Talk:Mount Bond

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[edit] West Bond and Bondcliff

These peaks seem to lack the 200 feet of topographic prominence required to be Four-thousand footers. Were they included by mistake, or for other reasons?
—wwoods 16:28, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

That's a really good question. I'm not sure anyone has surveyed a definitive prominence for either peak. I suspect everyone has been working off the USGS maps. Both West Bond and Bondcliff have 5 40-foot contours around their summits, which is a minimum of 160 feet. Additional prominence above the highest contour could be 1 to 39 feet (using integers here), with an additional 1 to 39 feet below the lowest contour at the saddle. That makes the prominence fall between 162 and 238 feet, which averages to 200. Short version: I think (but don't know for a fact) that the list makers looked for any peak that had at least 5 40-foot contours of prominence. Where did you get your prominence figures from? I see that peakbagger.com lists it at 160 to 200 feet, but that fails to take into account my analysis above. Ken Gallager 13:48, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

What I just wrote applies only to summits that don't have a printed elevation, e.g. West Bond. Bondcliff (with a printed elevation of 4265) can only have a maximum prominence of 160 + 25 + 39, or 224. Minimum would be 160 + 25 + 1, or 186. So the average for Bondcliff is actually 205. Ken Gallager 13:53, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I used peakbaggers, roughly averaging the 'clean' and 'optimistic' figures, and trying not to convey a false impression of precision. After asking that question, I came across peakbagger.com: "New Hampshire 4000-foot Peaks", which says

"This list of 48 ranked peaks in New Hampshire's White Mountains matches closely to that used by the Four Thousand Footer committee of the Applachian Mountain Club. The committee uses an "optimisitic" prominence threshold of 200 feet, which, in terrain covered by maps with 40-foot contours, is equivalent to the 160 feet of "clean" prominence used on this site.

"The only discrepancy between the ranked summits on this list and the official 4000-footer club list is that the official list includes South Hancock but not Mount Guyot. This seems odd to me, since Guyot clearly has the exact same prominence as nearby West Bond, an official peak, and South Hancock clearly just misses the 160 foot clean prominence cut-off by 1 foot."

—wwoods 17:24, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

The only quibble I have with peakbaggers is that they call 200 feet "optimistic", when prominence could be anything between 160 and 240 feet when 5 40-foot contours encircle a summit. Thus, 200 feet or more of prominence should occur roughly half the time. But thanks for clarifying where the numbers came from. And yes, having been over Guyot, I agree that it is certainly a worthy summit destination! Ken Gallager 13:25, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

That "40-foot contours" must be a typo. They meant 20-foot contours, giving a range of 40 feet, 160–200.

—wwoods 16:13, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

...But often they are forty-foot intervals. On further thought, they're probably assuming precise surveys of summit elevations, so the potential error is in the saddle's elevation. Well, there's Guyot done.

—wwoods 17:34, 23 January 2007 (UTC)