What Is a Summit? [NY Times]

[RyanSchilling]

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... ummit.html

[cottonmountaineering]

interesting read, in my view jurgalski is too much of a perfectionist but brings up a good point on some of the summits

In my opinion:
a blatant non-summit would be not crossing the ridge on shishapangma (viesturs reached the false summit on one climb, but had to return to reach the actual summit)

a gray area would be the last 10 vertical ft on manaslu, because its a cornice without rock underneath it that might break off

an area i dont really care about would be cho oyu, where the highest point is uncertain due to drifting snow on the plateau, or dhaulagiri where the exact summit isnt clear. A lot of other mountains have cornices as summits where standing on the highest point would send you to your death, so a few feet away is prudent



if you ask a mathematician if .9999... = 1 they would say yes, i think mountaineers would agree that standing on the exact precise spot doesnt matter

[martinleroux]

if you ask a mathematician if .9999... = 1 they would say yes

Maybe if you ask an engineer or a physicist. But not a mathematician!

The article has quote from Reinhold Messner that more or less sums it up. “If they say maybe on Annapurna I got five meters below the summit, somewhere on this long ridge, I feel totally OK,” Messner said. “I will not even defend myself. If somebody would come and say, this is all bulls**t what you did? Think what you want.”

[Somewhat of a Prick]

When there is no more rock above you. See Sunlight

[Chicago Transplant]

On big flat summits I am more of the ".9999" is good enough mindset, but where there is an obvious block/high point - especially if it affects the difficulty of the climb i.e Sunlight or the 13er Whitney in Holy Cross Wilderness, then you have to climb it to count it. Cornices are dangerous, and in Colorado where they melt off every year, most of them are over air anyway. Just get close enough to where the actual high point would be in dry ground without risking sending yourself for a ride, but don't turn around well before the vicinity of the highpoint. If the summit area is too dangerous and you had to turn back, its not a summit. I've turned back because of sketchy snow on the ridge, it wasn't a summit, and I didn't count it.

[k_fergie]

if you ask a mathematician if .9999... = 1 they would say yes

Maybe if you ask an engineer or a physicist. But not a mathematician!

The article has quote from Reinhold Messner that more or less sums it up. “If they say maybe on Annapurna I got five meters below the summit, somewhere on this long ridge, I feel totally OK,” Messner said. “I will not even defend myself. If somebody would come and say, this is all bulls**t what you did? Think what you want.”

Any mathematician knows that 0.999999... (repeating endlessly) is exactly equal to 1. Very simple and elegant proof. 1/3 = 0.3333..., 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 0.3333.... + 0.3333.... + 0.3333.... = 0.9999.... = 3/3 = 1

Engineers are just more practical and call anything between 0.5 and 1.49 equal to 1

[Scott P]

I agree with cottonmountaineering and Chicago Transplant.

Reaching the foresummits of Shisha Pangma or Broad Peak not mentioned in the article, but another on people often stop short of) and claiming the highest point does seem dishonest. For something like Annapurna where the summit isn't obvious or defined, it doesn't seem as important.

[martinleroux]

if you ask a mathematician if .9999... = 1 they would say yes

Maybe if you ask an engineer or a physicist. But not a mathematician!

Any mathematician knows that 0.999999... (repeating endlessly) is exactly equal to 1. Very simple and elegant proof. 1/3 = 0.3333..., 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = 0.3333.... + 0.3333.... + 0.3333.... = 0.9999.... = 3/3 = 1

That strikes me as the sort of argument that would satisfy an engineer or a physicist, but not necessarily a mathematician! You're making all sorts of implicit assumptions that you'd need to spell out if you wanted to provide a rigorous demonstration. For example, what exactly does 0.9999... represent? If you're working with real numbers and the conventional definition of a limit, then in that framework one would certainly conclude that 0.9999... equals 1. (More precisely, the limit of the infinite series 0.9, 0.99, 0.999, ... is equal to one). But there are other frameworks, notably non-standard analysis, under which one can make a formal distinction between the infinitely recurring decimal 0.9999... and 1, even if the difference is infinitesimally small.

Of course none of this is of any practical significance, just as it isn't of any practical significance as to whether Reinhold Messner reached the the true summit of Annapurna or whether he reached a point on a broad ridge a bit lower and a short distance away.

[jchapell]

The topic of the article was interesting, but also reminded me how much I love everything John Branch writes. His Dawn Wall coverage, The Last Cowboys book, and this article on a tragic avalanche in Washington are a few great reads https://www.nytimes.com/projects/2012/s ... nnel-creek . He has a new book coming out in the next month or so about the sports we probably all like called "Side Country."

Anyhoo, continue with the debate.

[Boggy B]

A few meters from the true summit on any mountain isn't even close to .999...

So with that out of the way, apart from the folks who think they can count summits if they haven't gained at least 3,000 feet or think they can count a ski descent from Sunlight when the summit block didn't have good coverage, I think we're all in agreement on what constitutes a true summit.

Seriously though, I think the article's quote from Guy Cotter sums it up: “There’s a difference between thinking that you’re on the summit and there is no further to go, and knowing there is further to go and not going further.”

Though I would change the second part to "not knowing there isn't further to go" since blizzards and blacking out aren't really good excuses for believing in error that you've reached the top.

[justiner]

This is Part 3, but one should watch Part 1 + 2, as this is still pretty cutting edge, high altitude climbing that's very dangerous indeed. But at the start of the video, you can see the very emotional climbers, posing for a summit shot, waiting for the sky to clear just to verify that yes, they ARE on the actual summit,

but then....



Here's part 1 + 2. It's a much lower peak, but it ain't no walkup:

[RhodoRose]

"Engineers are just more practical and call anything between 0.5 and 1.49 equal to 1"

Electrical Engineers: 5 significant digits
Mechanical Engineers: 3 significant digits
Civil Engineers: "What's a significant digit?"