Largest 'flat' summit?

[rijaca]

Browns Peak next to Medicine Bow in Wyoming is a big flat summit. Hard to pick out a highpoint.

We probably spent an hour wandering around the summit area looking at various cairns trying to figure out the highest one.

[12ersRule]

Browns Peak next to Medicine Bow in Wyoming is a big flat summit. Hard to pick out a highpoint.

We probably spent an hour wandering around the summit area looking at various cairns trying to figure out the highest one.

In those situations, I usually just go to what the loj coordinates say.

I have spent a lot of time on ridges, though, when there are highpoints that all look about the same just to have my bases covered.

Didn't hit the other towers west of this one, because the other hps looked scary to me: https://listsofjohn.com/peak/2217

[12ersRule]

The high point in the state of Oklahoma is on Black Mesa.
The top of the mesa is huge. You would NEVER find the high point except for the fact that the good folks of Oklahoma commissioned, produced, and installed a 10 foot high granite obelisk there.

It's flat enough that the monument is apparently in the wrong place and the true "summit" is northwest of there.

I don't know about that. On PA, the old timers were right all along.

[seannunn]

The high point in the state of Oklahoma is on Black Mesa.
The top of the mesa is huge. You would NEVER find the high point except for the fact that the good folks of Oklahoma commissioned, produced, and installed a 10 foot high granite obelisk there.

It's flat enough that the monument is apparently in the wrong place and the true "summit" is northwest of there.

Well I for one am not going back for that.

Sean Nunn
Peculiar, MO

[XterraRob]

I wonder what the flattest 14er summit is, Bross?

[denvermikey]

I wonder what the flattest 14er summit is, Bross?

Could be. Longs might be real close too.

[Wentzl]

Largest flat 14er summit?

Massive

[two lunches]

Massive likely has the largest area above 14K, but i don't recall that summit being particularly "flat" as compared to Longs, which i personally think is flatter than Bross.

[jrbren_vt]

Of the Colorado peaks I have been on, Square Top above Guanella pass and Colony Baldy come to mind as summit areas where you could have a soccer game. I still wouldn't want to be the one who has to retrieve the ball when it goes out of bounds though. Massive was definitely not in this class to me, more of a long ridge. Back east Mt. Mooselauke come to mind. I don't know when a flat summit becomes a Mesa or a Butte. There are several of them on the drive between Denver and Colorado Springs.

[bdloftin77]

I wonder what the flattest 14er summit is, Bross?

If you want to get technical, I posted these 14er summit steepness lists on LoJ a while back. One method - take the summit, create a circle of a certain radius around the summit, and take the average elevation along that circle. 100, 200, and 400 m are probably good local metrics of flatness, though I also posted 800 m and 1600 m lists. The average circle/ring elevation idea is from Tim Worth.

Bross, Pikes, and Oxford are at the bottom of the first three lists.

Colorado 14ers: Average elevation along surrounding circle at "X" distance

100 m radius
200 m radius
400 m radius
-----
800 m radius
1 mi radius

Another metric Joe Grim and John came up with is finding the contour area that is 300' below the summit (300' seemed like a good number when looking at ranked summits). I have an email from Joe from a while back with all the ranked CO results, including unanalyzed ones.

For 14ers, the largest contour area winner is Bross at 0.259 square miles, followed by Sherman at 0.248.

Joe noted that the least steep ranked summit in Colorado by all the metrics we've come up with is Tower Benchmark in the northern plains. Its contour area at 300' below the summit is a huge 189.993 miles. Other notable flat summits at the bottom of the list are Great Divide Benchmark at 78.772 mi, Big Arroyo Hills at 27.12 mi, and Holcolm Hills at 21.751 mi.

To get a finer resolution analysis of steepness, we'd probably re-analyze using contour area at 100' and 200' below the summit as well. This would favor smaller spires at the low end of the contour area, and more locally flat summits at the high end.

=====

For any who are curious, here's the top average drop lists in all of Colorado (largest average drop at "x" distance - smaller distances favor spires, larger distances favor high-rising, isolated mountains)

Top 100 Colorado Peaks with Largest Average Drop along a Surrounding Circle at "X" Distance

100 m radius
200 m radius
400 m radius
800 m radius
1 mi radius

And under New Content + LiDAR, John made a new steepness page with smallest contour at 300' below the summit, as well as shallowest angle to a 300' drop below the summit. He decided the smallest area at 300' below the summit made a bit more sense in determining the steepest peaks. Here's a list of the 100 steepest by that metric, as well as the 200 steepest. And a map of the 100 steepest.

It's cool to see where the steep, jagged peaks are clustered. Some of my favorite areas in Colorado are near these clusters.

[madmattd]

If you want to get technical, I posted these 14er summit steepness lists on LoJ a while back. One method - take the summit, create a circle of a certain radius around the summit, and take the average elevation along that circle.

The issue with this method (and admittedly any method will have something to be nit-picked over) as it relates to the discussion of "flattest summit" is if a peak's high point is near the edge of a cliff, but is on an otherwise large, flat area. Longs is a great example of this: it's summit is just a few yards from the cliffs down to Chasm Lake, but off to the West it is pretty flat for >1/10mi. I think the "pick a contour X feet below the summit area and measure the area" is the best reasonable approximation to address this. I'd be curious to see what that whole contour-area list looks like if it ever is shared in full.

[bdloftin77]

If you want to get technical, I posted these 14er summit steepness lists on LoJ a while back. One method - take the summit, create a circle of a certain radius around the summit, and take the average elevation along that circle.

The issue with this method (and admittedly any method will have something to be nit-picked over) as it relates to the discussion of "flattest summit" is if a peak's high point is near the edge of a cliff, but is on an otherwise large, flat area. Longs is a great example of this: it's summit is just a few yards from the cliffs down to Chasm Lake, but off to the West it is pretty flat for >1/10mi. I think the "pick a contour X feet below the summit area and measure the area" is the best reasonable approximation to address this. I'd be curious to see what that whole contour-area list looks like if it ever is shared in full.

Yep! Definitely agree. I think it'd be cool to use other contour areas as well, just to see what things look like (i.e. 200', 100', and maybe 50' or even less). Longs is definitely a prime candidate as one of the flatter summits if the drop to the contour is a lot less than 300'. It's very flat, but then has huge cliffs around the edges. The 300' metric captures the cliffs around the edges a bit more than the flatness of the large summit - relative to other summits - putting it up higher in the list than otherwise. But I think 100' or 50' might capture the local flatness, just like 100' or 50' (or possibly 200') might capture jutting ranked rock formations better that only have a couple hundred feet of drop before ending in relative flatness (like Big Rock Candy Mtn or Noddle Heads North, two I've climbed that didn't rank very highly with the 300' drop metric).

I might ask Joe to see if he can perform an analysis on the ranked CO peaks on contour areas with less drop from the summit, just to see how that compares and what's added/removed from the top 100/200.

Here's the list that Joe sent me. If a summit hasn't been analyzed, the resulting drop and therefore area could change, possibly drastically, when the true elevation is input. So only the first couple hundred are more final, whereas the unanalyzed ones, as well as the order, are approximate.

EDIT: Was about to send the list, but looks like csvs or xls aren't supported file extensions. I could email it to you if you'd like.