Pico Cristóbal Colón is the highest mountain

Mountain

Image:Himalaya_annotated.jpg|thumb|right|The Himalayan mountain range with Mount Everestrect 58 14 160 49 Chomo Lonzorect 200 28 335 52 Makalurect 378 24 566 45 Mount Everestrect 188 581 920 656 Tibetan Plateaurect 250 406 340 427 Rong River...

 in Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

 and the fifth most prominent

Topographic prominence

In topography, prominence, also known as autonomous height, relative height, shoulder drop , or prime factor , categorizes the height of the mountain's or hill's summit by the elevation between it and the lowest contour line encircling it and no higher summit...

 in the world (see list of peaks by prominence). The nearest peak that is higher is Cayambe

Cayambe (volcano)

Cayambe is the name of a volcano located in the Cordillera Oriental, a branch of the Ecuadorian Andes. It is located in Pichincha province some 70 km northeast of Quito. It is the third highest mountain in Ecuador....

, some 1288 kilometres (800.3 mi) away. There is a permanent snowcap on this peak and on the nearby mountains. It is part of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta

The Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta is an isolated mountain range apart from the Andes chain that runs through Colombia. Reaching an altitude of 5,700 metres above sea level just 42 km from the Caribbean coast, the Sierra Nevada is the world's highest coastal range...

 range, along with Pico Simón Bolívar. The peak is named for Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...

.

Pico Cristóbal Colón and Pico Simón Bolívar are the two highest peaks in Colombia and are very nearly equal in elevation. It is possible that nearby Pico Simón Bolívar is higher than Pico Cristóbal Colón. If so, then Pico Simón Bolívar is the true highest mountain in Colombia and the fifth most prominent in the world.

Pico Cristóbal Colón was first climbed in 1939 by W. Wood, A. Bakerwell and E. Praolini.