Mont Blanc – 4,807 metres above sea level – is western Europe’s highest mountain.
Were it to retain its elevation, but relocate to Colombia, Mont Blanc would be merely that nation’s 30th highest peak.
You may be surprised to know that 13 of the 29 Colombian peaks that reach higher than Mont Blanc – including the 4 tallest ones – are not in the Andes.
Colombia’s highest mountains are in the entirely separate & much more compact Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, in northern Colombia.
The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta’s glaciated peaks are the world’s tallest coastal mountains.
I took the photo just before sunrise on 10 March 2026.
My vantage point was a ridge in the Sierra’s foothills, circa 1800 metres above the not-distant Caribbean Sea.
The pictured twin peaks – Pico Cristóbal Colón & Pico Simón Bolívar – are Colombia’s highest, with a current altitude of circa 5,720 metres.
Over the last nine decades these glaciated mountaintops’ “permanent” snow caps have been thinning.
According to one source, this has reduced the pictured peaks’ altitude by 50 metres or more.
Global warming is progressively “shaving” various notable, very “snowy”, glaciated mountains. Over recent decades, for instance, the USA’s Mount Rainier has also become somewhat shorter.
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