Southeast USA Top 50 by Prominence

Showing Tom Pomeroy's first ascent dates for climbed peaks (28 out of 50, or 56%)

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List Description

List Info

Even though the Southern Appalachians are higher than the Northern Appalachians, they can only muster 24 peaks with over 2000 feet of prominence, compared to 54 north of the Potomac. Lack of glaciation has left the southern peaks more rounded and gentle, and thus the ruggedness needed for lots of high prominence peaks is lacking. Still, this is a nice list, an excellent alternative to the list of tightly clustered 6000-foot peaks of the South. North Carolina still (entirely or partially) claims 21 of the ranked 50 peaks, but that means that over half are in the other mountainous Southern states of Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Georgia, and Kentucky

Due to a lack of accurate survey elevations for many peaks and saddles in the region, the lower reaches of this list are made up of several summits with overlapping prominence ranges. The value listed here is the clean prominence, so the list cuts off at 1620 feet of clean prom, just below Bluff Mountain. But the unranked peaks below could very well be on the "Fifty Finest" list--for example, Bald Knob could have as much as 1640 feet of prominence, more that Bluff's clean value. To claim a list completion, a climber should probably do the unranked peaks to increase the chance that the actual top 50 were climbed.

Finally, this list shows Rocky Mountain, VA with 2272 feet of prominence, but there are several nearby peaks (Pleasant, Maintop, Bald) with 4040-to-4079 foot contours that could perhaps "steal" the prominence from Rocky. So it is probalby wise to visit those contenders, too.

Sources

• Book County High Points by Andy Martin; list compiled 2000 by Edward Earl, Andy Martin, and Ron Tagliapietra.
• List generation helped by Edward Earl's WinProm program.
• Posts made to the Yahoo Prominence Group online forum.
• Prominence values in this list may not agree 100% with sources, due to different interpretations of key col spot elevations and out-dated peak elevations in the PBC Database.