MountainViews is a inward-facing crowd-sourced website designed to spoon-feed hillwalkers at all levels of ability, including experienced individuals who were previously skilled walk planners and navigators. Unfortunately, MountainViews, and other similar online spoon-feed resources and tools, discourage the development and maintenance of essential basic outdoor skills. As a result, they are largely responsible for the significant de-skilling of the Irish hillwalking community which has been accelerating since the start of this millennium.
Built almost entirely from third-party source material, sometimes without full permission, MountainViews are desperate to have a monopoly in Irish hillwalking, doing everything they can to eliminate their "competition", whether they be information providers or hill list compilers.
FOR THE RECORD: On 19th July 2025, MountainViews were given an exclusive opportunity to view a private draft version of this webpage for one full week before we were scheduled to make it publicly available on 26th July 2025. During that week, we had an email discussion with MountainViews, during which time they did not request for the webpage to remain private or be altered in any way. They also chose not to accept our generous offer to delay this webpage's publication in order to give themselves time to end the ongoing and unnecessary list-related conflict they started in January 2025 (click here for full details). Based on MountainViews' own actions, this page has now been made public with their full knowledge and permission.
Built almost entirely from third-party source material, sometimes without full permission, MountainViews are desperate to have a monopoly in Irish hillwalking, doing everything they can to eliminate their "competition", whether they be information providers or hill list compilers.
FOR THE RECORD: On 19th July 2025, MountainViews were given an exclusive opportunity to view a private draft version of this webpage for one full week before we were scheduled to make it publicly available on 26th July 2025. During that week, we had an email discussion with MountainViews, during which time they did not request for the webpage to remain private or be altered in any way. They also chose not to accept our generous offer to delay this webpage's publication in order to give themselves time to end the ongoing and unnecessary list-related conflict they started in January 2025 (click here for full details). Based on MountainViews' own actions, this page has now been made public with their full knowledge and permission.
The MountainViews story
MountainViews was created as an Irish hillwalking website by Simon Stewart in 2001 as a direct follow-up to his earlier attempt called Hillwalking in Ireland. The MountainViews website is an unmoderated, crowd-sourced forum where hillwalkers have since posted thousands of comments on hundreds of notable Irish mountain summits, hill summits, County High Points and certain sub-30m prominence subsidiary tops. All of these locations have been harvested from various pre-2001 hill lists which were all originally compiled and published by third-party researchers. Stewart has built an extensive database comprising several of these painstakingly researched third-party hill lists to form the central core of the MountainViews website. Interestingly, only one of the third-party source hill lists has ever been published and promoted on MountainViews. This might seem a bit odd, but we will look at the motive behind this decision later. In recent years, Stewart and his band of not-so-merry men have taken the website in other directions by introducing lesser significant coastal locations from other third-party researched lists. He has also expanded the website's geographical content beyond that of Ireland. Unfortunately, these deviations have removed the uniqueness the website once had when it was purely an Ireland-focused hillwalking resource.
Timeline of events
1952
1970s
1990s
2000s
2010s
2020s
MountainViews was created as an Irish hillwalking website by Simon Stewart in 2001 as a direct follow-up to his earlier attempt called Hillwalking in Ireland. The MountainViews website is an unmoderated, crowd-sourced forum where hillwalkers have since posted thousands of comments on hundreds of notable Irish mountain summits, hill summits, County High Points and certain sub-30m prominence subsidiary tops. All of these locations have been harvested from various pre-2001 hill lists which were all originally compiled and published by third-party researchers. Stewart has built an extensive database comprising several of these painstakingly researched third-party hill lists to form the central core of the MountainViews website. Interestingly, only one of the third-party source hill lists has ever been published and promoted on MountainViews. This might seem a bit odd, but we will look at the motive behind this decision later. In recent years, Stewart and his band of not-so-merry men have taken the website in other directions by introducing lesser significant coastal locations from other third-party researched lists. He has also expanded the website's geographical content beyond that of Ireland. Unfortunately, these deviations have removed the uniqueness the website once had when it was purely an Ireland-focused hillwalking resource.
Timeline of events
1952
- The original Vandeleur-Lynam list of 2,000-foot Irish summits published.
1970s
- The Ireland's County High Points list emerges as a new hillwalking challenge.
1990s
- The Irish Marilyns list published.
- The Irish Hewitts list published.
- The 400-Metre Tops of Ireland list published.
- The Irish Humps list published
- The 500-Metre Tops of Ireland list published.
- The Dillons list published.
2000s
- In response to new lists being published, MountainViews is set up using a new database built entirely by harvesting all summit and high point information from the original third-party 1950s - 1990s lists without having to undertake any map-based original research. This marked the start of MountainViews' "take for free" approach.
- MountainViews uses "their" database of third-party research to spew out their own set of derived lists without having to undertake any map-based original research.
- MountainViews ignores the existence of all original third-party lists and starts promoting only its own derived lists plus the Vandeleur-Lynams (an original list they were given full custody of). It is worth pointing out that if the other third-party lists had not existed, MountainViews would not have been created and would certainly not have been expanded beyond the Vandeleur-Lynam list.
- MountainViews expands their "take for free" approach by inviting hillwalkers to post content on their website.
- Hillwalkers provide the vast majority of content on the MountainViews website for free.
- MountainViews establishes itself as the unrivalled online resource for hillwalking in Ireland.
2010s
- MountainViews rest on their laurels while a growing number of rival websites and phone apps emerge.
- The MountainViews website begins to look very dated and overly cluttered compared to its rivals.
- MountainViews repeatedly begged Kieron Gribbon to speak at their 2013 gathering. He declined due to family and other life commitments at the time. Although it was not his intention to offend, it was viewed as a snub by MountainViews, and they have been frosty with him ever since.
- MountainViews produce a book in an attempt to profit from the data they harvested from third-party originated hill lists. The information in this book is also freely available on their website. The primary objective of this book is to make one of their derived lists appear more "official".
- Despite owing their website's entire existence to third-party hill list researchers and compilers, MountainViews state in their book that "after thousands of amendments and measurements in the field, etc, the lists can now fairly be said to be the collective work of MountainViews and its members". It is doubtful that this view is shared by the original third-party list researchers and compilers, whose painstaking research MountainViews would so quickly attempt to oust and replace. It is worth remembering that if those original source lists (which MountainViews now choose to ignore) had never existed, MountainViews.ie would not have evolved beyond the Vandeleur-Lynam list. Its domain would be VandeleurLynams.ie. In fact, if it wasn't for the first modern 2,000ft lists that emerged in the 1990s (i.e the Irish Hewitts and the Dillons), there would have been no motivation to create even MountainViews in the first place.
- MountainViews gets into bed with Mountaineering Ireland in another attempt to appear more "official". (Here in the present, one of our predictions is that Mountaineering Ireland will absorb MountainViews and quickly discard it given that MountainViews' poor reputation, selfish ambitions and low tactics are all now being revealed.)
- MountainViews attempts to lower the minimum elevation of a mountain from 2,000 feet to just 500 metres.
- MountainViews deviates away from being purely an Irish hillwalking resource to include islets and small exposed rocks around the Irish coastline. It also starts to include information about hillwalking outside Ireland. These moves take away all uniqueness that the website once had as an Ireland-only hillwalking resource, marking the start of its decline.
- MountainViews expands its "take for free" approach by starting to beg for donations on a regular basis. It is worth pointing out that MountainViews is a hobby website - not a charity. It is also worth remembering that the vast majority of its content has been supplied for free by the wider hillwalking community. By begging for donations, MountainViews are effectively asking hillwalkers to buy back what they had contributed for free. It is unclear if people are actually falling for this. Your money would be better spent going to a local Mountain Rescue Team or other registered charity.
- The number of new daily contributions appearing on the MountainViews website plummets.
- MountainViews focuses on manipulating Wikipedia content to boost their profile by planting outgoing links to their own website.
- Kieron Gribbon publishes his family of Irish High Point lists (including the original Ireland's Range High Points list) on 5th December 2015 and informs MountainViews of this out of courtesy. The founder of MountainViews' negative and defensive response serves as an adequate acknowledgement.
- MountainViews feel the need to justify their popularity by regularly quoting unprovable statistics about their website's usage. At one point, a note in their website's footer area claimed they received 11 million visitors per year! They wish. Page views, maybe, but even that is unlikely. Just a random number plucked out of the air. It is also worth questioning the authenticity of the "guests online" figure they display. This is a bit vague, and doesnt specify if it is live, in the last day, week or month. It might not even be the number of visitors, but the number of page views. It could also be set to display a random fluctuating number within a specified range which they can manipulate at any time (e.g. 400-500 when they release a newsletter). Do not take anything for granted. For the egos at MountainViews, it is ALL about looking popular and they will do whatever it takes to prolong that illusion. Update: additional evidence of MountainViews' deception is provided in our 24th April 2025 entry.
2020s
- The number of new daily contributions appearing on the MountainViews website continues to plummet. Nothing new is posted most days, however there are very noticeable spikes during the days leading up to a newsletter being published. This flurry of last-minute activity is clearly a desperate attempt to make their website look more popular than it actually is. Interestingly, the vast majority of new posts are being contributed by MountainViews committee members. As the older unmoderated crowd-sourced content becomes more and more out-of-date, and without any house-keeping activities taking place, its reliability and trustworthiness decreases.
- MountainViews give their website a makeover, however it still looks dated. Remarkably, they have managed to make their layout even more cluttered than before, which is quite an achievement in itself.
Quality of MountainViews' content
Due to MountainViews' lack of moderation, the quality and reliability of the website's content is not of a consistent standard throughout and has the potential to be out-of-date or misleading in places. For this reason, all information presented on the MountainViews website should be treated with extreme caution and not assumed to be accurate or up-to-date. A cautious approach is further encouraged given that most of the crowd-sourced content on the website is more than 10 years old. A lot can change on the ground in Ireland during that time, and there is no evidence of any housekeeping having been carried out on the website. The MountainViews development strategy appears to focus more on quantity of content rather than quality.
MountainViews' target audience
It is difficult to know what type of hillwalkers are likely to benefit from the MountainViews website. The obvious spoon-feed approach clearly demonstrates that MountainViews want the website to single-handedly equip inexperienced hillwalkers to go into the hills unaccompanied by more experienced walk leaders. This is reinforced by the fact that there is no space on the website for promoting clubs, guides and training providers. Despite the inconsistent quality and reliability of MountainViews' unmoderated content, inexperienced hillwalkers are being led to wrongly assume that everything presented on the website is up-to-date and factual. This assumption could ultimately be a very dangerous one with potentially fatal results. On the other hand, experienced hillwalkers have absolutely no need for a website like MountainViews. Why would they? A confident, experienced hillwalker requires only a good-quality published paper map for planning and navigating their walks. Nothing else.
MountainViews' spoon-feed approach is steering people away from undertaking their own pre-walk map-based planning and on-walk navigation using a map and compass. This digital spoon-feed trend is having an extremely negative effect on hillwalkers in Ireland because it is gradually de-skilling the Irish hillwalking community as a whole. Not very long ago, hillwalkers were able to teach themselves the basic skills of route-planning and navigation simply by using a map and compass. They might also have called upon the knowledge of experienced hillwalkers for ideas and inspiration by referring to walking guidebooks. These essentials allowed hillwalkers to gain the skills they needed.
Today, since the introduction of spoon-feed websites and apps, like MountainViews, more and more people are heading out into the mountains equipped only with a tiny little phone, often staring at it to make sure the dot representing them on the screen is still following that preloaded GPX track they downloaded from the MountainViews website. Unfortunately, the de-skilling hillwalking community is coming to expect, if not require, this level of assistance in the hills. Do not fool yourself into believing that following a dot, crosshairs or arrow on a screen counts as navigating. Such a high level of dependence on navigational technology can be extremely dangerous, potentially even fatal. Let us not forget that one of the primary reasons to go hillwalking in the first place is to detox our eyes and brains as much as possible from those nasty screens we have all become so addicted to. Hillwalking is our time to immerse ourselves in nature away from the stresses and strains of everyday life. If you are spending a large portion of of time on the hills staring at your phone, you have completely missed the point of what hillwalking is all about.
An old proverb states Give someone a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach someone to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime. Translating this to a hillwalking context: if you use spoon-feed websites and apps like MountainViews, all you are doing is taking one metaphorical fish after another after another while not learning any essential basic skills. You are far better off learning to "fish" for yourself (i.e. learn the basic essential skills of hillwalking and practice them regularly with a real paper map and traditional magnetic compass.
Some staunch MountainViews' loyalists might argue that the access information presented on MountainViews is useful for walk planning. This would only be true if such information was regularly monitored, maintained and updated by the website's admin - which it currently is not.
What are MountainViews' goals?
It is very obvious that the people behind MountainViews are driven more by their website's traffic statistics rather than by the quality of its content. For example, they used to quote in the website's footer area a very exaggerated figure of 11 million visitors per year. Yeah, right! We are also highly dubious of the live figure stating how many people are online at any particular moment in time. We suspect this indicative number actually refers to how many visitors the MountainViews website received in the last 24 hours or in the last 7 days. It could even be stating the number of page views during one of those periods rather than visitor numbers. Either way, this just doesn't smell right and comes across as a blatant attempt to big up their traffic stats.
Why would they make these exaggerations? The most likely reason is they are trying to attract a potential buyer who is looking for a new advertising platform with an established audience. Or maybe they just want to satisfy their own over-inflated egos by showing us the stats they themselves would like to see. The very fact that MountainViews displays these unnecessary numbers at all tells us they have ego issues.
Another indication of their drive to attract visitors is how widely they have manipulated content on Wikipedia by planting incoming links for their website wherever they can. If only they had put the same amount of effort into their own website, they could have ended up with something really good by now. Another highly probable direction for the MountainViews website is a total handover to Mountaineering Ireland. To an extent, this has already partially happened and is clear to see in the mutually defensive relationship they have built since High Point Ireland arrived on the scene. That arrival filled a sports niche which neither MI or MV were previously willing to entertain, sparking the beginning of an exclusive inward-facing MI-MV alliance. As a direct result of this alliance and the limitations it has placed on both parties, High Point Ireland has now established itself as the official All-Ireland governing body for Sport Hillwalking.
We also believe that MountainViews, among others, wants to kill off traditional walking guide books and printed maps by providing downloadable GPX routes for free. A major side effect of this approach is the decimation of real navigational skills among hillwalkers, making them more and more dependent on technology, which is not a good thing.
MountainViews and hill lists
It is a commonly believed myth that MountainViews is the official hill listing authority for Ireland and that they have compiled their own hill lists based on first-hand map-based research. This couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, the one and only original summit list MountainViews promotes on their website is one they inherited. And that list does not even meet the internationally recognised prominence criteria of separate summits defined by UIAA. All the other lists promoted by MountainViews have been derived from various pre-2001 hill lists which were originally compiled and published by third-party researchers. This inward-facing approach is clear to see on every summit's MountainViews page. Not once is any summit referred to on the MountainViews website as being a Hewitt, a Marilyn, a Hump, a 500-Metre Top of Ireland or a 400-Metre Top of Ireland, despite all those original source lists having been copied and pasted into the MountainViews database in 2001. This blatant disrespect for the people who researched and compiled Ireland's original hill lists clearly highlights the inward-facing nature of MountainViews.
In the past, MountainViews have gone so far as to take an earlier original third-party list, the 400-Metre Tops of Ireland, and simply rename it as the "Carns" in an attempt to pass it off as their own creation. Unfortunately, some Irish hillwalkers actually appear to have been fooled by this. In 2025, MountainViews have attempted to oust another original list in a similar manner. In this ongoing attack, the target was the original Ireland's Range High Points list (published in 2015), which they are trying to replace with a significantly inferior list they are deceptively calling the "Range & Area Highpoints". Click here to read all about this attack and our rigorous ongoing defence against it...
MountainViews and place names
MountainViews have a tendancy to waste much of their time trying to determine correct names for summits in Ireland, what these names mean, why they have been assigned, and how they are pronounced. Providing such superfluous detail does absolutely nothing to enhance the actual hillwalking experience. For this reason, the vast majority of walkers just skip past that information. It is worth remembering that Irish hills and mountains existed quite happily without names for millions of years before humans arrived in Ireland. And they will return to being nameless again for eternity after our species leaves this planet.
Until then, during this current geological blink of an eye, each of us is free to refer to any summit by whatever name we wish. For example, Ireland's highest peak is most commonly known as and spelled "Carrauntoohil". It is often referred to by various other English and Irish spellings, all of which would be recognised by Kerry Mountain Rescue Team in the event of an emergency. But is there anything stopping us from personally naming this particular summit based on one of its positional attributes like "1,039 metres", "3,409 feet", "V:804:844", or "volley.possessive.river" (what3words) or a descriptive phrase like "Ireland's highest peak" or "the County High Point of Kerry"? The simple answer is no, nothing is stopping us. Most names or descriptions like those listed above could be used when describing your location in an emergency, but it is best to use place names as they appear on the map you bring on your walk. Local mountain rescue teams will definitely recognise these names and respond accordingly.
Rather than wasting time on niche information like place names, MountainViews would be far better off spending that time moderating the crowd-sourced content on their website.
MountainViews and certificates
In an attempt to boost the profile of their derived lists, MountainViews offers Certificates of Completion to hillwalkers who visit all locations on each list. To obtain one of these certificates, all you need to do is create a profile on MountainViews and tick all the relevant locations on the website. You don't even need to visit any of them in reality or have ever set foot in the hills. Once you have ticked them all, MountainViews will contact you to let you know that you have been successful. No further verification is required. Simple. You can collect your certificate at their annual gathering (if you really want to travel to and sit through that) or you can have it posted to your address. If neither of these suit, you could probably request to have a PDF version emailed to you. Give it a try if you don't believe us. It is worth noting that by not having a robust challenge completion verification process in place, the value of a Certificate of Completion from MountainViews is seriously diminished, even if it is earned legitimately.
MountainViews & Mountaineering Ireland
We have heard that the founder of MountainViews, Simon Stewart, may have been employed in the past by the Mountaineering Council of Ireland which has since been rebranded as Mountaineering Ireland. Whether this is true or not, we can confirm that the Mountaineering Council of Ireland passed on original third-party hill lists to Stewart (which MCI had received from those lists' researchers / compilers) to help him develop his fledgling MountainViews database. It is doubtful that the original researchers / compilers would have permitted this if they had known their painstakingly researched lists would later be cast aside only to be replaced by MountainViews' derived lists. No matter how you look at it, this all seems very sneaky. But it is unclear who the sneaks were. Stewart, MCI, or both? Could either party actually have been naive enough not to see what was happening throughout this process?
In 2015, MountainViews claimed its website was attracting 11 million visitors per year. This alleged figure, along with their equally alleged monthly newsletter readership figure of 10,000, was certainly enough to attract Mountaineering Ireland's interest. At that time, Mountaineering Ireland was starting to get some heat from their hillwalking members about the organisation's bias towards the minority sport of rock climbing. However, they recognised a way to use MountainViews to win over the majority hillwalking portion of their membership by forming an exclusive alliance. This would also allow Mountaineering Ireland to tap into MountainViews' established and (allegedly) much larger online community from which to attract new individual members.
Seems a bit strange that MountainViews was gullible enough to go along with this. Were they totally blind to Mountaineering Ireland's commercial motivations? Were they just grateful for those third-party lists Mountaineering Ireland (as the Mountaineering Council of Ireland) had passed on to them? Or were they so desperate to gain 'official' recognition from Mountaineering Ireland when High Point Ireland arrived on the scene with its own set of original hill lists? Maybe it was a combination of all three. Whatever the reason, they are now in bed with Mountaineering Ireland who is helping to promote their derived lists without making adequate reference to the original third-party source lists. Have Mountaineering Ireland forgotten the true origins of MountainViews' derived lists or are they just choosing to ignore the existence of the original third-party source lists and the hard work put in by their researchers / compilers?
MountainViews' contribution to hillwalking
What have MountainViews really contributed to hillwalking? The short answer is "very little in the way of positive but a lot in the way of negative". In terms of their website content, the vast majority has been contributed BY the Irish hillwalking community TO MountainViews in the form of summit comments and even donations to cover the website's running costs which can be easily covered by its owner. MountainViews promotes a family of hill lists which have been derived entirely from earlier third-party lists through copying, extraction, merging and renaming. Since its creation in 2001, MountainViews has yet to compile a single original list of its own.
MountainViews' spoon-feed approach to providing information has been making a seriously negative impact to hillwalking skills in Ireland since 2001. It has helped to diminish individuals' abilities to research and plan their own walks using traditional maps. The massive volume of unmoderated content (mostly out-of-date) on the MountainViews website is fooling hillwalkers (including some who were experienced) away from seeking reliable ideas and inspiration from proper guidebooks. GPX routes, which unskilled hillwalkers are becoming more and more reliant upon, are slowly but surely killing off real navigation skills and the use of traditional paper maps. Without printed map sales, there will be no future incentive for mapping providers to update and expand their selection of titles. This, in turn, will impact the quality and selection of digital mapping available to hillwalkers.
MountainViews' one notable positive contribution is the naming system it has come up with for derived hill lists. This system requires a newly-published derived list to be named after one of its listed locations. We call it the MountainViews Derived Hill List Naming Protocol. We deployed this when assigning the name 'Slievemores' to our own derived list which comprises all the Irish Hewitts which are also Marilyns.
MountainViews & your privacy
If you are undertaking the Local 100 list challenge offered by MountainViews, this requires you to provide them with your home coordinates. By providing this information, the database MountainViews compiled from third-party original hill lists can generate a personalised list of the 100 locations closest to your home. In order to generate an exact list for you, the home coordinates you provide need to be as accurate as possible. In short: MountainViews know where you live.
It is worth noting that the MountainViews website comes under attack from hackers on a regular basis. This has taken the website offline on numerous occasions, sometimes for days at a time. Please note, that if you provide personal details to MountainViews, that information is at serious risk of being acquired by hostile third parties. Let's not forget that the MountainViews website is a hobby project brought to you by amateurs. If MountainViews know where you live, so do the hackers who target them.
Summary
- MountainViews was created in 2001 based entirely on earlier hill lists created by third-party researchers / compilers.
- Of all the original third-party source lists used to build its database, MountainViews has chosen only to promote one which does not meet UIAA standards (i.e. the Vandeleur-Lynams). Instead, they promote their own derived lists. The Ireland Walking Guide website promotes all the original source lists as peakbagging challenges.
- Due to its crowd-source approach and a lack of moderation / monitoring, MountainViews' aging content is unreliable and should not be trusted.
- The MountainViews website's spoon-feed approach caters mainly for novice hillwalkers who want to go into the hills unaccompanied by more experienced leaders. The website serves no purpose to experienced and competent hillwalkers as they only require professionally published hardcopy maps for planning their walks.
- Despite the long overdue introduction of a responsive layout to suit all display sizes in 2023, the MountainViews website retains an old-fashioned 1970s look (and not in a good way). Although we do not believe it was intentionally designed to be retro, the site's ugly over-cluttered layout actually keeps visitors online as they try to navigate through the maze to get the information they need. The result is wasted time and unnecessary extra screen exposure for the eyes. This is the internet's equivalent to chain smoking.
- The people behind MountainViews can easily afford to cover the costs of their website. It is very odd that they are continuously begging for donations to support their hobby. Given that the vast majority of content has been crowd-sourced, it seems extra cheeky to be asking for money.
- MountainViews' most notable contribution to Irish hillwalking is the MountainViews Derived Hill List Naming Protocol. We have followed this for our own Slievemore hill list.
- We predict that by 2035, the MountainViews website will either be sold to become an advertising platform or be fully absorbed by Mountaineering Ireland.
How can you help to put things right?
Now that your eyes have been fully opened and you can see MountainViews in their true colours, here are a few things you should do:
- Unsubscribe from MountainViews' newsletters. Thankfully they make this easy for you by providing an unsubscribe option at the bottom of each edition of their newsletter or in its cover email.
- If you have contributed any content to the MountainViews website for free in the form of summit comments, photos, videos, GPX tracks, etc, you have every right to demand that your contributions all be removed from their website.
- When you have completed 1 and 2 above, insist that your MountainViews user account be closed.
- Unfollow MountainViews, their loyalists, supporters, promoters and collaborators on social media.
- If you are a Wikipedia user, remove any outbound links directing to the MountainViews website.
- If you are a website manager, remove any outbound links to the MountainViews website and its social channels.
- Boycott the MountainViews website. Do not visit it.
