Humans have long sought routes through mountains for travel, trade, and warfare. Archaeologists recently unearthed evidence that suggests that in 218 B.C., Hannibal and his army crossed the Alps at a pass now called Col de Traversette. While we're less likely to travel with 30,000 soldiers, 37 elephants, and 15,000 horses and mules these days, we still seek low spots when moving through mountains.

Mountain Pass in the Rockies

Passes and Saddles

In simplest terms, a pass is the lowest point between two high points. For the hiker, the pass is also the highest point on the trail, that peak on the elevation diagram in your guidebook. The term pass is often used interchangeably with gap, notch, saddle, and col. The main difference is that these other terms generally refer to the geomorphological feature, while pass refers specifically to that spot on a route, as in a passage through. So while a pass may cross a gap, saddle, notch, or col, a gap, saddle, notch, or col does not necessarily host a pass.

Which of these features your pass passes through depends on where they appear. In general, you'll find gaps in the south (Cumberland Gap), notches in the northeast (Pinkham Notch), and cols in the Alps (Col de Traversette). In the west, saddle is primarily used for unnamed features and pass for those that get a name (Donner Pass). Some sources suggest col relates specifically to mountains, rather than hills, and that notches are more rugged than gaps, but this may have to do with the terms col and notch being used in more mountainous and rugged regions.

Gaps are subdivided into water gaps, which were carved by a stream, and wind gaps, which were not. A saddle is shaped like a horse's saddle, sloping upward in two directions and sloping down from a center point in the other two.

Whatever you call it, that moment of crossing a pass is like stepping up to the edge of the earth and seeing another world – endless miles of sky, mountains stretching to the horizon, the trail unspooling before you, ready to take you to down into the valley and up to the next pass.

More Information

For more mountain related jargon and terminology, see Anatomy of a Mountain: Backpacking and Hiking Jargon courtesy of the TrailGroove Blog. Additional information can be found in How the Mountains Grew: A New Geological History of North America as well as in books like Geology Underfoot Along Colorado's Front Range regarding Colorado-specific information. Mountain Press also offers their state-specific geology guides.

Editor’s Note: This article by contributor Andrea Lani originally appeared in Issue 34 of TrailGroove Magazine. You can read the original article here.