THURSDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER 2011
The Netherlands is an incredibly flat, low-lying country, with a quarter of its sixteen thousand square miles located below sea level, and another quarter less than a metre above sea level. The highest point is in the hills to the south, with an altitude of a mere 322.7 metres. In a recent article Thijs Zonneveld, a sports journalist, complained that with this kind of landscape Dutch athletes are heavily handicapped in alpine sports. His jovial solution was to build a 2km tall mountain in the Netherlands, but he received such an enthusiastic response that it became a serious idea [1] .A growing team of experts, ranging from scientists to economists to sports administrators, are investigating the feasibility of the proposal. If constructed, it will stand more than a kilometre taller than Dubai’s Burj Khalifa [2] , currently the tallest man-made structure in the world, and will be twice the height of Mount Snowdon. It will attract skiers, climbers, hikers, white water rafters, and may have wind turbines and hydroelectric power stations. It will cost billions of Euros and require billions of tonnes of materials, but if Dutch engineering can reclaim and protect thousands of square miles of land from the sea, then perhaps it can also build this mountain.
Written by Aaron Barker
![](mailto:?subject=A man-made mountain in the Netherlands?&body=https://bluesci.soc.srcf.net/posts/a-man-made-mountain-in-the-netherlands <a href="https://bluesci.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/holland.jpg"><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-4141" title="From: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dutch_Windmills_at_Sunset.jpg" src="https://bluesci.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/holland-300x193.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="193" /></a>The Netherlands is an incredibly flat, low-lying country, with a quarter of its sixteen thousand square miles located below sea level, and another quarter less than a metre above sea level. The highest point is in the hills to the south, with an altitude of a mere 322.7 metres. In a recent article Thijs Zonneveld, a sports journalist, complained that with this kind of landscape Dutch athletes are heavily handicapped in alpine sports. His jovial solution was to build a 2km tall mountain in the Netherlands, but he received such an enthusiastic response that it became a serious idea <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,784085,00.html" title='h' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer'><sup>[1]</sup></a> .<br><br>A growing team of experts, ranging from scientists to economists to sports administrators, are investigating the feasibility of the proposal. If constructed, it will stand more than a kilometre taller than Dubai’s Burj Khalifa <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_the_world" title='http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_the_world ' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer'><sup>[2]</sup></a> , currently the tallest man-made structure in the world, and will be twice the height of Mount Snowdon. It will attract skiers, climbers, hikers, white water rafters, and may have wind turbines and hydroelectric power stations. It will cost billions of Euros and require billions of tonnes of materials, but if Dutch engineering can reclaim and protect thousands of square miles of land from the sea, then perhaps it can also build this mountain.<br><br>Written by Aaron Barker<p><hr></p><h3>References:</h3><ol><li><a href="http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,784085,00.html" target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer'>h </a></li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_the_world" target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer'>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_the_world </a></li></ol>){kind=link}