Google Earth, Thomas Montgomerie and K2

One of the fun things you can do on Google Earth is recreate the view that Thomas Montgomerie had when he named the second highest mountain in the world; K2 (8,611 m). Thomas named K2 and the other Ks in 1856 by viewing the distant mountains from the top of Mount Harmuch (5142 m). The view he sketched is shown below:

Mount Harmuch is located approximately at 34°24 N  74°54' E so you can fly there in Google Earth. If you zoom in to the summit of the mountain, tilt the view to the horizontal, and look north you will see on your left a huge white mountain. That is Nanga Parbat, at 8,126 m the ninth highest mountain on Earth. Now look to the northeast. There is no immediately obvious massive mountain but on more careful inspection you should be able to spot two sharp peaks on the horizon that look similar to the drawing above. They should look like the picture below:

You can now have the pleasure of flying towards these two enormous mountains, the peak on the right, K1 of course was Masherbrum (7,821 m). As you fly towards the two peaks it becomes apparent that K2 is more distant than Masherbrum and that is why it appears lower from Mount Harmuch. My rough estimate is that K2 is about 30 km more distant than Masherbrum. That whole area is extraordinary to view in Google Earth. Measuring on Google Earth reveals that K2 was in fact some 220 km away when Thomas viewed it. K2 was the only one of the five K named mountains that retains it's K name. I will repeat here (from the Wikipedia K2 page) the wonderful quote from the Italian climber Fosco Maraini on the accidental appropriateness of the name K2. It was  "... just the bare bones of a name, all rock and ice and storm and abyss. It makes no attempt to sound human. It is atoms and stars. It has the nakedness of the world before the first man – or of the cindered planet after the last."