantly subjected to forces which work to tear them down. Erosion is at work while the mountains are being uplifted and long after until the mountains are reduced to low hills, rivers are traditionally believed to be the principle erosive factor on mountain ranges, with their ability of bedrock incision and sediment transport. The rugged topography of a range is the product of erosion. The basins adjacent to a mountain range are filled with sediments which are buried and turned into sedimentary rock. The early Cenozoic uplift of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado provides an example and this mass of rock was removed as the range was actively undergoing uplift
10.
Karoo
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The Karoo is a semi-desert natural region of South Africa. There is no definition of what constitutes the Karoo. The Karoo is partly defined by its topography, geology, and climate — above all, its low rainfall, arid air, cloudless skies, the Karoo also hosted a well-preserved ecosystem hundreds of million years ago which is now represented by many fossils. Today it is still a place of great heat and frosts, however, underground water is found throughout the Karoo, which can be tapped by boreholes, making permanent settlements and sheep farming possible. The eastern and north-eastern Karoo are often covered by large patches of grassland, the typical Karoo vegetation used to support large game, sometimes in vast herds. Today sheep thrive on the xerophytes, though each sheep requires about 4 hectares of grazing to sustain itself, the Great Karoo lies to the north of the Swartberg range, the Little Karoo is to the south of it. The only sharp and definite boundary of the Great Karoo is formed by the most inland ranges of Cape Fold Mountains to the south, the extent of the Karoo to the north is vague, fading gradually and almost imperceptibly into the increasingly arid Bushmanland towards the north-west. To the north and north-east it fades into the savannah and grasslands of Griqualand West, the boundary to the east grades into the grasslands of the Eastern Midlands. The Great Karoo is itself divided by the Great Escarpment into the Upper Karoo, a great many local names, each denoting different subregions of the Great Karoo, exist, some more widely, or more generally, known than others. In the Lower Karoo, going from west to east, they are the Tankwa Karoo, the Moordenaarskaroo, the Koup, the Vlakte and the Camdeboo Plains. The Hantam, the Kareeberge, the Roggeveld and Nuweveld are the better known subregions of the Upper Karoo, though most of it is known as the Upper Karoo. The Little Karoo’s boundaries are defined by mountain ranges to the west. The road between Uniondale and Willowmore is considered, by convention, to form the approximate arbitrary eastern extremity of the Little Karoo and its extent is much smaller than that of the Great Karoo. Locally, it is called the Klein Karoo, which is Afrikaans for Little Karoo. The Great Karoo straddles the 30° S parallel on the west of the continent and it is furthermore in the rainfall shadow of the Cape Fold Mountains along the western coastline. The western Lower Karoo contain remnants of the Cape Fold Mountains which give it a moderate hilly appearance, the Upper Karoo has been intruded by dolerite sills, creating multiple flat topped hills, or Karoo Koppies, which are iconic of the Great Karoo. The vegetation of the Upper and Lower Karoo is similar, so few people make a distinction between the two. Thereafter they gradually ascend the Great Escarpment along a valley to Three Sisters on the Central Plateau
11.
Cango Caves
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The Cango Caves are located in Precambrian limestones at the foothills of the Swartberg range near the town of Oudtshoorn, in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. The principal cave is one of the countrys finest, best known, and most popular tourist caves and attracts many visitors from overseas. Although the extensive system of tunnels and chambers go on for over 4 km, only about a quarter of this is open to visitors, cave paintings and artifacts indicate that the caves were in use throughout prehistory over a long period during the Middle and Later Stone Ages. The caves were rediscovered in modern times in 1780 by a farmer named Jacobus Van Zyl. The chamber he first was lowered down into was found to be as long as a football field, further exploration was done and a second chamber discovered in 1792. The caves soon became a place to visit. Goodwin, an archaeologist at the University of Cape Town, carried out a test excavation in the Cango Caves in 1930 which found stone artefacts, however, day-to-day management of the caves is the responsibility of the municipality of Oudtshoorn. Mr. Johnny van Wassenaer, the cave’s first official guide is purported to have walked 29 hours to find the end of the caves in 1898. When there, he is said to have calculated that he was 25 km from the entrance, so far, they are finding more and more caves to support this story. The first rough survey was done in 1897, mapping out the first 26 chambers, in 1956 the South African Spelaeological Association was tasked to draw up an accurate mapping of the Cango Caves, and look for alternative entrances. Their results indicated that the caves were 775 m long in a line. The nearest point to the surface in the caves is at the top of the shaft in the Devils Kitchen,52.6 m from the floor, in 1972 James Craig-Smith, Luther Terblanche and Dart Ruiters widened an obstructed passage to discover Cango II. It stretches 270 m beyond the end of the Devil’s Kitchen, at the end of Cango II there is a shaft that descends 20 m to a chamber filled with water. This water flowed in the direction of Cango I, in August 1975, during a symposium on cave biology, an exploration team led by Florus Koper drained the chamber of most of its water and crawled through what was previously an underwater passage. This led to the discovery of caves, called Cango III. Altogether these caves are about 1,000 m long, the biggest of the chambers, stretches about 300 m. Digby Ellis and Dave Land added 290 m to Cango III when they discovered a crawlway in December 1977, a further 90 m was added in June 1978. All these extensions were surveyed in August 1978 by Dave Land, Charles Maxwell, Brian Russell, tours are conducted at regular intervals on most days—there is a Standard Tour which takes an hour and an Adventure Tour which takes an hour and a half
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Mountain pass
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A mountain pass is a route through a mountain range or over a ridge. At lower elevations it may be called a hill pass, the highest vehicle-accessible pass in the world appears to be Mana Pass, located in the Himalayas on the border between India and China. Mountain passes make use of a gap, saddle or col, a topographic saddle is analogous to the mathematical concept of a saddle surface, with a saddle point marking the highest point between two valleys and the lowest point along a ridge. On a topographic map, passes are characterized by lines with an hourglass shape. Passes are often found just above the source of a river, a pass may be very short, consisting of steep slopes to the top of the pass, or may be a valley many kilometres long, whose highest point might only be identifiable by surveying. Roads have long been built – and more recently railways – through passes, some high and rugged passes may have tunnels bored underneath to allow faster traffic flow throughout the year. The top of a pass is frequently the only ground in the area. If a national border follows a mountain range, a pass over the mountains is typically on the border, and there may be a control or customs station. For instance Argentina and Chile share the worlds third-longest international border,5,300 kilometres long, the border runs north-south along the Andes mountains, with a total of 42 mountain passes. On a road over a pass, it is customary to have a roadside sign giving the name of the pass. As well as offering relatively easy travel between valleys, passes also provide a route between two mountain tops with a minimum of descent. As a result, it is common for tracks to meet at a pass, passes traditionally were places for trade routes, communications, cultural exchange, military expeditions etc. A typical example is the Brenner pass in the Alps, some mountain passes above the tree line have problems with snow drift in the winter. This might be alleviated by building the road a few meters above the ground, there are many words for pass in the English-speaking world. In the United States, pass is very common in the West, the gap is common in the southern Appalachians, notch in parts of New England. Scotland has the Gaelic term bealach, while Wales has the similar bwlch, the roads at Mana Pass at 5,610 metres and Marsimik La at 5,582 metres, on and near the China-India border respectively, appear to be worlds two highest motorable passes. Media related to Mountain passes at Wikimedia Commons
