In a recently prepared table, which lists the number of first ascents made by individual countries of peaks of more than 6,400m, Great Britain is second only to Japan.
> (In reply to UKC News)
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> Damn right! I did the first ascent of the swarm mofo's!
The Swarm is at around 7,000 ft Matthew, that's around 2,100m, so it misses the cut off point of 6,400m that the good Professor Josef uses.
Apart from that The Swarm is only 5m high whereas Everest is around 5,000m from its base, so naturally it is harder than a climb with an elevation difference of only 5m from base camp to summit.
For readers who are not familiar with The Swarm it is a small but perfectly formed quartz-monzonite boulder problem at the Secrets of the Beehive Area in the Buttermilk, California that Matthew first ascended.
It has a difficulty of confirmed 8b+ or V14 and I bet your bottom dollar that Kenton The Cool could not climb it once let alone six times like he did with Everest.
Must be hard, Tyler Landman seems to be using some kind of extra limb coming out of his face to get up it!
Ackbar27 Jul 2009
In reply to UKC News: This is why it is important to protect our Trad heritage. Out of interest, anyone have any idea what percentage of these new ascents are done by proffessionals or guided tour groups?
Any idea why he chose 6400m? Seems to me that there a thousands of worthwhile mountain first ascents, that have been done and remain to be done, below this height.
In reply to Glen: Good question. Maybe 6400m is what he considers to still be a peak of significant size in the Himalayas. If the work was focussed on Europe I guess 3000m would be of similar stature?
So of course this ignores all alpinism in Europe and, as you say, peaks everywhere else that are <6400m. Just one of those things I guess -- once you put statistics in context you realise the headline is sort of misleading. "Japan and Great Britain Have Most Peak First Ascents" should have "Over 6400m" addended which doesn't sound so clear-cut. You could just as easily change the headline to:
"Japan and Great Britain Have Most." Hoorah for Blighty! We have most!
I have to admit when I read the title I thought it was referring to the Peak District.
Looking at the list, if population weighting is considered (as it should be - number of first ascents per head of population) then Austria might well be the "first", which would come as no surprise to me (Them is well 'ard).