Introduction
If readers would like to contribute an article for the Guest Contributor
page heading please contact me, my email address appears on the About Me page heading. The 0nly two things I ask is that the article
should be hill related and importantly I should not end up in court through its
publication! Otherwise the choice of
subject matter is down to the Guest Contributor.
About the Author; Mark Trengove
Mark
Trengove is a hill- and mountain-hiker who wanders over the ranges of Britain,
Ireland and mainland Europe, when he is able.
He is also a creator of hill and mountain lists, which are published on
his Europeaklist website. He
lives in North Wales.
Europeaklist
By Mark Trengove
As a consumer of British hill-lists, I often
wondered, when I went on holiday in mainland Europe, what the prominence was of
the hills and mountains in the places we visited (for an explanation of
‘prominence’, also known as ‘drop’, see at http://www.peaklist.org/). I wondered whether there were mountain lists
for these countries. The hills of
Britain have been listed more than any country in the world, perhaps with the
exception of the USA. However, I found
that most countries in Europe did not appear to have hill and mountain lists to
any great degree – apart from such lists as the 4000-metre peaks of the
Alps. I decided to attempt to rectify
this.
The first list I produced was of the Vosges
Mountains in north-east France, which I had visited and hiked in the summer of
the year 2000. It was rather a haphazard
attempt at a hill-list, as I only had French paper maps to work with. Eventually I produced a list for my own use
of all the summits over 915 metres (3000 feet) in height and 150 metres of
prominence. I then moved on to the parts
of the French Alps that I was exploring.
In the early 2000s hill-listing got much more
reliable, as Jonathan de Ferranti, a friend of mine with far better computer
skills than me, started producing computer-generated lists of hills and
mountains (see Jonathan’s website at http://viewfinderpanoramas.org/). These lists still needed checking against
maps to tighten the accuracy, but the task was now much more methodical, and
easier. I remain very grateful to
Jonathan for his huge and continuing contribution to hill- and
mountain-listing.
A forthcoming trip to Zakopane in southern
Poland in 2005 turned my interest to the Tatra, in the Carpathians. I began creating a list of the peaks in this
fine range of mountains for my own use.
Through web-searches I became aware that a Pole from Warsaw called Piotr
Mielus was also creating a list of this range, so I got in contact with him. We ended up collaborating to produce a list
that was put into the public domain – ‘The Crown of the Tatra’ (see at http://www.peaklist.org/WWlists/euro600/tatra/Tatra.html). This was the first mountain list that I had
(jointly) worked upon that was published.
As time went on, I continued to produce other
hill and mountain lists for a number of other countries in Europe. These, too, were published on the Peaklist
website.
However, the Peaklist website was
effectively moth-balled in around 2009, when its web-master moved onto other
projects. I was continuing to produce
new lists, and they needed a platform to put them in the public domain. The Europeaklist website (see at https://sites.google.com/site/europeaklist/Home) was therefore
originally created in about 2010 to continue Peaklist in a European-only
context, and to serve as a platform for the growing collection of hill and
mountain lists I had and continued to produce.
The concept developed from publishing online lists to providing a series
of free downloadable leaflets and booklets that could be printed off on paper
or used in an e-format.
Originally a selection of booklets of the
British hills were included – these were taken off the website at the end of
January 2020 (with one exception – see below), at the time when the website was
re-launched in a new format.
Countries currently represented on the website
are Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland,
France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania,
Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, Netherlands, Poland, San Marino, Slovakia and
Spain. Lists for the Czech Republic and
Portugal are under development.
Baggers without Borders
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| Krzesanica 2122m, P323m, in the Polish Western Tatra (photo Mark Trengove) |
In recent years the website has diverged
somewhat from its original purpose. In 2020,
following my creation of a Google Forum for international peak-baggers, new
parts of the website were also created, devoted to the activity of
international peak-bagging, under the banner ‘Baggers without Borders’. These website pages include registers and
Halls of Fame for international peak-baggers – see at https://sites.google.com/site/europeaklist/international-peak-baggers-registers-halls-of-fame.
This has proved a very successful
development. The Forum has brought
together international peak-baggers from across the world as the go-to place to
ask for advice on peaks across the world, as many of the members have both
local and global knowledge from their own wanderings over the planet.
The Europeaklist website supports the Forum by
publishing annually peak-totals in various different prominence categories for
all who wish to participate. You do not
need to be a member of the Forum to participate in the Registers and Halls of
Fame. There is no minimum number of
peaks to enter a Register. Further
details can be found on the website via the hyperlink given above.
Poly-bagging
Later in 2020 a new section of the website was
created, devoted to those who ascend the same hill or mountain many times and
keep a record of their ascents. I have
coined a new term for this activity – ‘poly-bagging’. An introduction can be found on the website
at https://sites.google.com/site/europeaklist/polybaggers-register-hall-of-fame. There is also a register of ‘poly-baggers’,
with some people putting up over a thousand ascents of the same hill or
mountain. You can view the first
register (for 2019) at https://sites.google.com/site/europeaklist/polybaggers-register-hall-of-fame/poly-baggers-register-2019.
The 119
Although most British hill lists have been
removed, one still remains. This is a
list of the one hundred and nineteen hills in Britain and Ireland that have at
least 600 metres of prominence This is
a hill-list I first compiled over ten years ago which has gained some
popularity. You can find an introduction
to this list at https://sites.google.com/site/europeaklist/the-119, and an article in The
Summit, the e-magazine for Irish hill-walkers – see at page 41 in https://mountainviews.ie/annual/summitteering-Ireland-Britain-the119-2019/#page=41.
The future: Chinese mountain lists
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| Liánhuā Fēng (蓮花峰) 1854.8m, P1735, the highest peak in the Huáng Shān (黄山), Anhui Province, China (photo Mark Trengove) |
In 2020 I became involved in a project to
publish a list of all the mountains in the world with at least 1000 metres of
prominence – the World Ribu Project.
The project came about as a result of the Baggers without Borders
Forum. After a hiking visit to China in
2019, I decided to take on the mountains of China as my contribution to the
project. Most of the mountains in China
have not been listed before. My research
involves examination of worldwide maps created by Digital Elevation Models,
together with extensive searches on the Chinese web.
I have decided to venture outside Europe for my
next series of mountain lists, and a new set of publications covering the
1000-metre prominences of China will be published on the Europeaklist
website in forthcoming months and years.
As there are over eight hundred such peaks in China (Britain has
three!), listing them all is a considerable undertaking. The possibilities for peak-bagging in China
are huge, ranging from Mount Everest in the Himalaya to the granite spire peaks
of the Huáng Shān (黄山) in the south-east of this vast country.
Mark Trengove (September 2020)
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