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Mauna Kea
The tallest mountain on Earth, measured from its base
Mauna Kea, a dormant volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, reaches 13,803 feet (4,207 m) above sea level — but that is only part of its true height. Measured from its base on the deep Pacific seafloor, Mauna Kea rises more than 33,000 feet, making it the tallest mountain on Earth from base to summit, taller even than Mount Everest. Its name means "white mountain," for the snow that caps it in winter despite its tropical latitude.
The volcano built the northern half of the Big Island over hundreds of thousands of years and now sleeps, its summit a barren, cinder-strewn world high above the clouds. That high, dry, dark summit offers some of the clearest skies on the planet, and it hosts a cluster of the world's most powerful astronomical observatories — though the mountain is also sacred to Native Hawaiians, a tension that has made its use deeply contested.