Eric Gilbertson (climber)

Gilbertson was born a twin in Berea, Kentucky, a mountainous region He said that his passion for mountaineering started with trips with their parents to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. While at MIT, Gilbertson was an intern at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he co-designed a Mars lander to study the climate. He received his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering (ME) in 2008. before returning to MIT where Gilbertson completed his Master of Science in 2010, and a PhD in 2014, both in ME. After he graduated Gilbertson taught at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology, In 2016, he relocated to Seattle, where he taught mathematics at North Seattle College. where he has taught since at least 2018. ==Mountaineering==

, one of the Snow Leopard peaks and the highest mountain in Tajikstan Gilbertson was involved with the MIT Outing Club as a mountaineering guide. They say they are on a mission to climb the highest elevation point of every country in the world. Their first country high point was Denali in May 2010. Gilbertson completed the fastest known time (FKT) for the 100 tallest mountains in Colorado, Wyoming's thirteeners, and the tallest 27 peaks in Montana, the Rocky Mountains Slam, in 2020 He completed the FKT for the Bulger List, the hundred tallest mountains in Washington state, in 2018. This record was also beaten by Hardrath in 2021. In 2023 Gilbertson became the third American to achieve the Snow Leopard award by summiting all five peaks above in the former Soviet Union. He has done the same with other Himalayan peaks. including Alpomish, within the Gissar Range with Andreas Frydensberg ==Surveying==

Gilbertson uses professional surveying equipment such as GNSS receivers to precisely find the elevation of mountain summits. In 2018, Gilbertson climbed Jabal Sawda, which was previously believed to be the high point of Saudi Arabia, but determined that it was shorter than Jabal Ferwa. and Uzbekistan. In 2024 he was awarded a grant by the American Alpine Club to survey the Cascade Range in Washington state to determine how Washington's mountains were being impacted by climate change. to track ice melt over time. He first reported the findings on Mount Rainier in 2024. Larry Signani, who first surveyed the mountain for the Army Corps of Engineers, told The Seattle Times that the results were credible. concluded that four of the five—Mount Rainier, Eldorado Peak, East Fury, and Liberty Cap—had lost around of ice. Colfax Peak had maintained its elevation and it, along with Liberty Cap, remained the only ones that still had ice on the summit year-round. The findings, published in 2025, indicated that the ice melt is attributed to climate change and an increase of temperature of nearly since the mid-twentieth century, with most of this increase happening since 1990. On October 5, 2025, Gilbertson surveyed Crestone and East Crestone peaks in Colorado, determining that East Crestone is high, and around taller than Crestone, which was previously considered the true summit of the Crestone cluster. He showed that where LiDAR indicated there was a spire on East Crestone's summit, there wasn't any such feature. As to the discrepancy between their heights, he said that "The simplest explanation is they just hadn't been measured accurately enough until now to know which was taller". == Select publications ==