Pico Duarte is the highest peak in the Dominican Republic, on the island of Hispaniola and in all the Caribbean. At above sea level, it gives the Dominican Republic the 16th-highest maximum elevation of any island in the world. Additionally, it is only northeast of the region's lowest point, Lake Enriquillo, 46 m (151 ft) below sea level. It is part of the Cordillera Central range, which extends from the plains between San Cristóbal and Baní to the northwestern peninsula of Haiti, where it is known as the Massif du Nord. The highest elevations of the Cordillera Central are found in the Pico Duarte and Valle Nuevo massifs. History The first reported climb was made in 1851 by a German who was British consul: Sir Robert Hermann Schomburgk. He named the mountain "Monte Tina" and estimated its height at . In 1912, Father Miguel Fuertes dismissed Schomburgk's calculations after climbing La Rucilla and judging it to be the tallest summit of the island. A year later, Swedish botanist Erik Leonard Ekman sided with Schomburgk's estimate, and called the sister summits "Pelona Grande" and "Pelona Chica" ("Big Bald One" and "Small Bald One", respectively). During the Rafael Trujillo Molina regime, the taller of the two was called "Pico Trujillo". After the dictator's death, it was renamed Pico Duarte, in honor of Juan Pablo Duarte, one of the Dominican Republic's founding fathers. At the summit is an east-facing bronze bust of Duarte atop a stone pedestal, next to a flagpole that flies the Dominican flag and a cross. Geography The mountain's elevation was debated for decades, up until the mid-1990s, when it was still held to be high. In 2003, it was measured by a researcher using GPS technology, and it was found to be tall. The official elevation as recorded by Dominican government agencies is , a measurement that has been confirmed by several groups of hikers using personal GPS consoles (the most recent verified one in January 2005). In 2021 a team of researchers using GSSM technology found that it's altitude is of 3,101.1 meters with a margin of error of 0.3 meters. It is only a few meters taller than La Pelona, its twin, which stands at , and from which it is separated by a col between summits that is approximately wide, and is officially named Valle del Baíto, but unofficially called Valle de Lilís. The col's mean