{"id":8789,"date":"2019-01-01T22:20:02","date_gmt":"2019-01-02T06:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/?p=8789"},"modified":"2026-03-19T13:50:33","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:50:33","slug":"tallest-vertical-rock-faces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/tallest-vertical-rock-faces\/","title":{"rendered":"World’s Tallest Vertical Rock Faces"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Eiger,

Eiger, North Face<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n

Tall vertical rock faces are simply – supremely powerful.\u00a0I don’t mean a few hundred feet. I’m talking the world’s biggest vertical rock faces. Some more than a kilometer straight up.<\/p>\n

Any ordinary person can climb a mild grade trail, or even the world’s steepest residential road.<\/p>\n

Not many are drawn closer to the biggest rock faces. Most are content to see them from a comfortable distance. To most they inspire fear. \u00a0To others they intrigue – to climb it, to fly from it, to fly around it. To land on it.<\/p>\n

Ultimately they satisfy a deep core emotion.<\/p>\n

Vertical Granite Faces<\/b> (in no particular order):<\/b><\/p>\n

I define a vertical rock face as one where a stone thrown from the top will not bounce off or away until it has dropped the full height listed here. “Near vertical” is a bit looser.<\/p>\n

Yosemite’s famous\u00a0Half Dome <\/b>rises 4,700 feet above the valley floor and has about\u00a02,000 feet of vertical granite. <\/b><\/p>\n

Its big brother\u00a0El Capitan<\/strong>\u00a0rises about 3,200 feet above the valley floor and has a maximum of about 3,000 vertical feet of granite wall. <\/b><\/p>\n

Norway’s Troll Wall<\/strong>\u00a0is 5,300 feet above sea level and has about 3,600 vertical feet of wall <\/b>– then tapers off gently to sea level.<\/p>\n

Greenland’s Ketil wall\u00a0<\/b>has almost 4,000 feet <\/b>of near vertical.<\/p>\n

Mitre Peak<\/strong>, guarding New Zealand’s Milford Sound<\/strong>, has a 5,550 feet of near vertical <\/strong>granite face<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Pakistan’s Trango Towers <\/b>rises vertically 4,400 feet<\/b> and\u00a0nearly vertically 5,700 feet <\/b>above its base.<\/p>\n

Baffin Island’s Mt Asgard’s vertical face is “only” 3,940 feet. <\/b><\/p>\n

Baffin neighbor\u00a0Mount Thor Peak <\/b>has a granite face vertical drop of 4,101 feet<\/b>.<\/p>\n

Both are dwarfed by another Baffin neighbor Polar Sun Spire <\/b>with 4,300 feet of vertical rock.<\/b><\/p>\n

However, Ulvetanna in Antarctica <\/b>sports a vertical wall of 5,740 feet \ud83d\ude42<\/b><\/p>\n

and the North face of the Eiger <\/b>in Switzerland drops near vertically\u00a05,905 feet<\/b>.<\/p>\n

# # #<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tall vertical rock faces are simply – supremely powerful.\u00a0I don’t mean a few hundred feet. I’m talking the world’s biggest vertical rock faces. Some more than a kilometer straight up. Any ordinary person can climb a mild grade trail, or … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[31,27,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adventure","category-amazing","category-fun"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8789"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8789\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8978,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8789\/revisions\/8978"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daviddilworth.com\/pol\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}