Talk:Fourteener

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What is the source for the claim that

By this rule, Colorado has 54 fourteeners, California has 12, and Washington has 2.

and

Alaska has 16 peaks over 14,000 feet

According to List of United States fourteeners, there are 15 in California and 21 in Alaska. Which ones in that list aren't counted in this article? dbenbenn | talk 23:47, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

The counts can vary depending on the rule used for inclusion. Not sure exactly what list the above numbers refer to, but the List of United States fourteeners is not a particularly good list; e.g. Browne Tower is a silly inclusion, as it has less than 100 feet of prominence (based on the USGS topo) and is never climbed as a separate objective. --Spireguy 15:14, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Speaking of lists, people have noted that the List of United States fourteeners is lacking context; I propose that we just import that list to be part of this article. In the process, it would obviously be good to make the numbers and the list agree, based on some explicit rule. If nobody objects I'll do that and change the list article to redirect to here. --Spireguy 15:14, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Incorporated list

I changed List of United States fourteeners to redirect here and imported the list to this page. That solves the context problem. I also went over the list carefully and separated out the independent peaks from the subpeaks. Note the use of the two different prominence cutoffs, consistent with the main body of the article (and also pretty consistent with normal usage---a 300 foot prom peak in Alaska is a pretty minor subpeak, since everything is on a larger scale there). I checked the borderline cases with peakbagger.com, and checked some directly on the topo maps using Topozone. I didn't doublecheck every single elevation, but they should be pretty good. I expect that most complaints about the list will be about the borderline cases, like El Diente, but at least they are mentioned. -- Spireguy 20:17, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] dskendall.com link

What was the problem with the Interactive map of Colorado fourteeners link that just got removed? It looked like a decent interactive map of the 14ers. -- Spireguy 21:24, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Ah, I think I see now what you saw as the problem---that this looked like spam from a commercial site. However if you look at the site, even though it is .com, it has very little if any commercial content, and the actual link is a useful and noncommercial adjunct to the content of the wikipedia article. So I think the link is appropriate. -- Spireguy 21:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] globalisation, or does it not apply here?

This article seems to cover mostly the US, and does a side mention of Canada. I see no mention whatsoever of the Andes or the Himilayas, even though both are higher than North American ranges. I therefore ask: is this an exclusively North American term, and if so, shouldn't it be noted in the article?

I just noticed that the French Wikipedia says, Dans le jargon des alpinistes américains... Should we change our introduction to read In North American mountaineering...? --Qviri (talk) 14:18, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

It would probably make sense to say "In North American mountaineering" or even "In mountaineering in the United States." I had hoped it was clear from the rest of the article that the 14,000 foot mark is not very significant outside the U.S. (basically, it's totally insignificant), but perhaps not. I'll change it. -- Spireguy 19:33, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Good stuff, thanks for the clarification. --Qviri (talk) 19:46, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
Fourteneer is not used by Canadians, except perhaps when talking to Americans (U.S.). or referring to mountains in the U.S. RedWolf 22:29, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Table version

I hope people like the new tabular version of the list--comments?. I did not yet put in ranks, mostly out of lack of time. (Also because they are not completely well-defined, as the article notes.) Meters should be an additional column, also not put in for lack of time. -- Spireguy 05:07, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ranking, etc.

I reverted the very poorly done insertion of the rankings, rather than fixing them as suggested. First, the numbers weren't even consecutive (!). Second, if the list should be ranked, then it's better to do it as a separate first column. Third, and most important, I'm not sure that the list should be ranked at all. Rankings depend very much on the cutoff criterion chosen, so they aren't always very meaningful. Since adding a ranking column is a lot of work, I'd like to see a firm consensus on this talk page that a ranking is a good idea before anyone goes to the trouble of (correctly) putting ranks in. My vote is "No", but I don't think a ranking column would be a horrible thing.

I also put back in the fact tag in the 500 foot rule, since it still doesn't have a good citation. I know it's true by personal communication with the president of MCAK, but that's not verifiable, is it? -- Spireguy 02:45, 4 July 2007 (UTC)