I wasn't clear enough. In both the cases I know of the path exists, but the line has been 'smoothed' to an easy curve and so doesn't avoid the feature whereas, on the ground, there is a deviation to miss it.
[SM] Yes, the false street is indeed a standard copyright protection measure. [Rosie] You may hold the highest living Morniverser right now, but if so I probably held the title for a couple of years when we had a 10th floor apartment here in Singapore. Now we are back at sea level.
Without having any idea of where everyone lives, I think that Dujon might be the loftiest Morniverser, since he lives on a mountain outside Sydney. The first Antipopilg in 2003 was at Blaxland, (1404 feet, or 427 metres) and I don't think he'd be much lower than that (if not higher up).
I was kidding about the apartment in Singapore, obviously, but I was living at 265m back in 2003-2004 when we were in Texas. In my pre-Morniverse days I lived at 188m in VIrginia and at about 280m in Ann Arbor Michigan. None of these surpasses Dujon. If I can go back to my childhood, though, I lived for a year at 946m, and INJ was at university at 1250m around the same time.
(I think there is a pretty good chance that INJ is also the person here who has been up the highest (while still staying on the ground) though I might be wrong about that.)
flerdle) It may well be Dujon, then, for current residence. My feet-on-the-ground record is El Teide in Tenerife, 3717 m or 12,196 ft. The air pressure there is about 64% of sea-level pressure and you noticed it. Quite a lot of puffing and blowing climbing the few hundred feet from the cable car to the summit. Water would boil at 88°C, just about enough to thicken gravy but not enough for a decent cuppa.
I lived for a year at about 420m on the Swiss/French border. It didn't feel at all high, because everything around was so much higher, namely the Jura mountains to the west, and the Alps etc to the south-east.
[Rosie] When I typed that about INJ I was vaguely thinking "we already had this conversation not so long ago", and your Tenerife posting reminds me that indeed we did.
(CdM) Probably my fault, then, because stuck on my bedroom wall is a b & w 1978 photo of me and half a dozen other herberts and several herbertesses, all from Croydon Astronomical Society, as we crowd round the summit marker. Where has INJ been? I think I've probably got the record for current UK residents. The modest height does make a difference in that snow, on the rare occasions that it falls, lasts much longer up here than in London and numerous occasions when there's light drizzle and mist whereas London is dry. Some of this is the London Heat-Island effect which on a warm calm summer night can be quite stark, with temperature differences of 8°C.
[flerdle] Thanks for adding a few inches to my height. I am at a mere 250 metres (depending on where on my little plot of paradise you stand) which is around and about 850 feet asl. As it is now approaching, if not past, the noon time I might pop down to my local club for a wee bit of luncheon delight, which should bring me home quite heady. Cheers.
At the risk of blowing my own trumpet (but, hell, I am proud of it), my highest point is the summit of Mera Peak in the Himalaya at 6476 metres (21,247 ft). I now live at about 40m asl.
[Rosie] No, my fault, not yours. I just remembered because my highest is almost identical to yours, but in a completely different part of the world (Colorado Rockies).
[Rosie] - No oxygen. I was slowed down by the lack of it, but not reduced to gasping. The main effect was that I lost my appetite completely. I was there in March-April, so pre-monsoon. Overnight it was regularly down to about -20°C. During the day there was a lot of bright sunshine, but I reckon the shade temperature didn't get above freezing; it was fleece jacket, thick gloves & balaclava even when working quite hard and down clothing as soon as the sun set. Mera is the highest 'trekking peak' in the Himalaya, anything over 6500m is a 'climbing peak' even if there is no technical difficulty. However Aconcagua is higher and presents no technical difficulties and is only about 20km from a good motor road. It's probably the ultimate challenge for the non-climber.
(INJ) I'm further impressed. The pressure up there is about 42% of sea level pressure. Apparently the lack of oxygen causes considerable problems with cognitive tasks but as I imagine you weren't writing up a PhD up there it probably didn't matter. Well done! I could manage Leith Hill (965 ft) these days but probably not Snowdon (3561 ft) even if I called it Yr Wyddfa.
[Rosie] Acclimatisation helps a lot. We flew in to about 2400m and then walked in for about 10 days, mostly on the ‘walk high, sleep low’ principle, which got us to a camp at about 5300. We then did a short day up to 5800 and then a push to the top. I reckon the last 700m would have taken me a bit over 2 hours from sea level (I was fitter then), and actually took between 4 & 5 hours. We then dropped about 1500m, to below the previous 2 camps. As for cognitive impairment – I ‘lost’ a good part of the next day. I couldn’t remember much of it only a day or two later and have never been able to, even prompted by photos. Another interesting effect was that my tent companion went into a pattern of Cheyne-Stoking while asleep – disturbing when you first hear it, but common at altitude. Of course, one of the effects of the cold and low pressure is that the air is extremely dry – it was hard to drink enough, especially as water bottles exposed to the air froze. It’s the physically hardest thing I’ve ever done and I certainly couldn't do it now.
The good news is that we've discovered the cat is a mouser (one of the reasons for getting her). The bad news is finding this out obviously entailed a renewed incursion. We look forward to being woken up by her dropping half-dead mice on our faces and being shown how to kill them. Will need to look at the bait trays over the weekend to see where its been taken. Sometime over the next few weeks we're getting our floors repaired which should seal up some of the holes at least.
Revisiting the bait sites I discover the trays in the kitchen are untouched, which is good news, but the one I put under the sink cabinet in the bathroom had disappeared! I have an image of a family of mice living in a red tray marked 'Poison' somewhere down there...