Talk:Aiguille Blanche de Peuterey

"Serious"

@Ericoides: What is meant by "serious"? That the mountain is not funny? Can you quote the context in which the source uses this word?  Sandstein  09:24, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

@Sandstein: A serious mountain or route is not one that's just difficult to climb. It generally means that it's remote, hard to get to (i.e. broken glacial terrain/distance), full of objective danger (avalanche/rockfall/serac), and hard to get up AND down. It's a recognised term in mountaineering and useful shorthand for all of these qualities. The ABdP qualifies for it in spades in the Alps; other serious peaks might be Mount Logan, K2; a serious route might be Route Major on Mont Blanc or any routes on the Eiger north face. Re the source, Dumler writes that the ABdP "is the hardest and most serious of the four-thousand-metre peaks to reach and then escape from" (p. 193). Ericoides (talk) 12:14, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

OK, thanks; could we reword this to make clear that the climb to the top is serious and not the mountain itself? Wikipedia is written for laypeople and this looks just weird as it is written.  Sandstein  12:17, 8 January 2017 (UTC)

As I explained, it's not just the climb to the top that's difficult (technically). But please do paraphrase my points above. I do think that the context clarifies what "serious" means and that the term isn't particularly problematic with regard to a mountain that is almost exclusively of interest as a mountaineering objective. To the layman it's simply some random bump on the side of Mont Blanc. Ericoides (talk) 12:53, 8 January 2017 (UTC)