Colorado LiDAR Findings

[bdloftin77]

Unrelated side note - Scott, unfortunately Joe and I found Turkey Monster to be unranked. Still a cool looking pinnacle though.

For sure it a cool pinnacle. Of note, the LoJ link says it has 280' rise on the map, but it really doesn't show up on the map at all (it should probably read "map: 0' ".

Yeah, he had to put something in for the elevation when he first listed it. A trip report said the rope length was 300’, so he decided to be conservative and call it soft-ranked at the time.

[CheapCigarMan]

Was Clark the only bicent to be knocked off?

Here's what's changed for bicentennial chasers. Feel free to correct me if necessary.

No longer ranked:
Challenger Point (14,086'; was 14,081')
Lightning Pyramid (13,729'; was 13,722')
Wood Mountain (13,682'; was 13,660')

No longer unranked:
North Maroon Peak (14,022'; was 14,014')

Summit moved:
Unnamed 13,660's summit is now 13,656' and has moved down the ridge toward Ellingwood Point

Promoted to bicentennials:
Mt. Parnassus (13,580'; was 13,574')
Rosalie Peak (13,579'; was 13,575'); tied with Clark Peak (13,579'; was 13,580'), which remains a bicentennial
Mt. Evans B (13,591'; was 13,577')
West Apostle (13,597'; was 13,568')

Demoted to tricentennials:
Unnamed 13,573' (was 13,580'); near Pole Creek Mtn.
Unnamed 13,543' (was 13,580'); near Mt. Adams
Mt. Powell (13,556'; was 13,580')

This is a great summary.

To complete it. Here's my understanding for the Centennial list.
Some of the Centennials moved up or down in elevation but they remained on the Cent list.

However, when it came down to the bottom of the Cent list
13,811 (now called 13,820), Arrow, Trinity, and Niagara moved up which bumped Teakettle and Dallas down to the Bi-Centennial list. With both Trinity and Niagara now tied in elevation for 100th & 101st.

Summit moved:
Mt. Buckskin's summit has moved to Mt. Buckskin's Northwest Summit. About a 1/4 a mile Northwest from the old summit toward Mt. Tweto / Mt. Democrat.

Promoted to Centennials:
Arrow (13,817'; was 13,803')
Trinity (13,816'; was 13,805')
Niagara (13,816'; was 13,807')

[HikerGuy]

Cross-posting to this LiDAR thread for visibility: This question may have been answered way back, but I can't remember if it was addressed. Was the elevation of the point 13,568 checked? It lies between 13,587(13,581) and 13,573(13,580). It had a Mike Garrett register on it and the height seems close to 13,573.

13587-13573.jpg (213.8 KiB) Viewed 1382 times

[Boggy B]

This one was checked by Theresa and found to be 13,565' with 210' prominence. See here, #9 under "Other Colorado Analysis."
[EDIT] First sort results by "Map elevation" at the top, otherwise the result doesn't appear on the page.

[HikerGuy]

This one was checked by Theresa and found to be 13,565' with 210' prominence. See here, #9 under "Other Colorado Analysis."
[EDIT] First sort results by "Map elevation" at the top, otherwise the result doesn't appear on the page.

Thanks again!

[Boggy B]

TL;DR

How do we classify named summits where the highpoint and the named point are in different places?

Take ranked Middle Peak - the coordinates given on the BGN page match the point labeled "13261" (USGS) at the northwest end of the ridge, but the 14ers/LoJ pin is at the ranked highpoint further along the ridge towards the Dolores saddle.

Then we have unranked Thunder Mountain - the pin is at the same location as the officially named point. However, slightly upridge to the west there is a higher point--which if I recall though still unranked turned out to be fairly prominent--before the Greylock saddle is reached.

With unranked King Solomon, the map label appears to designate the entire ridge/massif, the pin is at the southernmost prominence, but the BGN page indicates the northernmost (despite that the southern one was known to be higher then).

I believe The Sawtooth is an unranked/named example where 14ers, LoJ, and the BGN disagree.

This seems like an inconsistency. Do we usually try to use the map labeled (BGN/USGS?) point if it's unranked and otherwise the ranked point?
Are there any examples of named+ranked peaks that contradict this scheme?
If the point west of Thunder had turned out to be ranked, would we have moved that summit?

I'm not arguing for more peaks (since the only alternative that comes to mind where the named and ranked points differ would be to keep the named point as an unranked summit and add a UN at the ranked point, which would yield a bunch of extra named points with almost no prominence). Just curious if there's an actual methodology in these cases.

[bdloftin77]

TL;DR

How do we classify named summits where the highpoint and the named point are in different places?

Take ranked Middle Peak - the coordinates given on the BGN page match the point labeled "13261" (USGS) at the northwest end of the ridge, but the 14ers/LoJ pin is at the ranked highpoint further along the ridge towards the Dolores saddle.

Then we have unranked Thunder Mountain - the pin is at the same location as the officially named point. However, slightly upridge to the west there is a higher point--which if I recall though still unranked turned out to be fairly prominent--before the Greylock saddle is reached.

With unranked King Solomon, the map label appears to designate the entire ridge/massif, the pin is at the southernmost prominence, but the BGN page indicates the northernmost (despite that the southern one was known to be higher then).

I believe The Sawtooth is an unranked/named example where 14ers, LoJ, and the BGN disagree.

This seems like an inconsistency. Do we usually try to use the map labeled (BGN/USGS?) point if it's unranked and otherwise the ranked point?
Are there any examples of named+ranked peaks that contradict this scheme?
If the point west of Thunder had turned out to be ranked, would we have moved that summit?

I'm not arguing for more peaks (since the only alternative that comes to mind where the named and ranked points differ would be to keep the named point as an unranked summit and add a UN at the ranked point, which would yield a bunch of extra named points with almost no prominence). Just curious if there's an actual methodology in these cases.

Good thoughts. Do you have any more examples that could be looked at and possibly changed? I'll let John know you're curious and we'll see what he thinks.

[Chicago Transplant]

An example off the top of my head is "Hawk Peak", a 12er where the labeled USGS benchmark is not the true summit, so LOJ ignores the Hawk BM and pins the summit to the SE with the unofficial name "Hawk Peak". That may be handled that way specifically because of the stamped BM on the summit?

https://listsofjohn.com/peak/1021

[Boggy B]

That is interesting, and I'd agree it's probably because the physical marker forces the issue. Assuming there's no marker on the map-labeled Middle Peak.

I'm not advocating specific changes, mainly wondering about the reasoning.

Consistency with the maps makes the most sense to me, but interpreting map labels, feature types and coordinates isn't an exact science. Take Needle Ridge--the BGN designates the west summit, the highpoint is the east summit, and the feature type is Ridge. I would guess they labeled what was then thought to be the highest point (west) on the ridge, and it's fair to say the true highpoint (east) is really the named point, because it designates the whole ridge.

Then there's Gray Needle--nobody knows where the hell it is.

A clearer inconsistency is Thunder (feature type: Summit, named point matches pin and map label despite higher point to west) vs. King Solomon (feature type: Summit, named point differs from pin on higher point to south, map label covers whole ridge). You could argue the pin should be on the lower northern prominence based on the BGN feature type and location, if you can disregard the screwy map label. That would make it a very different hike.

That's deeper than I wanted to wade but interested if anyone has more examples of ranked+named points of the same feature in different locations.

[supranihilest]

The discussion in the above few posts is similar to a discussion found earlier in this thread, including the Hawk Benchmark reference! The discussion starts here and goes for something like two pages. Good topic, Michael.

[Boggy B]

Thanks, that was a worthwhile diversion. Not sure how I missed that since I've wondered the same about all those points.

I tend to think the summit of any mountain is the named point. I believe Sheep was named (per Burch?) for domestic sheep that used to graze on its grassy western flanks, hence the name is logically attached to the highest point in the view from the west, which is the benchmark.

If you go all the way to the highest point on Keyboard of the Winds (discussion here) you'll end up on Longs' standard route, on some nub at the top of the Trough with 19' of prominence (to which someone had the audacity to assign the nonexistent YDS grade of 5.1).

Consider again Gray Needle. In this case, climbers named a point they climbed, and for whatever reason it trended. No matter that it almost certainly is crowded by higher points--it is what it is (should it ever be found).

Being ranked confers extra significance, in our agonizingly boring world, most often to the named point, or in tricky cases a different, higher point nearby. Any other ranked examples?

[Scott P]

An example off the top of my head is "Hawk Peak", a 12er where the labeled USGS benchmark is not the true summit, so LOJ ignores the Hawk BM and pins the summit to the SE with the unofficial name "Hawk Peak". That may be handled that way specifically because of the stamped BM on the summit?

https://listsofjohn.com/peak/1021

In this particular case, I believe that it is handled that way because Hawk Peak is labeled on some maps. Otherwise, the peak would have just been labeled 12,796 if the highpoint isn't at or very near the BM. LoJ accepts guidebook and map names even if they aren't on the USGS 7.5 minute quad.

Screenshot_20230920_150533_Chrome.jpg (48.85 KiB) Viewed 622 times