Hiking and Highpoints

It is often the case that climbers create or adopt lists with the goal of hiking to as many points on the list as possible, with the eventual goal of completing the list. This can give hikers a sense of accomplishment that can help in motivation.



Lists of destinations that rank notable geographic points on the Earth by some criteria are informative, useful, and fun. Informative, since they highlight certain otherwise overlooked points, useful since they help hikers select climbing destinations, and fun since they allow hikers to set climbing goals.

However, it is important that ranked lists of points are designed to fulfill the purposes of the hiker. The criteria of each list should select the destinations that are most appropriate for the climber's needs. Here is a brief list of some of the possible requirements of hikers:

- technical difficulty of easiest ascent
- length of hike from closest access
- vertical gain from highest access
- climate
- scenic/geographic environment
- height
- recognition in climbing community
- fulfills interesting list criteria

For some it is enough that the climbing list criteria is interesting, obscure or popular to continue to be motivated. Others are seeking recognition from the climbing community in some way and wish to focus on well-known peaks. Still others are looking for climbs with specific attributes. No matter what the criteria is, it is important that the hiker understand the list criteria, so that they know why they are hiking the items on a list.

This article attempts to analyze each type of climbing list criteria and determine the applicability of each criteria for satisfying hiking list requirements.



Nearest Higher Neighbor

Nearest Higher Neighbor (NHN) is a way of measuring how far a peak is from it's nearest higher point of land. Note that this defintion does not refer to the distance to the nearest higher summit. Using the NHN criteria for a ranked list will produce peaks that are separated geographically.

NHN is moderately useful for hikers that value recognition, as this criteria does pick many of the most popular peaks, although since the selected peaks will be selected somewhat evenly over a region, there may be peaks selected in unpolulated areas.

NHN is a good way to include peaks that are high only with respect to other peaks in the area. Although these peaks may not compare favorably in height to Himalayan ones, they will probably be popular in their parts of the world.

NHN favors peaks that are on islands and peninsulas, since water helps distance them from other peaks. As a result, very low peaks may be included even though they are not particularly high.

Prominence

Prominence should be used carefully to rank mountains. Prominence does not use concepts such as summit height and distance to other higher peaks to rank each mountain, and as a result, hikers should clearly understand what prominence is, and what types of mountains lists based on prominence will produce.

The only requirement for a prominent peak is that you must descend a certain elevation in order to reach a higher point. That elevation difference is the peak's prominence. Prominence is NOT a good judge of how far the peak is from other higher peaks. NHN criteria should be used for this. It is a good judge of how independent the peak is from other higher peaks.

Although prominent peaks have a greater chance of being steep over other methods, prominence does not guarantee this either.

Prominence will often pick the highest peak in a range of mountains, which gives the impression that prominence will give you a good sampling of diverse areas in a chosen region. Most of the time it will, but prominence will favor terrain that is more jagged and could pick several peaks bunched together if there is no saddle between them. When this occurs, the hiker may end up hiking peaks that although are probably worthy climbs by other definitions, may suffer from a lack of geographic displacement.

Highpointing

Highpointing is for those who are primarily looking for recognition. Most highpointing lists are accepted, understood, and can be appreciated by the general public.

Highpointing is the act of visiting each of a set of locations that are grouped because they are the highest points of land within the geographic or political areas that constitute the set of regions satisfying a certain highpointing criteria. Usually, highpointing refers to visiting the highest point of land in each continent, country, or US state.

Highpointing is usually a good way to select geographically displaced peaks. However, depending on the political boudaries used, there may be a higher concentration of highpoints where regions are more finely divided.

Using this method may pick very low points if some of the highpoints are in flat low lying areas. Also, the highest point in each division may not be a summit if a mountain's foundation straddles a boundary.

Isolated Summits

Lists which rank the highest isolated summits are appropriate for hikers looking for the highest peaks, plain and simple. By using prominence as a requirement, local sub peaks that shouldn't be counted as mountains in their own right are eliminated from the list.

These summits may not always be the most popular peaks, and they may be grouped together geographically, but they do tend to be the most difficult.



So which criteria should you use? Prominence seems like a good way to go, although those looking for a greater geographic sampling may want to add a NHN requirement as well.

An interesting formula to use might be: Importance = NHN (in miles) + Prominence (in feet). Unfortunately NHN and Prominence Lists are hard to find on the Internet these days.

Those looking for recognition should consider the Highpointing lists. There is in fact a whole community of highpointers out there trying to get to the highest point in each state, or in each country, or all the peaks above a certain elevation in a certain region.

http://www.highpointers.org/
http://americasroof.com/world.shtml
http://www.cohp.org/prominence