NH Forty What?

[dr_wu002]

I've been fooling around with the US Board of Geographic Names, making some arbitrary and non-arbitrary lists. I noticed a few things though that might be of interest:

Waumbek - 3996'
Whiteface - 3993'
Moriah - 3980'
Jackson - 3973'
Tecumseh - 3975'
Mt. Tripyramid - 3868'

Of course if we weren't using base 10 this wouldn't be all that significant, but since we are, those appear lower than the golden cutoff point. Who knows, this might have been discussed before but it does seem potentially controversial.

I know there are others who claim that Guyot has the col requirements and South Hancock does not and so on. I guess it's splitting hairs. But what do y'all think? Mt. Tripyramid = 3868' ??? C'mon... how can it be that far off?

-Dr. Wu

 

[Zimmer]

Are you stirring up trouble again?

 

[NH_Mtn_Hiker]

I believe the USGS took the elevation from the maps at the point where the feature was located, not necessarily the summit. For example, Mount Tripyramid is a ridge. I think they took the Lat./Long. for roughly the middle of the ridge then took the elevation at that point without considering the summit.

With that in mind, I'll bet you can add Owls Head to your list.

In reference to the whole base ten thing:
01001001 00100111 01110110 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100101 01101110 00100000 01110101 01110011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01100010 01100001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01110100 01110111 01101111 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110111 01101000 01101001 01101100 01100101 00101100 00100000 01100010 01110101 01110100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01101110 00100000 01100001 01100111 01100001 01101001 01101110 00101100 00100000 01001001 00100111 01101101 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011 00101110 00101110 00101110 01101010 01110101 01110011 01110100 00100000 01101100 01101001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100001

 

[bikehikeskifish]

Don't call me a geek, Geek!

Tim

 

[Tom Rankin]

Waumbek - 3996'
Whiteface - 3993'
Moriah - 3980'
Jackson - 3973'
Tecumseh - 3975'
Mt. Tripyramid - 3868'

Hey, you guys have more NON-4000'ers than we do in the ADKs!

 

[MichaelJ]

Well, my USGS topo map shows

Waumbek - the X is labeled 1221m (4005')
Whiteface - the X is labeled 3994' but it's at the south ledges; there's a 4000' contour to the north
Moriah - the X is labeled 4049'
Jackson - the X is labeled 4052'
Tecumseh - the summit is labelled 4009'
Mt. Tripyramid - plenty of topo lines above the 4000' contour line on all the peaks

So I don't think that list is quite right...

 

[DougPaul]

In reference to the whole base ten thing:

Watch out or I'll put a Hex on you...

Doug

 

[dr_wu002]

I believe the USGS took the elevation from the maps at the point where the feature was located, not necessarily the summit. For example, Mount Tripyramid is a ridge. I think they took the Lat./Long. for roughly the middle of the ridge then took the elevation at that point without considering the summit.

With that in mind, I'll bet you can add Owls Head to your list.

Yeah, that's my guess. Owl's Head is listed at 3629; not even a freakin' prime number.

-Dr. Wu

 

[dr_wu002]

Watch out or I'll put a Hex on you...

Doug

Should I be surprised that you can translate binary on the fly?



-Dr. Wu

 

[GeorgeFitch]

Too Geeky

There are only 10 kinds of people. Those who understand binary and those who don't.

 

[DougPaul]

Should I be surprised that you can translate binary on the fly?

Sorry, I can't. But I can run a binary counter on my fingers...

Once upon a time, I worked with a computer that one debugged with binary lights and switches. I memorized a few conversions.

Just to give my age away, I'm best in decimal or octal. Still a bit slow with hexadecimal (slang hex, base 16).

(Just to keep it on topic...) Anyone have a list of 4K peaks in octal*?

Doug


* Just in case anyone is baffled by this baseless baloney, 4K base 8 (octal) = 2048 base 10 (decimal).

 

[dr_wu002]

(Just to keep it on topic...) Anyone have a list of 4K peaks in octal*?

Doug


* Just in case anyone is baffled by this baseless baloney, 4K base 8 (octal) = 2048 base 10 (decimal).

I was working on the 4000'ers in a nonal system but it's just annoying and a waste of time. I was also looking at a list of the highest "prime # peaks" in the Whites. That's also a pain to do. There's a big gap between Jefferson and the next one.

-Dr. Wu

 

[gaiagirl]

Speak English, people!!! Or Spanish, or Italian, or something else normal people can understand.
Seriously, if there are people who really only hike those summits because they're on a list then that's just sad for them, in my opinion. Who cares?? Numbers are meaningless; trust me, I just had a birthday!!

 

[giggy]

Speak English, people!!! Or Spanish, or Italian, or something else normal people can understand.
Seriously, if there are people who really only hike those summits because they're on a list then that's just sad for them, in my opinion. Who cares?? Numbers are meaningless; trust me, I just had a birthday!!

speak english or die? classic thrash album from 1985
http://www.megaforcerecords.com/cart/Speak Cover.jpg

 

[nartreb]

The GNIS "summit" locations aren't too precise.
As noted, the GNIS "summit" location for Tripyramid is in the col between North and Middle peaks. Most other "summit"s are like that: in the general area, but not necessarily on the actual summit.

Owl's Head is slightly more interesting:
"Owl's Head" is the name of the cliff on the south side of the south bump of the mountain. The summit of the mountain itself doesn't have an official name.
The GNIS "summit" location is near the the top of the south bump, though once again it's not too precise: it's above the cliff but below the highest contour of that bump.


As for prime number elevations, that's a waste of time. Even if there were surveys accurate to a foot (there aren't), the meaning of "sea level" is pretty arbitrary. You've got a choice of models that differ from each other by meters.

 

[dr_wu002]

Speak English, people!!! Or Spanish, or Italian, or something else normal people can understand.
Seriously, if there are people who really only hike those summits because they're on a list then that's just sad for them, in my opinion. Who cares?? Numbers are meaningless; trust me, I just had a birthday!!

I'm not a list person but, like I said, I was curious as to why some of these peaks were listed by the USGS as being 100's off feet off their conventional values.

Personally, the 4000' cutoff isn't very relevant to me just as when it turned from year 1999 to 2000 a few years back, while neat, was generally meaningless in the grand scheme of things. However, numbers can actually be fun to play with... I learned this teaching 8th grade math last year. I had to do something to keep my mind occupied.

-Dr. Wu

 

[dr_wu002]

As for prime number elevations, that's a waste of time. Even if there were surveys accurate to a foot (there aren't), the meaning of "sea level" is pretty arbitrary. You've got a choice of models that differ from each other by meters.

You are correct. And, it seems like a lot of times they're rounded to the nearest 5 or 10 anyway. I just thought it would be fun to take an established list of about 500 peaks and find the prime number peaks in it. That's when A) I realized that the list was strange, having many of the 4ks at weird elevations and B) I realized that there wasn't an abundance of prime number peaks on the list anyway. It got tedious quickly.

-Dr. Wu

 

[RoySwkr]

Anyone have a list of 4K peaks in octal*?

No, but for your convenience I have posted below a list of peaks in NH with altitude over 4000'[hex]

...

 

[RoySwkr]

I was curious as to why some of these peaks were listed by the USGS as being 100's off feet off their conventional values.

As nartreb says, sometimes what they consider the summit is not where peakbaggers think the summit is, see the coordinates they give

Other times, the elevation was taken off a previous map edition and not updated for the new map

And some are just errors, see Bartlett Haystack, don't know if this was map reading or keypunching

Bottom line - don't trust NGIS elevations

 

[SteveHiker]

No, but for your convenience I have posted below a list of peaks in NH with altitude over 4000'[hex]

...

hey, the same as the list for Colorado, too.