Europe

Europe, as geographers have long noted, is not really a continent. The most cynical view is that it is merely a peninsula of Asia, only promoted to continent status becasue people from there happened to have conquered most of the world at one time or another.

However, this convention is very useful when it comes to dividing up the world. The Eurasian landmass is so huge and dwarfs all the other continents so much that chopping it up helps equalize things a little bit. This is especially true when it comes to dividing up the mountain ranges of the world--Asia by itself has enough mountains to overwhelm the Peakbagger.com range scheme, and anything that can be offloaded to Europe keeps the continents more in balance.

Therefore, the definition of Europe used here includes the entire ranges of the Urals and the Caucasus, since using them in their traditional role as dividing lines makes little sense in the context of range classification. Also included, of course, are all ranges west of the Urals: the Alps, Pyrennes, Carpathians, Scandinavian Mountains, and many other important highlands.

For such a relatively small continent, Europe actually has more than its fair share of awesome alpine terrain. The Alps are the quintessential European range, dominating the heart of the continent and rising to rugged, ice-clad slopes directly from densely-populated plains, but the Caucasus are actually higher and even more scenically spectacular.

Even after the Alps and Cacausus, Europe still holds many other impressive ranges, from the unexplored icecaps of Svalbard to the rocky cliffs of Greece, and from the forested ridges of the Urals to the glaciers of the Pyrenees. Except for extreme elevation and massive Central Asia-style blocs of ranges, Europe can match any continent in the variety and challenge of its peaks.