East Crestone Second dGPS Survey

[BillMiddlebrook]

Maybe Colorado climbers will eventually also recognize the reality that East Crestone is taller than Crestone.

There were many of us that were excited to have such precise measurements on a 14er. Climbers have already started to climb east Crestone much more this summer.

As for 14ers.com, I will be making a change similar to how John did on LOJ. Probably just identify at as Crestone Peak (E) and make a note of the issue between the East and West summits. Specifically, and most importantly here, I will be changing the route description to include notes on the new data and how close the two summits are in elevation. In the updated route description, I plan to document the final pitch to both summits because they are the same height in rounded feet. I will try to make it simple but explain it so people understand the unique nature of this situation.

I was very interested in the previous topic we had about Crestone Peak naming, and the fact that there are 4 points that make up the entire Peak area. To me, it's pretty simple if 14ers.com references the East summit as the main, West as the "named" prior to this new data, "NE Crestone," and yet another point off to the west.

Please don't be discouraged that the route description has not been updated here, it will. I think more people are geeked out by this than you might think.

Thanks again for doing (and redoing) this! Hopefully, someday we'll have some low-orbit satellite process that can get the same precision without humans even having to visit the summit. That would incredible and just think of how many crazy reclassifications, etc. will have to be done across the planet!

[HikerGuy]

Bill, are you going to remove Columbia Point from the ranked list? LoJ has made that update.

[BillMiddlebrook]

Bill, are you going to remove Columbia Point from the ranked list? LoJ has made that update.

You see, now I totally missed that one! While I try to keep up with what's going on, I miss sh!t and need someone to tell me to get with it.

Thanks so much, I appreciate it. No one should ever think that I'm stuck to any old peak tradition, previous calculations, naming, or whatever. I'm just sometimes out to lunch because I've been doing this for so friggin' long.

[HikerGuy]

Bill, are you going to remove Columbia Point from the ranked list? LoJ has made that update.

You see, now I totally missed that one! While I try to keep up with what's going on, I miss sh!t and need someone to tell me to get with it.

Thanks so much, I appreciate it. No one should ever think that I'm stuck to any old peak tradition, previous calculations, naming, or whatever. I'm just sometimes out to lunch because I've been doing this for so friggin' long.

No worries. Figured you were probably skiing, hunting or doing something much more exciting than keeping up with the forum and missed the thread. Appreciate all you have done and continue to do!

Are you going to treat yourself to a Rush show in Denver in October?

[BillMiddlebrook]

Are you going to treat yourself to a Rush show in Denver in October?

Absolutely, I'll be at the first one with a crew of believers.

[Scott P]

These results have to independently confirmed.

By who?

[skyrme17]

Yes, you may submit them, although submission doesn't necessarily mean acceptance. Still, a list should change based on independent and concurring results.

If you only trust elevations of peaks that have been independently measured by different people, I would venture to guess almost none of the CO 14ers elevations qualify for you to trust. In fact, you would trust almost no peak elevation in the world.

Generally peaks are only measured at most once, if at all. In the case of East Crestone it was never surveyed before by ground survey like this.

I'm confused why people set the bar so high for this one peak, but apply different and lower standards for all other peaks. I've found a similar case for Rainier after measuring it five times, getting results published in two academic journals, and meeting NGS bluebook standards, people still refuse to believe it could have shrunk. At least Rainier national park has finally officially recognized the new elevation in an opinion piece in Arctic Antarctic and Alpine Research Journal. Maybe Colorado climbers will eventually also recognize the reality that East Crestone is taller than Crestone.

I think you've done your due diligence. At the same time people should avoid the use of phrases like "believing so and so result" when it comes to a measurement. It may well be correct, but there is also a possibility it is not. More than 70% of experiments do not get reproduced, for a variety of reasons. Is it possible that East Crestone is higher than Crestone Peak? Of course, it's possible.

[ECF55]

Eric and team...thank you for posting! I love the pictures and I'm really impressed with your craft and care. High quality GPS receivers with sturdy, well-measured stands, integrated over multiple hours--that's a great setup and amazing data averaging.

How much variance did you have for your measurements for each peak between the two days? I believe you stated on a podcast that you measurement uncertainty with this setup and a 2h integration is plus/minus ~0.05 foot or 0.6 inches? For example, did your two measurements of East Crestone fall within the calculated uncertainty bar? (Shout out to Non-Standard 14er Podcast!).

Alternatively, would you say that there can be more variation in comparing measurements of the same peak over different days, but higher accuracy when calculating the measurement difference between two separate peaks measured on the same day under the same conditions?

Keep it up.

[josephnephi]

Alternatively, would you say that there can be more variation in comparing measurements of the same peak over different days, but higher accuracy when calculating the measurement difference between two separate peaks measured on the same day under the same conditions?

Because of the way the dGNSS works, measuring at the same time will always be more accurate for differential surveys. In order to get the incredible accuracy, dGNSS uses a nearby reference station with a highly accurate know position to determine the error due to atmospheric effect, etc.

It is possible that there is a (very very small!) bias to the error signal. If you compare measurements taken at the same time in the same area, than this bias will be in the same direction ("common mode") for both measurements. If we just care about the difference between the summits, this bias disappears in the difference. This isn't guaranteed if you compare measurements on different days. Because of the long measurement times, the contribution of this bias to the final result is negligible anyway, but it's still good practice to take simultaneous measurements.

This is also why Eric always reports post processing results from multiple sources (OPUS, RTX, etc). Each has a slightly different method that might be slightly biased. Therefore if multiple post processing methods all agree, you can be incredibly confident in the result. He also used a different antenna for each survey (and also used the same type of antenna on both the East and West summits in each survey) to further eliminate sources of bias that might be due to antenna type.

[Veory]

To answer the above quesiton I had to convert the older CSRS-PPP NAD83(2011) data from the 2025.7 epoch to the 2010 epoch for consistency with the new results processed in this epoch.

Looking at the results for both days of measurements for W Crestone, we see the measurements are 14298.979 +/- 0.035 and 14299.029 +/- 0.043. Errors here are 1-sigma. The combined distribution shows that the measurements fall at a z-score of 0.902 apart {Z=(h2-h1)/(sqrt(sigma1^2+sigma2^2))}, which corresponds to a 2-sided p-value of 0.37. This roughly means that, assuming the peak did not change elevation, there is a ~37% chance that we could have gotten these two measurements or an even greater difference upon resurveying. 37% chance is pretty high (we would want a 5% or less chance to say we confidently are measureing different things, i.e. the peak moved or the setup differed drastically). So, these two observations being 0.6 inches apart is statistically consistent.

Using the same methodology, East Crestone (14299.284 +/- 0.035 and 14299.446 +/- 0.039) interestingly gives us a z-score of 3.09, with the latter measurement being higher by 0.162' (1.94"). This yields a 2-sided p-value of 0.0020, meaning there is just a 0.2% chance this is a consistent measurement and nothing changed. Given that the other peak was so consistent with the same post-processing, I think it's likely this implies the summit of E Crestone did in fact change, probably not geologically (although anything is possible I guess).

So, East Crestone was probably tampered with, but ended up sitting 1.94" taller, again assuming the survey was perfectly consistent. My guess is that this value is a combination of statistical variance and an actual change, such that the change is only some portion of this difference, perhaps an inch or so? I'm not sure how to state the likely amount that is variance vs. real difference (or if it's possible to), as I am not really an expert in statistics.

Since W Crestone happened to also read 0.60 inches higher, this only changed the differential between them by 1.34" (in favor of East Crestone), so the result is ultimately still the same. It seems statistically likely that the summit boulder was tampered with in some capacity, but ended up sitting 1-2 inches higher as a result. Perhaps in the time between the measurements there was a boulder war like people joked about. I can confirm it was a large boulder that would've taken some real effort to move.

TLDR: Both measurements show E Crestone is higher by a similar margin, but the data shows that E Crestone may have been tampered with, resulting in it sitting slightly higher than it did during our 2025 measurement. It could also be a statistical freak anomaly of course.

Edit:

I want to make it clear I'm not making any accusations that this was done intentionally, there have probably been hundreds of people up there between surveys with all with different levels of knowledge and intention. Just pointing out what can be derived purely from the data. I think it's important for us who represent this new wave of surveying to be impartial to outcome in search of truth to maintain our integrity for future endeavors, which is why I bothered to point it out at all.

[k_fergie]

Coming in to raise this question again.

The survey location on E Crestone appears to be, though it may not be a man-made pile of rocks, in the photos in the paper as well as in the OP on this thread. Hard to say from photos. I haven't been there to see it, but what weight does my judgement carry here anyways? How do we know that the measured point is the highest natural point? I have no qualms on the rigor of the surveying methods, science is amazing, precision of sub-inches is incredible. However, the pile of rocks begs questions. This wouldn't be an issue with older hand instrument surveying or topographical interpolation, because at those error ranges, the distinction between natural and man-made is obvious. But with Lidar and dGPS, a game of inches, things get murkier given that most CO summits I have been on have rock piles on them and drawing the line of natural vs manmade is not black and white.

I don't have a horse in the race on what it means for which is the actual 14er here. I climbed OG Crestone a number of years ago and have a plan to climb New Crestone soon, mostly because I want to go tag NE Crestone.

[justiner]

lol if you're just measuring from a summit cairn I'm going to laugh so hard. I think that should be addressed, as it's a question many have raised.