Grand Canyon National Park highpoint

[John Prater]

In assembling the custom list of Grand Canyon National Park summits, I found that the location used in the LOJ database for the GCNP highpoint is not actually in the park. The cohp page lists 4 possible areas for the park highpoint. The LOJ location is within "area 4" but lies north of the park boundary. Roach pinpoints a location within "area 2." peakbagger.com uses the lookout tower location within "area 1." Ken Jones' report there indicates that he thought "area 2" was higher than "area 1."

I think John likes to use the "largest" contour when there are multiple possibilities (?), which is perhaps why "area 4" was used in LOJ. Looking at the 4 possible areas, "area 2" actually has the largest area within the park boundary, so that might be a better choice for the park highpoint location.

[BrianR]

That's a good catch. It's a tough situation, though, because there is obviously a ranked peak somewhere in one of those contours, but only one. It is interesting to note that Area 4 has spot elevations within the contour of 9176ft and 9173ft. But, if you look at the older provisional map via the "USGS" map choice at http://listsofjohn.com/PeakStats/QMap.php?lat=36.3425&lon=-112.0505&z=15, it shows the 9165ft spot elevation at the lookout tower. Assuming that is the Area 1 highpoint, even if Area 2 just northwest of the tower is 10 feet higher than Area 1, Area 4 still wins as the ranked peak (and belongs on my Kaibab NF list), regardless if 9176ft is not the highest point in Area 4. But, one has to also consider the northern part of the "dogbone" above Area 2 outside the Park! The true situation may very well be that the ranked peak is Area 4, with a low-prominence GCNP highpoint in Area 2. Or worse, the ranked peak is in the northern part of the Area 2 dogbone and thus the GCNP highpoint has barely any prominence at all. As a final FYI, the more up-to-date http://geocommunicator.gov jurisdiction data still agrees with the park boundary location given in the MyTopo map.

[John Kirk]

I think I have this handled - see this:
http://listsofjohn.com/PeakStats/QMap.php?lat=36.3402&lon=-112.0866&z=13&t=u