In this photo taken in August...

In this photo taken in August 2001 from the summit of Mt. Pilchuck, Mt. Baker is on the left and Shuksan is on the right in the distance. Between them in the foreground is a rounded summit called, not surprisingly, Round Mountain, elevation 5,320 feet. It is the highest point in a small range surrounded by three rivers, so that the highest saddle between Round and a higher summit is only 540 feet, giving Round a prominence of 4,780 feet! This is 369 feet greater prominence than Mt. Shuksan, and makes Round the ninth most prominent mountain in Washington. This photo was used by Aaron Maizlish in a lecture for the North American Cartographic Information Society, NACIS, as an example of one of the problems with the concept of topographic prominence. Maizlish also created a wonderful set of maps showing the 2000-foot+ prominence peaks in the western US. His website, http://www.peaklist.org/ contains a wealth of information about prominence as well as many prominence-based peak lists.