What's New
New Hikers Lists!
Due to popular demand, hiker lists can now be generated for each calendar year. For instance, to see who's been scaling the most peaks this year, go to http://summitcheeseburger.com/hikers/year/?year=2010. You can also go back in time to see what was happening in every year since the inception of Summit Cheeseburger in 2006.
The All-Time Hiker Standings have been improved too. Click on the star (
) next to a hiker's trail handle to "feature" them on the right-hand side of the page. You'll get a summary of their accomplishments, links to their most recent summits, and a list of other hikers they've summited with. Finally - for our furry friends - canine hikers can now be easily identified by the paw print next to their trail handles. 'Hope you like the improvements.
Two New Features - Progress Chart and Visitor Map
It's been a great summer so far at Summit Cheeseburger. Of special note, we've seen our first cheeseburger summits in Africa; Dopsteer and the continent's high point, Kilimanjaro. Great work! Summits continue to fall in Europe including first ascents in Hungary (Varhegy) and Spain (San Cristobal). Here in the United States we can marvel at incredible feats of hiking, climbing and burger eating with most, but not all, of the recent activity in the western states.
The site has seen some effort too, and we've added two new pages for your amusement. The first new page - Completed Summits Chart - displays the overall progress of the Summit Cheeseburger effort. The number of summits achieved is plotted beginning with the first cheeseburger summit in 2006. Every additional summit is added to this chart as it is posted. We're on a pace to complete our current list of summits in just under 6,400 years. That's too long, so please help make the curve steeper by enjoying a tasty cheeseburger on your next mountain adventure. The second new page - Visitor Map - provides the locations of the last 200 visitors to the Summit Cheeseburger site. You'll see that visitors to the site come from all over the globe. The world-wide distribution of site visitors reflects the ambitious scope of the Summit Cheeseburger effort and its goal of eating a cheeseburger on every summit on earth.
Finally, if you haven't yet registered on the site, do so. It's quick and easy; you don't need to enter any personal information - just a trail handle and your general location. By registering you'll be able to receive credit for your Summit Cheeseburger accomplishments and can post stories to the site. Simply stop by the SignIn Page.
MyTopo Maps on Summit Cheeseburger!
Summit Cheeseburger has teamed up with mytopo.com to provide our hikers with US Geological Survey 7.5' quadrangles and Natural Resources Canada maps. These sets of maps cover the entire US and Canada with detailed topographic information. MyTopo maps are available as an option on each Summit Page. In addition, we've added a new large map page for US and Canadian summits. These can be accessed through the link above the map on each Summit Page. For an example, take a look at the map for the most recent cheeseburger summit, Burnt Hill (click here).
MyTopo also provides custom printed topographical maps that are waterproof and tear resistant. You can build your own custom centered and sized map starting from any US or Canadian summit in our database. This can be a great alternative to purchasing a stock map... or the two, four, or more needed to cover the area you want. A link to their service is provided at the bottom of the "large map page."
Building a Better Summit Cheeseburger
Welcome to the new http://summitcheeseburger.com/. This new site has been redesigned from the ground up to make it easy to find summit and hiker information, to post cheeseburger summit conquests, and to provide instant updates of lists, maps, and charts. We are in the process of transferring all posts from the old site to this new, improved site - please be patient with the slow, methodical progress this effort requires. Remember, this upgrade is about the future - a future of tasty, nutritious cheeseburgers and challenging summits. This new site is designed to inspire even more amazing feats of cheeseburger summiteering.
What does this mean for you?
- You will need to Register on the new site
If you had access to the old site, it's been discontinued and you'll have to re-register on the new site at http://summitcheeseburger.com/signin. It's easy to do. If you didn't have, or need, access to the old site, please sign in to the new site - you will need this access! Only registered hikers/users will receive credit for cheeseburger summits and only summits conquered by registers hikers/users will be counted towards our goal. In addition, registered users can submit posts directly to the site and are provided with features that are not available to anonymous visitors.
- You will now have access to a much Larger Summit Database
The new summit database is prepopulated with nearly 500,000 named summits from around the world, so there won't be a shortage of new summits to scale anytime soon. You'll be able to browse by continent, country, state, or county and search for your summit of interest. Embedded terrain maps are provided for all peaks and tools are provided that allow you to identify nearby summits. If you find that a particular peak is not available in the database, there's a way to submit it to the Summit Cheeseburger staff of cartographers.
- Vastly Improved Posting
What could be more prestigious than receiving credit for a cheeseburger summit? How about authoring a post? The process for submitting posts has been redesigned to seamlessly, and instantly, update the lists of completed summits and hiker "standings." Part of the Summit Cheeseburger challenge is submitting the post - a duty - to amuse and educate the reading public. From now on, we're asking for a separate post for each summit, even if multiple peaks were scaled on a single hike. This will support our ability to update the complete summit and hiker lists. There are instructions on the site to guide you through this process. Once you've saved your post, the Summit Cheeseburger database is instantly updated and your contribution will be recognized as part of the collective progress toward consuming a CHEESEBURGER ON EVERY SUMMIT ON EARTH!
- Still Some Construction
The new Summit Cheeseburger site is up and running but a few links may be missing and some features have not yet been released so please "pardon the dust". And as mentioned before, the old posts from this site have not all been moved over, but this will happen over the coming months. Unfortunately, your witty comments of the past four years will be left behind. If you notice any problems please let us know at summitcheese@yahoo.com. Comments and suggestions are also welcome, but please realize that the number of unfinished tasks is still large, so your request will probably be joining a rather long list.
- Enjoy Cheeseburgers
Sure, waste some quality time looking through the new site, but mostly we hope that the new summitcheeseburger.com encourages you to get out into the hills with a cheeseburger in hand.
In the Home Stretch
We're putting the finishing touches on this site - trying to make it easier to browse and search for your summit of interest. Many (-40) of the posts from the previous site have already been moved over. In a few weeks we'll be redirecting folks from the old Wordpress site over to this site and off we'll go. If you're one of the few folks that are signed in to this site, remember that we're still working on a few things. If you have any comments or suggestions, please direct them to summitcheese@yahoo.com and we'll see what we can do.
If you can stand the cold of winter, get out, find a summit, and don't forget the cheeseburger.
Happy New Year!
New Year's Greetings from Summit Cheeseburger!
Mid-January is now just around the corner, we're still hoping to get the new site up and running by then. Recent efforts have been focused on allowing users to incorporate photos into posts in such a way that they remain linked to specific summits and users. In the future we'll be able to display photo galleries for individual summits or users. Current efforts are on providing user-specific views of their posts, photos, summits, and friends they've hiked with. Future (next 2 weeks?) efforts include moving over posts from the old site, and providing search capabilities for posts, usernames, and summits. Maybe we'll be a week or two late after all.
Construction Update
Things are moving along well - Google Maps to show the location of each summit have been added to the summitpage and we're working on a map of all completed summits. In a few weeks we hope to start moving over content from the old Summitcheese site. A "Write a Post" page is being developed that comes pre-loaded with the appropriate summit information. This should make tracking progress much easier. All in all, things are on schedule for a mid-January release.
Under Construction
Currently the new site is in the midst of a major construction. The hope is to have this site ready in mid-January 2010. While much of the functionality of the old site will be retained, a number of improvements are planned. Chief among these are allowing new users to register themselves to the site to start posting immediately. The site will be designed to capture summit and hiker information for each post so that the progress of the Summitcheeseburger effort can be easily tracked. In addition, the list of summits has been beefed up. The site has information on nearly 500,000 summits throughout the world - it's believed that this list is fairly comprehensive. Until this site is ready to go please use our original site at http://summitcheese.wordpress.com/.
