Home " Cols - Resources " Unrecognised passes

Unrecognised passes

When you open a catalogue of Club des Cent Cols passes, you'll usually find three separate tabs.

Le first tab is the copyright notice. It also includes a link to a presentation online about the country and its specific geographical features, particularly (but not only) in terms of mountain passes.

Le second tab concerns the list of recognised passes because they meet three types of criteria:

The topographical aspect is proven,
The name "col", the toponym, or any synonym or translation, confirms that the place was considered to be a col,
The source of the title meets recognised reliability criteria.

Le third tab brings together the "non-retained passes". These are two distinct types of pass:

Collars deleted They have already been part of the catalogue for at least one edition, but have subsequently been removed for various reasons. They are identified by the letter S in the PDF file status column.
Collars refused (sometimes called non-retained): these were proposed by members or found by a working group, but after study were not retained for various reasons. They are identified by the letter R in the Status column of the PDF files.

Possible reasons for refusal include, but are not limited to, the following:

Despite a recognised place name for a pass, topographical examination does not reveal the typical appearance of a pass. This category often includes confusing place names such as "Pas", "Goulet", "Seuil", etc.
On the contrary, despite the undeniable topographical nature of a pass, there is a lack of a title or an unrecognised title.
- Ex: Croix de ??, Alto de ??
Finally, despite its acceptable topography and title, the source itself is lacking.
- For example: unscrupulous cartography, occasional signage, known commercial or promotional creations.
In the latter case, over time it may happen that an initially unrecognised pass appears on a recognised source. For example, in France, when the 1:25,000 scale IGN maps are updated. The pass may then be added to the list of recognised passes.

This worldwide catalogue of recognised and unrecognised mountain passes is managed entirely by volunteers from the Club des Cent Cols. For almost 50 years, one by one, from over a million documents, paper maps or online, they have examined the more than 100,000 passes listed in the 2 categories, and filled in the 35 or so columns typical of a pass catalogue. You read that right: 3,500,000 items of data were compiled in this way, and are updated as regularly as possible.

The basic principles for the creation of collar catalogues are set out in the "Rules of the Game"In particular article 4, not forgetting the comments on articles 1 and 2.

Attached via links are PDF files containing the non-recognised passes for France, Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

Each PDF file includes WGS84 coordinates, a link to the interactive maps and the reason why the pass was not recognised.