In reply to andy kirkpatrick:
> A valid point, and a good pub discussion, what defines a wall, but believe me, when you get to the lower off you know you're at the top of A wall! Even without it being a wall or whatever, 16 days solo on the Troll in winter, on loose rock and sometimes rotten bolts equates to twenty laps of the Eiger North face.
It's not to do with 'what defines a wall', i.e the definition of a wall – because of course you can have a 'wall' as feature within a larger 'wall': e.g Terrace Wall on the east face of Tryfan, Red Wall on Lliwedd, or the Rote Fluh on the Eigerwand. But this is to do with the reference of a name. The Eigerwand, for example, refers to the whole north face of the Eiger, just as the Troll Wall refers to that whole particular wall on the north side of Trollryggen. To say simply that you've climbed 'the Eigerwand' or 'the Troll Wall' of course means you've climbed the whole thing from the bottom to the top.
If the names of mountain features are used in a misleading way, we're not talking about mountaineering but honesty. If someone tells me they've climbed the Eigerwand or El Capitan, etc etc, I assume they are being honest and do
not mean they've only got part-way up it.
Post edited at 20:43