Kings Peak, the crown among Utah's mountains, is now 5.9 feet taller than before at 13,534 feet above sea level. Mount Nebo has gained 4.6 total feet; Mount Timpanogos has risen 4.4 feet; Lone Peak has added an extra 4.3 feet; and Mount Olympus is now an additional 3.7 feet above sea level.
OK, the peaks haven't really grown, but their elevations have indeed increased slightly because of a recent change to a national measurement system that more accurately represents reality.
In fact, all of Utah and the nation's elevations have increased because of new calibrations made by the National Geodetic Survey, in conjunction with the U.S. Geological Survey.
But don't look for new maps to contain these new measurements anytime soon — the price tag and workload to do so is too extreme.
According to Dale Benson, a supervisor in the cartography division at the USGS in Denver, the biggest difference in elevation changes doesn't equal even one-half a contour line, and that's the standard margin of error the USGS is already listing.
"The cost of redoing all maps is just not warranted," he said.
Essentially, the USGS and NGS have altered the baseline in place since 1929. Back then, surveyors relied on an average of 26 East Coast tide stations for their reference system. In 1988, Congress adopted a new standard that uses one station at the St. Lawrence River as the only true gospel measurement point.
The result, Benson said, is that everything's changed in elevation. The smallest changes are on flat lands in Texas, where the increase is as little as 8 centimeters. The largest changes are in the massive Rocky Mountains and the Sierras — as much as 7 feet for Colorado's highest peak, Mount Elbert.
The revisions also mean Denver's "Mile High City" claim is now a little off with an increased 3 feet in the new survey to 5,283 feet above sea level. Downtown Salt Lake City's average elevation is also now 3 feet higher, and the Great Salt Lake waterline elevation is up 3.4 feet.
The lower 48 states' highest point, Mount Whitney in California, is now 6 feet higher at an even 14,500 feet.
On average, peaks in the Uinta Mountains increased about 6 feet, like King's Peak, Utah's highest point. Wasatch Mountains go up 4 to 5 feet.
Because actual sea level is hundreds of miles away for much of the West, past measurements with limited technology have been tricky. For example, surveyors have used plumb lines in the past, and the gravity from the massive mountains in the West pulled these bobs slightly off their true line, warping results.
So, elevations aren't really rising geologically, man is just getting better at measuring them through cartography, according to Benson.
"We don't get too excited about it," he said. "It's all relative."
No peak is going to creep above another, and Colorado still doesn't have more than its previous 54 total 14,000-foot peaks.
The Highpointers Club, a national hiking group dedicated to climbing each of the 50 state's tallest summits, has tentatively agreed to retain the old elevation system for now, presumably for simplicity's sake. A tedious, 11-step Internet process is required to convert an elevation point to the new standard.
Benson said the revisions are really only significant when someone is calculating something serious, like flood plains, for example, where this new, more accurate information is critical. "For most people, it's just a thing of interest," he said.
For more information, go online to www.ngs.noaa.gov.
E-MAIL: lynn@desnews.com