I have decided to try to climb the highest point of every state in America. Why? I am not sure I have a really meaningful answer other than I enjoy hiking, it is a good way to see the country and I like a challenge.
This decision was made right around my 50th birthday so maybe one could surmise that it is the result of a mid-life crisis. And I am not sure I know what a mid-life crisis is other than the reality of death is starting to have some real meaning and for me, this a way to stall that inevitability.
This was a trip to Mt. Katahdin at a tripping camp called Pine Island that I worked at for six summers during high school and college. I love this mountain and found that I was a pretty good hiker.
In high school and college, I worked at a summer camp in Maine called Pine Island Camp that sent out a lot of hiking and canoeing trips. I enjoyed both but excelled on the trail. There were a lot of good trips that I went on, but Mt. Katahdin was my favorite. The mountain was visually stunning whether standing at the shoreline of Chimney Pond, climbing Cathedral trail, the view from the summit, traversing the Knife's Edge or descending Dudley Trail and Pamola Peak.
I haven't done much hiking between the end of college and now, but I am lucky to live close to some pretty good hiking. So recently, I have started getting into 'training' for this challenge.
So my plan is to climb each of the highest points, not peaks in each state. In most instances, the peak and point are one in the same, but in a few instances, the highest point is really a peak that splits two states and the actual peak is not in the state that you are counting, and often not the highest peak in that state; my home state of Connecticut is a good example.
I did a lot of hiking at Pine Island Camp. When I was a counselor, we would take young men all through out New Hampshire and Maine; a lot of it on the Appalachian Trail. After camp was over, some of the other counselors and I would go do trips on our own. This was at the Pinkham Notch trail head getting ready to go up Mt. Washington via Tuckerman’s Ravine.
Since this idea came about when I was fifty and I plan to do 48 states, I will need to climb about five peaks a year. I am thinking I need to have an endpoint to the challenge and I worry about my capacity to accomplish some of the harder peaks after sixty.
I do not have a specific order other than I am going to try to knock out as many of the biggest ones I can early in the process. And I will try to at least climb a couple at a time to make the associated travel costs as minimal as possible. I do not plan to do Denali in Alaska because I concede that it is beyond both my skills and capacity. So my general description is the highest points in the continental 48, although I can see adding Hawaii as both doable and a good reason to visit the state.
So away I go. You can follow my progress here or on PeakBagger.com
Mt. Katahdin was my favorite mountain and I climbed it many times. It was easily the most dramatic in my limited experience of hiking in Maine and New Hampshire. I thought I looked really cool with the red, white and blue bandana and the Ray-Bans.