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United States United States summit

Mount Whitney

You can see 249 km from here, looking north.

Calculating the panorama…

Drag to turn around. The relief is drawn 2.2 times taller so the ridges can be read; far ridges are paler, as in the real air.

The view

Up to 249 km away.

Calculated on the relief one degree at a time, up to 250 km, with the curvature of the Earth and the refraction of the air: what stands above the horizon from here.

84out of 100

Our own rating, from the relief and the climate only: open horizon (35 points), how far you see (25), sea and named peaks in view (20) and clear months (20).

  • 249 kmFarthest ridgelooking north
  • 99%Open horizonof the circle where the horizon is below your eyes
  • 190Peaks in viewnamed summits that rise above the relief in front
  • 4,380 mAltitudeabove the sea, at the highest point of the viewpoint

From the relief only: buildings, trees and haze are not in the model. On a hazy day you see much less; 250 km is the limit of our calculation.

The sun

The best sunsets are from June to September.

When the sun really disappears from this viewpoint — behind the relief or into the sea — and in which direction, on the 15th of each month, in local time.

  1. Jansouth-west40 min before the sea-level sunset48%
  2. Febsouth-west52 min before the sea-level sunset47%
  3. Marwest-4 min before the sea-level sunset48%
  4. Aprwest-6 min before the sea-level sunset52%
  5. Maynorth-west-2 min before the sea-level sunset61%
  6. Junnorth-west-2 min before the sea-level sunset77%
  7. Julnorth-westsets on an open horizon75%
  8. Augwest-2 min before the sea-level sunset80%
  9. Sepwest-6 min before the sea-level sunset77%
  10. Octwest44 min before the sea-level sunset69%
  11. Novsouth-west44 min before the sea-level sunset59%
  12. Decsouth-west38 min before the sea-level sunset47%
  • Time: when the sun goes behind the horizon you see from here.
  • Minutes: how much earlier the relief hides the sun.
  • %: share of clear sky that month (NASA, 2001–2020).

The highlighted months are the clearest. Golden hour starts about an hour before.

The place

Mount Whitney.

Highest mountain in California and the contiguous United States

Mount Whitney is a summit in United States, 4,380 m above the sea.

On a clear day the farthest ridge you can see is 249 km away, looking north.

190 named peaks rise above the relief in front; the most prominent is Telescope Peak (3,366 m), 117 km away.

The horizon is open, below your eyes, over 99% of the circle.

The skies are clearest from June to September.

Mount Whitney 2003-03-25
Geographer ( talk · contribs ) · CC BY 1.0

Get there and stay

Plan the visit

A guided tour, a bed nearby, a car.

Some links above are affiliate links: if you book through them we may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes what the data on this page says.

From above

The viewpoint and its surroundings.

The satellite image of the 6 × 6 km around the viewpoint, with what OpenStreetMap shows nearby.

Mount Whitney seen from above (Sentinel-2)
Seen from above: Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 (EOX, CC BY 4.0), 6 × 6 km, north up. Points © OpenStreetMap contributors.

Around, in OpenStreetMap

  • 1other viewpoints within 5 km
  • 30named peaks within 5 kmMount Carillon, Mount Corcoran, Mount Hitchcock and 27 more
  • 3marked trails within 3 kmJohn Muir Trail, Mount Whitney Trail, Mount Whitney Mountaineer's Route
  • 1shelters and huts within 5 kmSmithsonian Institution Shelter
  • 13campsites within 10 kmTrail Camp, Outpost Camp, Mount Whitney Trailhead Campground and 10 more
  • cable car and funicular stations within 5 km
  • car parks within 3 km
  • visitor centres within 5 km
  • restaurants and cafés within 3 km
  • places to stay within 10 km

Counted in OpenStreetMap, the map anyone can edit. A low number may just mean nobody has mapped it yet.

In our other atlases

What you see from Mount Whitney, and what is near.

Everything around this viewpoint — mountains, water, forests, birds, caves and the night sky — in the family's atlases.

Peakyas105 mountains within 25 km
Mount Whitney · this placeMount Whitney4,421 m · 0.1 kmMount Russell4,296 m · 1.3 kmMount Muir4,272 m · 1.5 kmMount Langley4,277 m · 7.8 kmMount Williamson4,390 m · 8.8 kmMount Tyndall4,275 m · 9.4 kmMount Keith4,262 m · 14 kmRed Hill · 25 km
Lakeyas3 lakes within 15 km
Wales Lake0.3 km² · 2.9 kmWallace Lake0.3 km² · 4.0 kmCottonwood Lake Number Five0.3 km² · 10 km
Darkskyas3 dark-sky places within 30 km
Mount WhitneyBortle 2 · this placeMount WilliamsonBortle 2 · 8.8 kmDeadman CanyonBortle 3 · 29 km

Figures from the sister sites' databases (Wikidata, HydroATLAS, GeoNames, OpenStreetMap, GBIF). Links open when each site is online.

Photographs

The view, as people saw it.

Other viewpoints nearby.

Mount Whitney

United States

  • 84Viewyas Score
  • 249 kmFarthest ridge
  • 190Peaks in view
  • 4,380 mAltitude

Dante's View

United States · 146 km

  • 84Viewyas Score
  • 236 kmFarthest ridge
  • 30Peaks in view
  • 1,657 mAltitude

See the guide

Half Dome

United States · 170 km

  • 84Viewyas Score
  • 243 kmFarthest ridge
  • 58Peaks in view
  • 2,655 mAltitude

See the guide

Dewey Point

United States · 174 km

  • 84Viewyas Score
  • 230 kmFarthest ridge
  • 43Peaks in view
  • 2,250 mAltitude

See the guide

Where these figures come from

Name and typeWikidata (Q235539) · CC0
SunJ. Meeus, Astronomical Algorithms
Peaks in viewPeakyas (Wikidata, CC0)
Panorama and altitudeCopernicus DEM GLO-90 / GLO-30 · © DLR e.V., © Airbus Defence and Space GmbH, Copernicus/ESA
CloudsNASA POWER (CERES SYN1deg, 2001–2020; MERRA-2)
What is around© OpenStreetMap contributors · ODbL
ImagesEOX Sentinel-2 cloudless 2016 · CC BY 4.0; Wikimedia Commons
Sister atlasesPeakyas, Lakeyas, Darkskyas

Every figure is an average, an estimate or a count from a public dataset. Licences and methods: data sources.

The family

Do you prefer beaches, lakes, mountains, waterfalls, islands, rivers, canyons, caves, dark skies, viewpoints, birdwatching or forests?

Same idea, other landscapes: field atlases built on open data, in seven languages.