3 of these continental summits are maped in SOTA. If anyone is venturing up Mt Blanc or Denali then let us know in VK as a S2S on HF would be pretty cool. VK2/SM-001 in Australia is an easy walk in summer and a litttle harder in winter with snow but possible.
Maybe the MT could create a seperate association for these summits, they are pretty special ones?
Compton
Thanks for the link to the interesting reading Compton. When my son Jimmy M0HGY was still at school, there was a visiting speaker one evening - Rhys Jones - who has achieved the seven continental summits. It was a great talk, which Jimmy and I both attended.
We won’t be altering the geographically based structure of SOTA associations though I’m afraid!
It seems that VK2/SM-001 would only be included if you consider Australia itself to be the continent. In Australasia, a ZL mountain is higher, while in Oceania, we begin to look towards Indonesia / Papua New Guinea. There’s several interpretations depending on whether we consider political boundaries or the tectonic plates, but it’s quite contrived to have VK2/SM-001 as one of the seven continental summits.
Ha, yes. Depends which side of the continent you are on as to which one are in the list of 7. If we can get a S2S in the database then we can all postulate for the rest of our useful lives on what we did and did we do it or not.
Compton
But…
No reason not to instigate a special award though - thoughts?
Barry GM4TOE
SOTA Awards Manager
The fact that only one of the official seven continental summits has a SOTA reference might make S2S a bit tricky.
ZL is on a different plate to Australia, but Papua New Guinea is part of the Australian plate - you could walk across during glacial maxima of the Ice Ages! By any scientific definition of “continent” there are more than seven - Europe + Asia should be just one, but for instance Madagascar and New Zealand are small continents which with even smaller microcontinents such as Rockall add to the total.
But add a few references and a C2C (continent to continent) award becomes possible!
Hi, the highest summit in Europe is Elbrus. Mont Blanc is only the western European highest peak.
Yes, depends on who’s list you regard as official. Like I said we can postulate for ever, but I’m focusing on trying to get the S2S to make the postulation worthwhile.
Compton
Yes, that is certainly an interpertation many make, but not all. There are several official versions of what the list of these summits is.
Compton
That’s just it though Compton. To progress with an idea with this, we would need, with good reason, to choose ONE of these versions. In all likelihood, we would choose what would appear to be the “most” official version with the greatest concensus - and that one has only Denali that has a current SOTA reference, and VK2/SM-001 is not in the list.
Obvious then! Pick mine!
“Pick mine” has been a recurrent mantra of SOTA participants throughout its existence. This has been in regard to summits, rules, prominences, definitions, criteria, scoring systems etc etc. The original MT established objectivity as a core value, and the current MT tries to uphold this principle. 