Paul Ryan, Mountaineer (or, the Further Adventures of a Lying Liar)
<...> Here's the first exception. Ryan has told his hometown paper that he has climbed "about 40" of the famous "Fourteeners" in Colorado -- the 54 peaks more than 14,000 feet high. In fairness, he made this claim a few years ago, before he knew he would be under the scrutiny he is now.
Still: this claim makes me even more suspicious than his marathon answer did. I know nothing about mountain climbing, so give my views appropriate weight. But to see what people who do have experience think, you might check out the current comments at the climbers' site SuperTopo. One explains the reason for his skepticism:
The 54 peaks are scattered throughout remote parts of Colorado and you have to visit out-of-the-way little towns and valleys to tick the list, towns and valleys that you would never visit otherwise....
To have climbed forty and not be a resident means that you would have had to devote entire summers to climbing fourteeners, in essence becoming a "lifestyle" hiker/scrambler. I doubt Ryan had the time or dedication to fourteeners to take the required time out from his political career. Even if you did four a summer, that would be ten summers devoted to traveling to Colorado for the purpose of high altitude hiking. Even if you live here and can drive to the trail heads, forty is a huge commitment of time and energy.
Read more at The Atlantic
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Enjoy the laughs!
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1905949&tn=100
Welcome to DU! 
PIKES PEAK, COLORADO: Lying about running a marathon in under three hours, when your actual time is over four hours, is bad enough. But lie to Coloradans about how many fourteeners you've climbed and you're crossing a line--and not just the tree line.
Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan claims to have climbed 40 of Colorado's 53 fourteeners (mountain peaks over 14,000 feet in elevation).
<more>
were chasing me, and I was only 17.
Last edited Wed Sep 5, 2012, 08:13 PM - Edit history (1)
Hieronymus Carl Friedrich von Münchhausen (German pronunciation: [ˈmʏnçhaʊzən]; 11 May 1720 – 22 February 1797) was a German nobleman and a famous recounter of tall tales. In his youth the Baron was sent to serve as a page to Duke Anthony Ulrich II of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and later joined the Russian military. He served until 1750, in particular taking part in two campaigns against the Ottoman Turks. Returning home, Münchhausen is said to have told a number of outrageously farfetched stories about his adventures. He died in his birthplace of Bodenwerder.
Even before his death, Münchhausen's reputation as a storyteller was exaggerated by several writers, giving birth to a fully fictionalized literary character usually called simply Baron Munchausen. The (fictional) Baron's exploits, usually narrated by himself, focus on his impossible achievements as a hunter, warrior, and traveler, including rides on cannonballs and trips to the moon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_M%C3%BCnchhausen
