Mohamed Ellozy said:
It is a great site (although it has actually been live since last September, though perhaps not much advertised). The original material by Aaron was on the CoHP site and it's nice that he now has his own site with expanded material.
Another great resource for prominence afficianados is Greg Slayden's
Peakbagger.com. It has a dozens of lists which are backed by an astounding number of peaks (I think over 5000) in a database that covers the whole world. When I wanted to know the prominence of Slide, Hunter and Black Dome which I hiked last weekend, this is where I went.
And to me the coolest resource is Aaron's maps. Look at this one:
Northeastern U.S. Prominence Map. What I find most interesting, besides the locations of these peaks, are the connecting devide lines (those wiggly red lines connecting the peaks). To me the subject of prominence leads to the discovery of where the saddles are, and that leads to the watershed devide lines. This gives a much more global perspective on the geography of the mountain ranges. As a peakbagger before I though about prominence, I worried about where a peak was and how to get to the top. Except for worrying about a few local features (cliffs, ridge lines, stream gullies,etc.) I didn't much fit a particular peak into the "big" picture. I think most peakbaggers are the same.
But now look at that map for a minute. When I first saw that, I said to myself "now why does that red line from Katahdin to Washington go way up across northen Maine, along the border and into Canada before dropping back into New Hampshire". Voilla! Watersheds!. First you need to go up between the West and East Branch of the Penobscot, then you need to squeeze between the head waters of the Kennebec to the South and the Allagash and St. Johns to the north, then you have to skirt around the Andoscoggin and get down south before you hit the Connecticut. Untill I really looked at this, I never realized how complex the river systems were in Maine - and really it's the same everywhere.
As for the NE FF, it's a cool list:
17 are 4000s
24 (including the above) are HH
All but 5 are 3000s
8 involve bushwhacks
and there are assorted CoHPs in there.
I started the list in 2003 (already having done about half for other pursuits) and will probably finish this year (9 more to go). Along the way Meo, Audrey & Pat, Tramper Al and Spencer have joined me here and there on the NE FF list, plus TeeJay who did Black Dome (a NY P2K) with me last weekend. Anyone else interested? - come along! I may do my last FF bushwhack at the Sepember gathering (Cold Hollow in Vermont).
Just do it!
