3,000 foot rule question?

[pvnisher]

So what's the standard for 13 and 12ers?
For those keeping score is there some general consensus?

[mindfolded]

So what's the standard for 13 and 12ers?
For those keeping score is there some general consensus?

Get to the top.

[ltlFish99]

I think I'll hike decalibron 4 times, just so I can say I did each mountain separately.

I am fan of and adhere to the 3,000 foot guideline simply because in the beginning I did not know anything about the mountains, was very curious and heard/read a lot about this.
It just made sense to me in the same way a peak needs to a certain height above the nearest neigh bor peak to be ranked makes sense.

But if you climb DeCaliBron and adhere to the 3000' rule, you will need to start well below Kite Lake every time.
I did that from Montgomery Reservior way back in the day (2003?). It was kind of fun. I only did it once though.

Sean Nunn

That is true as I was researching the ones I have hiked to confirm the 3,000 feet. I also noticed that this hike was mentioned in another thread about not gaining 3,000 feet from the common trailhead of kite lake.
Maybe I need to hike them from alma?

[mtnkub]

If you have questions about the 3,000 ft "rule":
Check out page 4, for the post by gore galore.

[Mtnman200]

If you have questions about the 3,000 ft "rule": Check out page 4, for the post by gore galore.

I copied gore galore's post below for your convenience:

by gore galore » 24 Sep 2018, 22:51

The so called 3,000 foot rule is perhaps the most misunderstood concept about Colorado mountaineering on the Forum based on the present post and some responses and other posts of similar nature. I have a working outline of the history of the 3,000 foot rule based on historical research rather than conjecture which I hope to finish sometime in the future and perhaps post on the Forum. I can say that the origins of the 3,000 foot rule date to 1940 within the Colorado Mountain Club to satisfy certain Club requirements. It is a rule that hasn't been valid for some forty years and probably ignored much longer than that.

I think that part of the misunderstanding to present day mountaineers may be found in Gerry Roach's Fourteener book, various editions, in which he discusses the 3,000 foot rule under the heading of "When Is A Peak Climbed?" Gerry writes, "In Colorado there has been a long-standing informal agreement that one should gain 3,000 feet for a "legal" ascent of a Fourteener." Perhaps so, long ago and no longer valid within the CMC but in the twenty-first century this thinking probably lingers only with the purists or those who would like to impose their standards on others. There is, of course, the formal agreement among competitive 14er speed attempts and like pursuits of a 3,000 foot rule. Gerry further writes, "There is nothing sacred about the number 3,000. It is approximately equal to the vertical distance between treeline and summit, but other than that, it's just a one-number estimate for defining the bottom of a Colorado mountain." This is most certainly pure speculation as my own historical research leads to a much more compelling reason for the number 3,000 which seems to be sacred among Colorado mountaineers.

The answer as to the why of the 3,000 foot number and eventual rule are from the clues of the accepted trailheads to the Fourteeners in the 1930's. And this is why the trailheads to the Fourteeners today are the accepted standard based on the same principle despite some now being less than a 3,000 foot gain.

[nunns]

You must admit, HighPilgrim, that you don't always set a great example in this regard.

It's highpilgrim, Mr. Nunn.

I think your point was mostly the point of my point. I don't lack self-awareness in that regard. In fact, I'm perfectly happy poking fun at my shortcomings and I never lack material in so doing.

Being able to laugh at ourselves is a good quality, and should be required before one laughs at others.

Sean Nunn

[bdloftin77]

So what's the standard for 13 and 12ers?
For those keeping score is there some general consensus?

I haven't heard of a consensus for mountains below 14k feet in Colorado.

Roach suggests using using the prominence of the mountain in question as your criteria. http://climb.mountains.com/Word_Tent_fi ... ak_Climbed

"When is a Peak Climbed?
After grappling with the question of what is a peak, we need to think about the question: When is a peak climbed? Most people would squirm if you drove a vehicle to within a few feet of a summit and then walked the last few feet to the summit, and most people would squirm if you did not reach the highest point at all. Two necessary conditions seem to be that you must reach the highest point under your own power and that you must gain a certain amount of elevation. The crux question is how much?
An obvious answer is that, to climb a mountain you must climb from the bottom to the top. Although the top of most mountains is well defined, the bottom is not. One definition is that the bottom of all mountains is sea level. This flip definition makes little topographic sense, and it means that few people have ever climbed anything.
In Colorado, there has been a long-standing informal agreement that one should gain 3,000 feet for a “legal” ascent of a fourteener. Of course, there is nothing sacred about the number 3,000. It is approximately equal to the vertical distance between treeline and summit, and it represents a nice workout, but other than that, it is just a one-number estimate for defining the bottom of a Colorado mountain. Even people who are careful to gain 3,000 feet on the first peak of the day, often hike the connecting ridge to the next peak and claim a legal ascent of the second peak after an ascent of only a few hundred feet. Most people who climb Colorado peaks do this.
A good minimum criterion for climbing a peak is that you should gain a vertical height under your own power equal to your peak’s rise from its highest connecting saddle with a neighbor peak. If you do less than that, you are just visiting summits, not climbing mountains. Beyond this minimum gain, you are free to gain as much altitude as your peak-bagging conscience requires. The greater your elevation gain, the greater your karmic gain. Except for ridge traverses, 3,000 feet seems to satisfy most people.
– Gerry Roach"

Though you might usually be able to ascend the prominence of a peak, this could be troublesome in some cases. Take Mt Elbert for example, whose prominence is 9093' according to LoJ (https://listsofjohn.com/peak/1). Perhaps no one has actually climbed Elbert according to this definition. Very few people have climbed Mauna Kea in Hawaii, fewer Mt Rainier, and perhaps no one Orizaba and Denali.

During my 14er quest, I often tried to gain over 3000'. My most ridiculous example was starting at the "4 way" TH for Culebra, hiking to the summit, then jogging down ahead of my hiking group so I could descend the hillside below the TH to 11,047', then back up to the car (thus appointing/pretending that low point was my "actual" TH, gaining a net of 3000'). The only ones I definitely did not ascend/descend 3000 net feet are the Decalibron, Bierstadt, and Sherman. I could repeat those as longer road walks if I chose. But after completing the 14ers and working on lower peaks, I became more focused on just reaching the top of, even "visiting" any peaks that I wanted to do. I feel like I proved myself to myself after working on the 14ers and doing some big bike climbs, so now I try to find the most efficient way to the summit. I'm still hesitant to count (don't count) some particular summits if I drove to, or drove very close to the top (namely any drives up Pikes, Evans, or the drive up Mt Diablo in CA).

The lowest ranked summit in Colorado, Two Buttes, involves a gain of a bit over 300' to get to the top. This seems reasonable to me. If the 3000' rule applied to every summit in Colorado, you would have to START outside the STATE for any summits under about 6315'. This is preposterous.

I agree with others that starting at the official trailheads is "good enough" for the typical hiker who is not competing in an FTK attempt or trying to strictly follow the 3000' net vertical gain rule before/after a summit or summit chain. Evans from the upper parking lot would personally make me squeamish. I was comfortable starting from Summit Lake, as the gain is fairly similar to Sherman from the east TH. However, I did eventually bike Evans from Idaho Springs, which made me even more content with that peak. As others have mentioned, the harder 14ers tend to have more than 3000' of gain anyways, and it's some of the easier ones which fall short. Almost anyone can walk a few miles up and down a road... I feel like doing this to complete the 3000' vertical isn't proving a whole lot.

On ListsofJohn, some of the summits have less than 100' of prominence, and some even have 0' of prominence (CO eastern county high points). Because of this, and because net vertical gain rules are arbitrary, here is his rule:

"Ascent of a Peak:
Arriving at the highest natural ground is required to claim an ascent of a peak. This means if a 10ft pillar of stone sits atop an otherwise flat and expansive summit, one must get atop this stone. Some feel it is sufficient to "touch the top" with a hand, while others require standing or sitting on the highest rock. Use your own judgment, but at a minimum your body should touch the highest natural surface.

A peak should be counted only once per calendar date. Going over the same peak twice in a day does not constitute a new ascent of that peak, as one could revisit the same peak's summit a virtually unlimited number of times in a day unless a minimum gain is required. Minimum gain requirements are not used for a variety of reasons including subjectivity/error and the fact that many peaks do not have sufficient rise to allow a minimum gain to be possible." (https://listsofjohn.com/glossary#PRank - bottom of the page)

The only pitfall of this is that you cannot count climbing Pikes Peak twice in a day from the Barr TH, for example (though you could put it in an ascent note if you wanted to). That's okay, because otherwise you could use the "no gain necessary" loophole and cross over the summit of a peak hundreds of times in a day and count several hundred ascents. I'm sure that most peakbaggers using LoJ do not have a minimum gain requirement (unless perhaps they are purely working on, say, the 14ers, 100 highest in CO, etc). It's just extremely impractical.

[onebyone]

Ha. I also parked at Four Way to get the 3,000 feet or at least close to it. Don't even know if that was far enough down but I think it was.
Then refused rides down from the upper trailhead back down to Four Way. lol
Silly me.

[Eli Watson]

Re: 3000' Rule
As a member of the Stodgy Ultra-Purist 3000' Rule Finisher Society, I can say with reasonable certainty that Sherman was my least favorite to fulfill this personal goal. The listed 5.25 mi RT became 13.5 mi from parking near Fourmile Campground at 10,800', since there was no parking available closer to the required 11,036'.

DeCaLiBro from Paris Mill was 14.5 mi.

I did Bierstadt from Echo Lake as part of Tour de Abyss.

2WD limitations took care of the rest, including Culebra. Four Way does not fulfill the 3000' Rule. You have to walk down the slope and wander around until you drop below 11,047'.

Re: Double-Summits
When I biked from Echo Lake to summit Evans then completed Tour de Abyss to summit Evans again, I counted that as two summits in a single day. If summiting Evans as part of Tour de Abyss from parking at 13,300' and going across the Sawtooth counts, I won't lose any sleep over counting that after already summiting Evans once prior to that in the same day. If you summit once, then drop back down to a commonly accepted TH and re-summit, there's no logical reason not to count that as two summits in a single day.

In contrast, I did not count summiting Cameron twice when I walked back over it from Bross to descend from the Democrat-Cameron saddle my first time at Kite Lake. Nor do I count myself as having summited Culebra/La Plata/Massive/Recloud/Shavano twice in a day when returning from Red/"E La Plata"/"N Massive"/Sunshine/Tabeguache, respectively.

Reproducing from the first page of this thread:

The climber/hiker must reach a point on the way up and down that is at least 3000 feet below the summit under there own power to follow this rule.

Here are just a few examples that are sure to rub people the wrong way and get them off to a bad weekend.

*If you hiked Bierstadt from Guanella Pass - Doesn't count

*If you paid $150 to hike Culebra and started from the upper TH - Doesn't count
4/way - Still Doesn't count

*San Luis from willow creek - Doesn't Count

*Handies from American Basin - Doesn't Count

*Evans from Summit Lake - Doesn't count
Guanella pass - still doesn't count

*Grays and Torreys from upper TH - Questionable

*Delcabrion from upper TH - Doesn't count

*Sherman from upper TH - Doesn't count
Leavick site - Still Doesn't count

*Sneffels from upper TH - Doesn't count
from the outhouse - Still doesn't count

Have a great weekend everyone!

[disentangled]

2WD limitations took care of the rest

that's basically my brilliant strategy to meet the 3000' rule. lol road walking.

[Chicago Transplant]

The easiest way to get questionable peaks to 3000' is to do them in winter. A few examples: Guanella Pass is closed at a little below 10,900' in winter, Paris Mill is about 11,060', Stevens Gulch Exit from I-70 is about 10k, and Iowa Gulch about 11k.

[Jon Frohlich]

So what's the standard for 13 and 12ers?
For those keeping score is there some general consensus?

Get to the top.

This. Start at a logical place. Hike peak. Trying to apply a standard would be utterly pointless.