Wikipedia:WikiProject Mountains

Welcome to WikiProject Mountains.

First, an important note for everyone to remember: A few Wikipedians have gotten together to make some suggestions about how we might organize data in articles about mountains. These are only suggestions, things to give you focus and to get you going, and you shouldn't feel obligated in the least to follow them. But if you do not know what to write or where to begin, following the below guidelines may be helpful. Mainly, we just want you to write articles!

Scope
This WikiProject aims to expand and improve articles on mountains and hills and topics related to them, such as mountaineering and rock climbing.

Portal
The main portal for this project is Portal:Mountains from which there are numerous links to relevant articles, grouped by subject, as well as features such as Picture of the Month. The shortcut for the portal is P:MTN.

Parentage
The parent of this WikiProject is WikiProject Geography.

Descendant Wikiprojects

 * WikiProject British and Irish hills
 * WikiProject New Hampshire Mountains
 * WikiProject Mountains of the Alps

Similar Wikiprojects

 * WikiProject Volcanoes has a significant overlap in its scope with this WikiProject, since most (but not all) volcanoes are also mountains.
 * WikiProject Rivers, WikiProject Lakes, WikiProject Deserts and WikiProject Glaciers are projects covering other geographical features.
 * WikiProject Climbing covers articles on climbers/mountaineers.

Our content

 * WikiProject Mountains/New article announcements
 * WikiProject Mountains/Recognized content
 * See /Assessment for the process of assessing articles.

Featured Articles
Cerro Azul (Chile volcano) · Hoodoo Mountain · Level Mountain · Mauna Kea · Mauna Loa · Metacomet Ridge · Mono-Inyo Craters · Mount Cayley volcanic field · Nevado del Ruiz · Payún Matrú · The Volcano (British Columbia)

Good articles
Amak Volcano · Ben Nevis · Eldgjá · Gerlachovský štít · Glacier Peak · Hualālai · Huangshan · Independence Pass (Colorado) · Kohala (mountain) · Lastarria · Licancabur · Mentolat · Mont Aiguille · Monte Burney · Montpelier Hill · Mount Adams (Washington) · Mount Baker · Mount Bailey (Oregon) · Mount Cleveland (Alaska) · Mount Edziza volcanic complex · Mount Elbert · Mount Garibaldi · Hakkōda Mountains · Mount Hood · Mount Kenya · Mount Rainier · Mount Redoubt · Mount Tehama · Mount Thielsen · Mount Vesuvius · Nevado de Longaví · Ollagüe · Parinacota (volcano) · Pinkham Notch · Purico complex · Roxy Ann Peak · Silverthrone Caldera · Wells Gray-Clearwater volcanic field · Wilkins Peak · Yamsay Mountain

Articles by popularity

 * See /Popular pages

Structure
A template will provide a common set of features on a mountain organized into a consistent format. The template will include an infobox, that contains the following attributes:


 * name of the mountain/peak
 * elevation, in both metres and feet. Metres should be listed first except for mountains in the United States, where feet is given first. The international spelling of metres should be used for non-USA mountains (versus the American spelling "meter").
 * latitude and longitude
 * mountain range in which the peak is located within
 * date of first ascent
 * difficulty of easiest ascent (e.g. snow/ice climb, scramble, hike)
 * topography map reference (e.g. 83E/03)
 * picture(s) and caption. The caption should include month and year if known.

The body of the article should try to provide the following information:
 * history of the mountain, including how it received its name
 * geology
 * trail head and approach routes
 * timeline of ascents if it is a major mountain of the world; for example, any of the eight-thousanders.
 * detailed information on the first ascent including party members and nationality
 * common climbing routes (and grade)

After creating an article, add it to the relevant section on List of mountains by elevation. If there is an article containing a list of mountains for that country to which the mountain belongs, also add the new entry to that list (e.g. List of mountains in Canada, List of mountains of the United States).

Categorization
If an article is added to the project, please also add it to one of the mountain categories: e.g. Category:Mountains of Canada, Category:Mountains of France, Category:Mountains of the United States. Also consider adding a link to the article to the appropriate list article, such as List of mountains of the United States, Canada, etc.

If a country specific mountains category does not exist, then add it to one of the continent specific categories such as Category:Mountains of Europe or Category:Mountains of Asia. If those are not applicable, then add it to Category:Mountains. For a country that does not have a specific category yet, the general rule is to create a category for the country only when the number of existing mountain articles is five or more.

Category:Mountains

For a fully expanded list or if JavaScript is not enabled, see /Categories.

Hierarchy Definition
No classification of Mountains has been defined. Possible future possibilities could be by continent or major mountain chains.

General Strategy and Discussion forums

 * Talk Page
 * /General
 * /Categories
 * /List of Mountain Types
 * /Article Improvement

Templates
There is one infobox that makes any mountain infobox: Infobox mountain. See an example, right, of the use of the template. This template has three required parameters: It has many optional parameters:
 * Name
 * Elevation (metric units first, but US customary units first for peaks in the USA). For conversions use convert or use one of the following automatic conversion parameters.
 * Elevation_m for conversion from metres to feet
 * Elevation_ft for conversion from feet to metres
 * Location (State/Province, then country).

Copy and paste a sample infobox from any of the following links to get started:


 * Infobox for mountains in the Alps
 * Infobox for mountains in Canada
 * Infobox for mountains in the Himalaya
 * Infobox for mountains in the United Kingdom
 * Infobox for mountains in the United States

The previous multi-template is no longer used.

For a list of articles using it, see WikiProject Mountains/List of mountains

Assessment template
Talk pages of articles about mountains are encouraged to use WikiProject Mountains. The talk pages that do use this template are at pages linking to template.

NOTE: An older redireect to this template Mountain should not be used on new talk pages.

For lists, see WikiProject Mountains/Assessment

Related, specialised infobox
Hills in Great Britain often come with multiple named summits. For this situation, there are two specialized templates:


 * GB summits start
 * GB summits entry

Mountain Pass infobox

 * Infobox mountain pass

Usage is nearly identical to that of Infobox mountain, though there are fewer fields (see the template page for more details).

Please add Mountain Pass to the talk page.

Mountain Range infobox

 * Use Infobox mountain. The previous infobox Infobox mountain range is now a redirect. The older infobox has been deleted.

See the template page for list of fields.

Citation templates
All good articles must have reliable sources and mountain articles are certainly no exception. Key information in the infobox, including elevation, prominence, coordinates, first (recorded) ascent, last eruption (for volcanoes) should have cited sources. Some of the common sources used now have citation templates to make it easier to cite them as a source. At present, the following citation templates are available:


 * Cite gnis for the Geographic Names Information System (USGS).
 * Cite ngs for U.S. National Geodetic Survey (NGS) datasheets.
 * cite aaj for the American Alpine Journal
 * Cite bcgnis for BC Geographical Names Information System (BCGNIS) data.
 * Cite bivouac for Bivouac.com (Canadian Mountain Encyclopedia)
 * Cite cgndb for Canadian Geographical Names Data Base (CGNDB) data.
 * Cite crdb for mountains in the Canadian Rockies. Previously hosted at peakfinder.com.
 * Cite gvp for the Global Volcanism Program run by the Smithsonian Institution.
 * Cite peakbagger for Peakbagger mountain pages.
 * Cite summitpost for SummitPost mountain pages.
 * Cite Farquhar for links to the online version of Place Names of the High Sierra by Francis P. Farquhar.

Barnstar

 * —an award placed at another users talk page for improving articles related to Mountains.

Measurement units
All nations, including the United States, now use SI units for geodetic measurements. Modern elevation measurements reference a geoid rather than sea level (since the oceans are now known to have their own highs and lows.) It is therefore no longer appropriate to append "above sea level" to elevation measurements.

When giving elevation, prominence, or isolation in the United States, please use "feet" or "miles" first followed by "meters" or "kilometers" in parentheses. For all other peaks, please reverse the order: metric first, then imperial in parentheses. For mountains of the United States, use the American spelling "meters" while for all other mountains use the international spelling "metres".


 * Example: Mount Elbert, 14439.6 ft
 * Example: Mount Robson, 3954 m

Consider using the convert template to automatically convert units and avoid conversion errors. For example, for Mount Elbert using 14439.6 ft will produce 14439.6 ft. This template has a more extra options that can be used to control whether the units are wiki-linked or abbreviated. See Template:Convert for detailed instructions and Template:Convert/list of units for a list of units that can be used. Template:epi can be used to construct sortable tables displaying elevation, topographic prominence, and topographic isolation.

Please read WP:UNITS for more information from the Wikipedia Manual of Style

U.S. vertical datum
In 1991, the United States converted from the National Geodetic Vertical Datum of 1929 (NGVD 29) to the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD 88) for vertical control of the 48 contiguous states. Please see NGVD 29 and NAVD 88 and Height Conversion. Unfortunately, the elevation of most summits in the United States still reference the NGVD 29. This results in a vertical error of as much as 2.5 metres (8 feet), most noticeably in the Rocky Mountains. Elevations referencing NGVD 29 should be converted to NAVD 88 using the VERTCON orthometric height convertor.

Naming conventions
See also: Naming conventions (landforms)

Articles should be named according to the most common name for a mountain. If alternate names exist, mention them in the article and create redirects for them to prevent duplicate articles. "Mount" will always be expanded in the article name. For example, Mount Logan and not Mt. Logan. A redirect for "Mt. " should be created to prevent duplicate articles. "Mount" should not be used just to disambiguate the article if it is not normally part of the mountain's name.

If a mountain name is not unique, the convention is to create a disambiguation page for the mountain. Then, all mountains by that name will be disambiguated by putting the political division name of the mountain in parenthesis after the mountain name. For example, Mount Columbia exists in both Alberta, Canada and Colorado, United States. The disambiguated pages are subsequently named: Mount Columbia (Canada) and Mount Columbia (Colorado).

Some mountains/peaks have the same name in the same political division. For example, Granite Peak has been given to over 40 peaks in the United States alone with it existing multiple times within certain states. In this case, the naming convention is to add a distinguishing sub-classification of the political division. For example, in the United States, one would also add the county name: e.g. Brown Peak (Kern County, California). When this situation occurs as it does for Granite Peak and Brown Peak, the standard infobox template will not be used. Instead, a table listing the peak names and unique geographical information will be used. See Granite Peak and Brown Peak for examples of this table. Articles that contain these lists should include the template mountainindex at the bottom, to place them into the correct category.

If a mountain crosses multiple states/provinces within a country or more than one country, the disambiguated name should use the mountain range instead. For example, Mount Quincy Adams (Fairweather Range) which is on the Canada/United States border.

Some names refer to both a set of mountains, and possibly other non-mountain articles. In this case, please create two articles: a standard disambiguation article that follows the standard Manual of Style (WP:MOSDAB), and a different article that contains just the list of mountains with the same name. This other article should be titled "List of peaks named XXXXX" where XXXXX is the common name of the peak. The disambiguation article should refer to the list article. For example, see Mount Wilson and List of peaks named Mount Wilson.

Picture Gallery

 * Gallery of mountains contains a gallery of photos used by the project's articles. After adding a new picture, also consider adding it to this page.

Resources
Some useful resources for information on mountains: Obsolete resources:
 * Himalayan Index - Peaks of the Himalaya over 6,000 metres
 * The Alpine Journal - 1926 to 2019
 * Canadian Mountain Encyclopedia Extensive index and climbing guide to Canadian, U.S. and Central American summits, passes and ranges
 * The Himalayan Journal - Journals of The Himalayan Club
 * Peakbagger.com Prominence, first ascent etc. for many peaks around the world
 * England - 50 Most Prominent Peaks includes latitude and longitude
 * CdnRockiesDatabases - Peaks of the Canadian Rockies (formerly known as Peakfinder.com)
 * Peaklist.org Exhaustive lists of peaks with a minimum prominence, including all mountains in the world with > 1500 m prominence
 * SummitPost
 * TopoQuest on-line topographic maps for the U.S.
 * Peakware - Owner stopped updates in May 2020. Any existing references in articles have been preserved via archive.org but this website should no longer be added for new references.

Government sources

 * Natural Resources Canada
 * Geographical Names of Canada Official source for geographical names in Canada
 * Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI) de México
 * Sistemas Nacionales Estadístico y de Información Geográfica (SNEIG)
 * U.S. National Geodetic Survey
 * NGS Datasheets Most accurate elevation and coordinates for peaks in the U.S.
 * NGVD 29 to NAVD 88 online elevation converter @ NGS
 * Geodetic Glossary @ NGS
 * U.S. Geological Survey
 * USGS Geographic Names Information System Official source for geographic names in the U.S.