It is a common misconception[citation needed] to refer to this mountain as the highest point in South America outside the Andes while ignoring the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia.

The nearest city is actually São Gabriel da Cachoeira, about 140 km (87 mi) in a straight line, from where virtually all climbing expeditions depart.

[citation needed] For 39 years, based on an uncontested measurement performed in 1965 by topographer José Ambrósio de Miranda Pombo, using a theodolite, the elevation of Pico da Neblina was thought to be 3,014 metres (9,888 ft), but a much more accurate measurement performed in 2004 with state-of-the-art GPS equipment by cartographer Marco Aurélio de Almeida Lima, a member of a Brazilian Army expedition, put it at 2,993.78 m (9,822 ft).

[citation needed] The Venezuelan side of the massif is hillier and the altitude gradient to the northern plains is less abrupt, although deep chasms and high walls still exist.

Due to Pico da Neblina's equatorial latitude, while it can be cold on top, sub-freezing temperatures and frost appear to be rare (no permanent measurements are undertaken), and there is no snow.

The exact date and circumstances are obscure and not documented, but a popular story often heard in Brazil says that it was supposedly seen and reported by an airline pilot who overflew it at a luckily cloudless moment.

In 1954, eight years before the Pico da Neblina was successfully climbed, the area was visited from the north by an expedition led by botanist Bassett Maguire, who reached the northern summit plateau of the massif and observed the highest peak, then unnamed, estimating it to be between "8,000-9,000 feet".

Therefore, it was still widely held for many years after the peak's discovery that Brazil's highest mountain was Pico da Bandeira (2,891 m or 9,486 ft), between the southeastern states of Minas Gerais and Espírito Santo, in a much more populated, developed and easily accessible region.

Therefore, climbers are advised not only to take the utmost precaution in avoiding insect bites but also to discuss preventive and/or therapeutic strategies with qualified physicians who are familiar with tropical diseases.

[6] While the panners' presence there is technically illegal, they are widely tolerated by Brazilian authorities, and Czaban speculates that this would be because in such a remote area, they are believed to watch the border and nature better than the park rangers and the army would have the means to do.