Mountains

They’re often referred to as majestic, massive, and even magnificent. Peaks have always piqued our interest since inception. Who doesn’t want a breathtaking birds-eye view of the earth from above? But make no mistake, these majestic massifs are where many have met their maker. Climb on! We’ll take a peek at some of the most popular peaks as we demystify mountains on this week's episode of FYI!

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they're often referred to as Majestic massive and even magnificent Peaks have always piqued our interest since Inception who doesn't want a breathtaking bird's eye view of the Earth from above but make no mistake these Majestic massifs are where many have met their maker climb on we'll take a peek at some of the most popular Peaks as we demystify mountains on this week's episode of f why I welcome to for your info English you got it[Music][Applause][Music][Applause] okay hello hello hello Amigos welcome one welcome all it's time for another exciting edition of FYI and today we're doing something that is near and dear to my heart the mountains now first let's start with the pronunciation mountains now that's the a la Americana pronunciation you know in the United States we say mountains fountains certain we have that glottal stop but you can also say Mountain Fountain certain practice but don't say Mountain you don't know how many times I've heard Mountain if I had a nickel for every time I heard that and that's an expression we use to say we've heard something a million and one times and mountains are very special to me because I grew up in the mountains I come from the mountains dare I say I'm a mountain man all right well let's take a look at our intro which is always chock full of great adjectives and verbs and all kinds of cool words I think you need to know I started off by saying they're often referred to as Majestic I think that's an easy one to figure out you say we say Majestic massive and even magnificent Peaks have always peaked our interest now did you see what I did there I'm already playing with words Peaks Los Picos have always peaked our interest and to Peak somebody's interest is obviously to make them interested and it's interesting because it's spelled exactly like the soccer player PK but we pronounce it just like Peak like a mountain peak also we use the word summit for the top of the mountain and that's even in a verb if you didn't know that that means you haven't listened to our episode on Mount Everest where we talked about that Summit and we're going to talk about all things mountain today so I don't know if you got that pun but if you did give yourself a pat on the back Peaks have always peaked our interest since Inception who doesn't want a breathtaking and the best way to describe this is when you see a certain View and this happens wow it takes your breath away that's right it's breathtaking and then I said a bird's eye view which I know we've looked at on this podcast before a bird's eye view is a view from above and just be careful make sure you pronounce the word Earth correctly I've heard a lot of people say aarth it's Earth then I said but make no mistake make no mistake these Majestic massifs and a Massif is a French word but that's another word we use when we talk about mountains I said these Majestic massifs are where many have met their maker and if you listen to our episode on death it came out pretty recently that's one of the ways I told you that we can say to die to meet your maker it's poetic and then I said climb on and I looked it up this is a way people say sige escalando climb on I just want to make sure you guys don't say climb so let's review those climb is the verb and climber see no B I know it's in there but we don't pronounce it climb on climbers and then you heard an ice pick I put in the sound effect of an ice pick and then I played with words again yet another pun I said we'll take a peek at some of the most popular Peaks as we demystify mountains and to take a peek is p-e-e-k and Peak mountain peak is p-e-a-k but they're homophones now if you are a patron you'll know that because you can follow along with our vocabulary sheets and worksheets which are designed to to test your English and make sure you remember as much as possible now I don't expect you to remember every single vocabulary word there are tons of them I think in some episodes we've had over 500 expressions and words but the idea isn't to memorize them it's to expose yourself to them to get used to them to familiarize yourself with them and this is a great visual tool now if you want to get those PDFs that you can get every week along with a bonus episode you can join us over on patreon.com it's patreon.com Alberto Alonso we have an amazing community over there I am so proud of each and every one of my students and you're thinking but Alberto how do you know their progress how can you be proud of your students well remember you can get an extra episode you can get PDFs but if you're in my inter Interstellar level then you have a private class with me every month as well as weekly review classes and if you want weekly review classes you can check out our super duper students and speaking of let's send them a shout out right now a shout out to all my patrons especially my super duper students Javier Paco Roberto David Jose Maria Mila Alex and don't forget about my Interstellar students Carmen Lina Isa Paco and Edgar thank you so much to all of you and keep up the great work if you guys want to find out how you can get involved and be a part of this awesome Community this curious Community all you have to do is go over to patreon.com Alberto Alonso and find out more and there are two comments that I hear all the time a oh my God Alberto I feel like I'm getting such a deal by a choyo and number two and I think the most important comment is oh my God I'm really making progress this is really a fun effective way to learn English so if you want to find out how all my students are kicking butt betandolo go over to patreon.com Alberto Alonso all right Mountaineers when did mountaineering become a sport well in the mid 19th century when people wanted to get away from the city life remember putting it all into a timeline industrialization was going on so it was a very industrial World Factory life you know it wasn't as bright as it is today so people felt a need to get out and not just get out and get away but also to explore and I think reaching a mountain peak no matter how tall it may be is even a symbolic thing I mean how many times have you gone on a little Hill una Colina and you stood on top of it and you said King of the mountain or King of the Hill I mean there's even a cartoon that's called King of the Hill and it's an idiomatic expression so we have this almost innate need to discover mountains and to Summit them or to reach the peak and before that there were people who were doing this Mountaineers I guess but there were more in the name of science scientific exploration you know finding out more about those habitats and the wildlife but this is where people started to do it for fun as a hobby and again that was the mid 19th century but as with everything it had its ups and downs it fell into disfavor for a brief period I think you know the word brief quick brief breve in Spanish and this was in 1865 when four climbers died they were ascending or climbing the Matterhorn and what happened was the whole world was watching it made international news and they said wait a second this is all fun and games but if four people die this is foolish and immoral and obviously dangerous and we're going to talk about that dark side you know as we said before people meet their makers on mountains because if I have to bet man versus nature I know where I'm placing my money but I think everybody knows now climbing is bigger than ever and there are so many different types of climbing as well you've got hardcore climbing with ropes and you've got somebody with a belay and we're gonna look at all this vocabulary but if you're a patron you can just take a look at the PDF and have the word in Spanish and we're just talking about climbing but that's just one of the many many activities that you can do on a mountain obviously you can ski snowboard hike right remember we we looked at hiking to take a hike means so somebody can be telling you that take a hike this is where tone is so important and even in the winter months where climbing can be really difficult even treacherous treacherous is another way of saying dangerous you have indoor rock gyms which are more popular than ever I remember taking a class when I was in college remember college is how we say University and it was at a rock gym it was climbing and rappelling and to repel is to go down with a rope so you climb and you repel I think the word is the same in Spanish I'm not sure where the accent goes and then I said the word belay before which is freno or cavilla which these are really important because they could save your life so it was really interesting because you don't just learn about climbing you learn about the harness and all the safety you know there are a lot of different things that have to be done a lot of checks as with anything because sure if you fall in a rock gym well maybe there's a mat on the floor but if you fall you know off a peak it doesn't matter as I said how tall it may be if you fall off the wrong Cliff the word Cliff is a cantilado you could meet your maker or who knows break some bones either way it's not a positive outcome so I think that's another reason that climbing was able to bounce back because we started adding all these different safety features because it's all fun and games until people start dying nobody wants death I mean I think the idea is to come as close as possible to death without out actually touching death to have as they call a near-death experience and that I guess gets your adrenaline pumping really hard but mountains are more popular than ever whether you're just there to do some sport or just take in a beautiful view mountains are lovely places even a resort in a mountain it just has a special atmosphere that you won't find at a beach or in a city so I guess we should ask the question what is a mountain well what if I were to tell you that there is no universally accepted definition of a mountain yeah I'm dead serious it depends on where you live but let me tell you what I found it's a landform that rises prominently above its surroundings its surroundings generally exhibiting steep slopes and those are some good words to know steep I think in Spanish it's the opposite of flat and the word slope and he skiers or snowboarders might recognize that one is La Cuesta La bajada so it's a steep slope a relatively confined Summit area and as we said before the Summit is the top and considerable local relief mountains generally are understood to be larger than Hills okay that's pretty good that's a geographical definition but my question is where is the limit like you know uh how tall do you have to be to be a mountain well typically 300 meters again this is disputed that's right in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland a mountain is usually defined as any Summit that is at least 610 meters high so there's a lot of leeway there mucho 300 meters versus 610 meters that's a wide range there is one thing that everybody will agree on geologists included mountains are formed through tectonic forces erosion or volcanoes which act over the course of tens of millions of years so think about that every time you look at a mountain it has been in the making in the works for tens of millions of years and once a mountain stops growing usually they are slowly leveled this is because of weathering so they get weathered down to this Gaston there are landslides natural disasters and even erosion that's caused by rivers and Glaciers one thing we all know about mountains is the higher you go the colder it gets and those colder climates and less listen to the pronunciation no climate climates these colder climates strongly affect the ecosystems so you can find in a very short period many different ecosystems because of the DraStic temperature changes and as we know the higher you get the less hospitable it becomes the terrain is treacherous the climate gets more harsh or extreme and that's why when you look at places like Everest the real people the only people who are really really ready to climb that mountain are the Sherpas the local people because they're used to it and if you haven't heard our episode on Mount Everest you are missing out it's a wonderful episode that mountain could tell a million stories if it could talk as you all know Mount Everest is in the Himalayas its Summit is eight thousand eight hundred and fifty meters above sea level however it doesn't take the title of the highest mountain in our solar system that is Olympus Mons which is on the planet Mars and are you ready for this it's a whopping 2171 meters that's almost three times the size of Mount Everest so just imagine how big Mars must be let's take a look at some of the most famous mountain ranges and a range is like a I think you would say cordiera a collection of mountains a range and there are a wide range of mountain ranges okay bad joke I've decided to highlight some of the largest ones some of the longest ones so for the height you can say tall or high but if we're talking about how far it extends then we would say for the length how long they are so now we're talking about length the Andes now you say Andes we say Andes like my friend Andy Vaughn the Andy stretch 7 000 kilometers as you know they are located in South America Next Up we've got the Rockies and the Rockies are in the United States those stretch 4 830 kilometers next up we have the Great Dividing Range now this one I wasn't familiar with this one stretches 3500 kilometers and it's located in Australia you've got the Ural mountains which are located in Eurasia then you've got the Atlas Mountains which I'm sure many Spanish people know about those because they aren't too far away the length of the Atlas Mountains is 2 500 kilometers long as we know they stretch across Northwestern Africa spanning the country of Morocco then you've got ones that are near and dear to my heart the Appalachian Mountains the Appalachian Mountains stretch 2414 kilometers and these mountains are the mountains I grew up in these are the Lakes I would swim in as a child these are the trails I would take but I'm not alone because the Appalachian Mountains stretch so far across the United States they are located on the east coast and they stretch from Canada all the way down to Georgia so I'm not the only one so many people from so many states grew up in those mountains they go through New York New Jersey Connecticut Massachusetts It's amazing And every part of it is unique and when I go visit my dad you'll see there are always hikers because people spend their Summers hiking the Appalachian Mountains and then of course the Himalayas and notice the Himalayas aren't as long as the Andes the Andes stretch 7 000 kilometers the Himalayas 2 400 kilometers but that's nothing to shake a stick at because 30 of the were world's highest mountains are in the Himalayas all the mountains known as the eight thousanders the ones that are over 8 000 meters tall according to the international mountaineering and climbing Federation eight thousanders are the 14 mountains on this Earth that are more than eight thousand meters in height they are all located in the Himalayan and karakaram mountain ranges in Asia and all of their Summits are in the death zone and in the bonus part we're gonna find out what happens to the human body once you reach the death zone so obviously Everest is on that list now this is interesting Everest as we said before is almost 9 000 meters above sea level but it's growing four millimeters a year then you've got K2 and K2 is 8611 meters it's on the Pakistan stand China border and if you did the math it's a little bit shorter than Mount Everest but it is considered the planet's toughest and most dangerous mountain to climb it has earned the nickname Savage Mountain and unlike Mount Everest you can't walk to the top all sides of the K2 are extremely steep so you have to climb it and obviously there are frequent rock falls and avalanches so it's a lot more dangerous to climb than Mount Everest then you've got Annapurna which is also a force to be reckoned with which is 8091 meters it is the 10th highest mountain in the world and one of the most dangerous as well but it was the first eight thousander to be climbed the easiest and I'm gonna say this in air quotes in parenthesis which is technically the easiest of the eight thousanders again easier if you're an experienced climber not for you and me don't get any crazy ideas in your head and then we've got one that is just a mystery in and of itself the gankar pwenceum this is the highest mountain in Bhutan and it is the highest unclaimed you heard right the highest unclimbed mountain in the world it reaches an elevation of 7570 meters and its name means white peak of the three spiritual Brothers it lies on the border of Bhutan and Tibet and why is it the highest unclimbed mountain is it really that difficult well no it's because of government regulations in 1994 climbing of mountains in Bhutan higher than 6 000 meters has been prohibited out of respect for local spiritual beliefs and in the year 2000 mountaineering was forbidden completely so I guess that makes it even more attractive and I think that's what our love of mountains comes from conquering mountains conquering Hills getting some kind of viewpoint and also a reward because think about it you gotta work to get up there but once you're up there and you're looking at that beautiful breathtaking view you realize it was worth it we've got to wrap up the first part but I hope you'll join us in the bonus part remember for just three Euros a month you can get the worksheets and the bonus episode and you'll help me remember this is a self-produced podcast I make it out of love and well if I get to make a little extra money to invest in hosting and Equipment well it really helps so thank you thank you thank you to all of you for being amazing students and for all your constant support will end the first part with an idiomatic expression faith can move mountains I sure hope you'll join us in the bonus episode of today's F why foreign[Applause][Music][Music]