Difficulty Ranking

This table ranks the relative difficulty of the highpoints of all countries on a scale from 1-100 based on 11 different categories: political, technical, altitude, danger, approach distance, hiking distance, bushwhacking, weather dependence, beta and contact requirements, time, and cost. Each country is given a subjective score of 0-10 in each category. A weighted sum of the scores is then calculated. The highest weight is given to political, technical, danger, and beta required.

The final score is then normalized so the highest score is 100.

The most difficult peaks are the highpoints of Burma, Bhutan, and Kyrgyzstan. Mt Everest is ranked much lower because, despite having a high altitude, it ranks low in terms of technical, political, danger, and beta required.

If you climb the highpoint of a country with a higher score, this represents greater progress towards completion of the country highpoints list. For instance, the Kyrgyzstan highpoint has a score of 76 and the Thailand highpoint a score of 3.5. This means, climbing the Kyrgyzstan highpoint is approximately 22 times more valuable than climbing the Thailand highpoint for progressing towards list completion.

A climber’s score can be calculated by adding up the points from each country highpoint climbed. If all highpoints are climbed, that results in a score of 3948. Thus, a metric of how close a climber is to completion is found by seeing how high the climbers score is, and how close to 3948.

For example, a climber that climbs 100 low-difficulty peaks could have a lower score than a climber who climbs 20 high-difficulty peaks. But the climber with the higher score is closer to list completion.

[Note: the political situations in Afghanistan and Venezuela have gotten significantly easier in 2026, so I’ve updated the rankings of those].