How is the point value determined on activation points for each summit?
Joe WB9SBD
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From the height of the summits. Normally the range is selected for the whole association but I think we have a few where the range varies between regions in an association.
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Huh? I would think the points value would be more meaningful if two things were considered.
1- Difficulty to get to the Summit. I mean why should a summit that you can drive to and park at the peak, be worth more points than one that you have to hike to for over a hour and carry everything in and out.
2- level of activation? I also think why should a peak that has been activated 12 times because it is easy to do, be worth more than one that has never been activated because it is extremely difficult?
Joe WB9SBD
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You not the first person who thinks there is something wrong with how points are awarded. and you wont be the last. The points system is objective not subjective. With 152434 summits that is the only way.
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Hi Joe, this might save some time typing. I think a lot of the arguments have been aired before 
Bummer!
You would think difficulty or at least rarity would have a strong effect! I have one I’m thinking of doing, it has never been done before, yet it is worth half the points of one I can drive to and operate. huh?
But, your name will be forever recorded as The First Activator!
The cognoscenti will know 
.
Enjoy the activation Joe, whatever points you get. I won’t get any tomorrow, but it would make my day to work you S2S!
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We plan on doing it up right. Like a Big DXexpedition. A Minimum of two stations running at least SSB & CW, maybe more.
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But you can only claim the points once a year, so at some point you’ll want to tackle other summits. The number of drive on summits in the scheme are a small percentage of summits (easily < 1%), and the points-once-a-year rule tends to act as a self-limiting feature for people just driving up and operating their favourite 10 pointer day after day.
As the other thread notes, no one has come up with a scalable, objective way of rating summits on difficulty that could supersede what we currently have, and that’s because difficulty is a largely subjective thing when prominence is your only inclusion criteria.
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Prominence is permanent. Suppose the road was closed to the first summit and a road built to the second one? Access is a variable, we can’t monitor access for hundreds of thousands of summits. Difficulty is subjective, one man’s impossible is another man’s walk in the park.
As I said above, difficulty is subjective and cannot be easily quantified, and even if a method could be found, it has to be applied to hundreds of thousands of summits, some of which may never have been climbed. Somebody would have to activate a summit before we know how diffficult it is!
After the initial idea for SOTA the details were brainstormed by many people and the idea refined in the light of experience. Its a bit late to change, good alternatives would have to be found and tested. Best stick to it as it is, warts and all!
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Agreed.
The summits that may be difficult or even unlikely for most of us would still be considered easy by the experienced mountaineers.
So if the mountaineers rated sota summits, the Matterhorn might be rated 10 points and all others 1.
That scheme would not create much entertainment for the majority.
Alternative methods of rating summits require assessment on various complex criteria, on which agreement would be difficult or impossible to achieve.
I agree with the MT view that the altitude based scheme we have, while perhaps not satisfying the difficulty criteria preferred by more expert and experienced mountaineers, meets the needs of the vast majority of SOTA activators and keeps us interested.
In my view, SOTA isn’t inherently a mountaineering activity, it’s a portable amateur radio activity with pre-assessed site selection options.
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Joe,
The bottom line is that the system is set up and you have to accept it in order to have fun and participate. It’s too large and structured to change much anyway. Be glad that it exists and works so well!
Here in Colorado it seems incredibly unfair that we have to climb to 10,500 feet to get 6 points, and 12,500 feet to get 8 points, 13,500 feet to get 10 points. Many of our baby 2-point summits at 8000 feet are very challenging to activate! In many other SOTA Associations, getting points is much less demanding. There’s significantly less oxygen on our 6 point summits than for the same points in most other Associations. We also have very few drive-ups. We do long hikes, and winters are very serious up high.
On the other hand, we have a lot of spectacular, fun summits available, many with reasonable access!
The SOTA point system isn’t set up to be consistent or “fair”. Since this is a global program, with numerous different Associations, there has to be a system that works and is objective. What matters is whether you can access, climb, and activate summits within your range, and whether you enjoy this.
In many ways being in a SOTA Association with only a few low summits is much less fair than the situation out here, with the system heavily biased toward high summits.
One of the best things about SOTA is that you can travel to numerous other Associations and enjoy their point schemes and peaks if you wish. Many activators do this.
The system was originally set up in the UK, and it works well there. Even though many of the UK summits are much lower in elevation than the peaks around here, I wouldn’t dare to suggest that they have it easier over there. Think cold rain, snow, ice, and more cold rain. Long winters…short days. The system works there, it works here, and it works in most places where it’s set up.
It isn’t really about points anyhow, eventually.
73
George
KX0R
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This brings out another point. How do we intercompare Associations? The highest summit in Britain is Ben Nevis, which is just a smidgeon over 4,400 feet high, a pygmy compared to the average Colorado summit! But wait a bit! Ben Nevis is climbed from sea level, you feel underfoot every inch of that 4,400 feet! How high is the starting point, the road head, for those Colorado summits? How much of that 13,500 feet do you actually climb?
When a new Association is being developed the summit team plot a distribution graph of summit heights and then juggle with the point bands to try and get a reasonable distribution of points so that there are not too many summits in any one point band. Sometimes nature makes that difficult! Obviously if the Association is overall pretty high then even the one point summits are going to look on paper like giants! The lowest summits in Colorado would be worth several points in Scotland, where they would be climbed from a low elevation, but in Colorado you start from a greater height. This is the sort of problem that SOTA is set up to solve.
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Also you have W0C/FR-004 Pikes Peak in Colorado at 4301m - 10 pts which you can drive up to or even take the train when it is running again! I found Ben Nevis a lot more of a challenge than Pikes Peak (I went up before it was a SOTA summit on the rack railway/railroad train). Another easy 10 pointer is Mount Washington in New Hampshire that is also accessible by car and train.
73
Nick
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thats no use either joe , as one activator may scale to the summit easily as he is much fitter so less effort needed there as it may take another activator double the time and more effort?
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Agree with the objectivity of the convention. What’s unfair or fair to one is the same for all. Each association has its unique set of challenges. Here is W7W land, access is a constant obstacle with many summits being surrounded by private property which no amount of climbing can overcome.
All these factors aside, SOTA tests all aspects of our sport in a creative and active combination. Those aspects keep many of us going out seeking that challenge.
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A by-product of the objective scoring classification is that it does mean some relatively easy summits are worth ten points. That means folks who don’t have extreme mountaineering or hiking ability can still get to some ten-pointers somewhere. This is a good thing.
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