14er Surveying Results

[spiderman]

Last fall we climbed the lowest 14ers and the highest 13er, with Arthur carrying along a professional grade GPS unit kindly borrowed from Trimble. We greatly appreciate their assistance and training. The instrument has one of the most accurate GPS unit for portable surveying. The data was post-processed to improve precision. The conclusions, with more than 95% confidence, are as follows:

A) Sunshine and Huron are 14ers
B) Grizzly is not a 14er
C) Bross has enough prominence to be a ranked 14er.
D) N. Massive does not have enough prominence to be a ranked 14er


Sunshine: 14,001.8’ +/- 0.7’
Huron: 14,005.4 +/- 0.7’
Grizzly: 13,994.1 +/-1.0’


N. Massive Peak: 14,333.8 +/- 1.0
Saddle: 14,061.5 +/- 1.0’
272.3 +/- 1.4’ of prominence

Bross Peak: 14,172’ +/- 0.7’ (if we had climbed this forbidden peak, we would have measured this value)
Saddle: 13,863.7 +/- 0.7’
308 +/-1' of prominence

Pictures from the surveying trip are in the following article:
http://www.amerisurv.com/PDF/TheAmerica ... ay2015.pdf

[San Juan Ron]

Interesting article! Next go around, check Stewart Peak. My GPS shows 14,000, but it's old and +/- 30 feet. SJ Ron

[spiderman]

The biggest remaining question is if Challenger Peak is a ranked 14er. We are leaving that as a good exercise for someone else!

[MonGoose]

Awesome!

[JeffR]

Well done! Good to see some hard numbers. And that's some primo equipment you used - most GPS receivers need hours to to get a tenth as accurate.

[San Juan Ron]

Sunshine was 14.001 until a few years ago when it was revised to 14,007. So, the 14,001 was actually more accurate? SJ Ron

[spiderman]

The models of "sea level" have been changing. They also have been adjusting the spheroid model of the Earth. We have been using the WGS 1984 datum with the GEOID 12A (Conus) Geoid model. I'm sure that the models will one day be updated again and a 14er might be added or delisted.

[DeTour]

That's all great, but what about Sunlight Spire?

[BillMiddlebrook]

That's all great, but what about Sunlight Spire?

Still not named
Still lacking prominence
Still awesome

[ajkagy]

Sunshine: 14,001.8’ +/- 0.7’

so when sea levels rise this century from climate change Sunshine won't be a 14er anymore?

[spiderman]

Definitely a few feet of sea level change will affect mean sea level. Additionally, the geoid model of the earth keeps changing. The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) periodically releases new versions, so that could change the official height of our peaks.

We learned how difficult it is to properly survey something because the Earth's surface is moving and we are constantly adjusting the coordinate system. Even though a GPS can get accuracy down to centimeter levels under the right conditions, they have to compare results with so many correction factors to accommodate old data.

[MountainHiker]

Thanks for doing this. A few years back a group of us surveyed the Drift - Fletcher saddle to see if Drift was a separate thirteener. The big deal wasn't Drift itself as much as the high one hundred list. We had talked about also surveying North Massive but never got to it. Hopefully some day someone will measure the drop to the saddle for Challenger.

http://www.14ers.com/php14ers/triprepor ... m=tripmine

I see my pictures have broken links. It looks like the URLs of the pictures are all now different! I'll see about fixing those tomorrow.