Mountain Views monthly newsletter

A piece from the Mountain Views monthly newsletter:

SUMMITEERS CORNER A place for those interested in Summiteering, Bagging or Highpointing.

The Surprising History of Lists of Irish Summits Myrddyn Phillips who assisted MV by providing list data in our early days, takes an interest in the history of hill and mountain lists, in this case lists about Irish Hills. You can view a spreadsheet detailing his researches. Click here. Astonishingly the history includes nearly 40 lists and that before the year 2000. There are a few more he hasn't included as yet (though he plans to I gather) including County Highpoints and some MV lists which started in 2002. The history is interesting from a number of points of view and shows a progression in terms of comprehensiveness and accuracy in line with the improving maps of Ireland. MountainViews believes that for summiteering to become a mass activity or discipline of hillwalking, a degree of selection is required to present a coherent family of lists. We also believe that the state of the art for lists goes well beyond the basic geography of early lists and should include as accurate hill-surveying as necessary, cultural information such as all names including those in Irish, geology, summarised data about available routes and a framework of appropriate area names. Additionally ongoing maintenance is a requirement of a modern list in our view. MountainViews now has a system for allowing any member to suggest improvements to its lists (Propose Places Database Change) which over time will, we believe, ensure accuracy and comprehensiveness. Additionally MountainViews website presents list data in the context of a huge amount of crowd-sourced comments, ratings, photos, videos and GPS tracks. Nevertheless, do take a look at this history of lists and be amazed. You can also see Myrddyn's Blog Here