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PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 12:21 am
by GEM Trail
There are a million ways to do the highpoints, if you wanna get creative. In winter, from tallest to shortest, alphabetical order, by foot from the lowest base of each mountain, west to east, by prominence, etc.

I gave an idea to a friend of a friend like 12, 13 years ago- to carry my bike up each highpoint. My friend's friend was all hot to do it, but I wasn't. So I let that one go, and this guy did all the highpoints! Well, actually, last I heard, he had done them all but Denali, which he had failed on three years in a row!

The reason I didn't do it was because it didn't seem like enough challenge, what with most of them being walkups. But I gotta admit, carrying a bike up Denali would be a respectable feat...

and now the limit of my climbing world is to get my daughter trained and motivated to just do Denali!

PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 2:25 am
by grunt
WingLady / Diane, great book! When I moved to California, I only took a few books with me (out of a large collection), and that was one of them. :)

My highpoints so far
Guadalupe Peak, TX
Black Mesa, OK
Mount Sunflower, KS
Panorama Point, NE
Harney Peak, SD

PostPosted: Wed Oct 11, 2006 12:42 pm
by Holsti97
GEM Trail wrote:I gave an idea to a friend of a friend like 12, 13 years ago- to carry my bike up each highpoint. My friend's friend was all hot to do it, but I wasn't. So I let that one go, and this guy did all the highpoints! Well, actually, last I heard, he had done them all but Denali, which he had failed on three years in a row!


I think Kevin Foster succeeded in riding or carrying his bicycle to the top of the 50 State highpoints. Here is his website:

http://www.kevin-foster.com/summits.htm

PostPosted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 4:34 am
by gwave47
I too am a highpointer. I have completed 12 so far this past summer I did 5 in 6 days in a cross country trip to include Mt. Elbert in Colorado. I really enjoyed myself and it was awesome seeing Mt. Sunflower the day before. I enjoyed both even though they are completely different. I will have to say a true highpointer though is someone who has done all 50 or aspires to. Anyone who says that they aren't going to do a few of them because they are not tall enough is not a true highpointer. Because any real highpointer knows that highpointing is not about how tall the mountain is, its about traveling through places you would have never traveled through or even known existed so that you can climb a mountain or an ant hill. Highpointing is truly a journey of a lifetime.

PostPosted: Thu Oct 19, 2006 2:13 pm
by WingLady
gwave47 wrote:Anyone who says that they aren't going to do a few of them because they are not tall enough is not a true highpointer.

When I first read this sentence, I thought you were talking about short people (like me @ 5'2") using their height as an excuse for not attempting to climb more challenging highpoints (e.g. Denali).

I do try to use my height as an excuse for not being able to get up some rock climbs, but then someone always mentions Lynn Hill, and I have to back off.

I think I need to wake up a little more before reading the forum messages. :lol:

PostPosted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 6:04 pm
by Scott Wesemann
I have done 8 (all out west) and I am sure I will finish all of the western ones, but the way I look at it, if I am going to spend time and $$ I want to climb some real mountains.. no offense to highpointers, but that is just me. Maybe when I can't climb anymore I will finish up all 50, but for now, the eastern HP's just don't interest me at all.

State highpoint climbers

PostPosted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 7:52 pm
by Cy Kaicener
Here the website of another SP er -- Interesting site
http://www.surgent.net/highpoints/ -- Scott Surgent

PostPosted: Wed Nov 08, 2006 9:07 pm
by Haliku
I came across this site by accident and figure I'd share it. See http://geology.com/state-high-points.shtml

PostPosted: Thu Nov 16, 2006 2:32 pm
by WingLady
We try to post closures and other "surprise" changes to highpoint accessibility on our site at:

http://www.HighpointAdventures.com/HPUpdates.htm

If you know of any other key issues with HP access that we haven't mentioned, please let me know and I'll try to get the word out.

PostPosted: Sun Dec 17, 2006 7:01 am
by GEM Trail
It's great to hear everyone's stories on this topic. Highpointing really is special, half about climbing mountains, half about traveling America. And visiting friends, the ones who moved so far out of the way you never figured you'd been in their neck of the woods.

My dream trip for next year is to introduce her to Colorado via a little cross-country drive. Starting in Philly, we'll go right by the Pennsylvania high point (we're saving that for later), we can tag Ohio and Indiana, then possibly Illinois and Iowa en route to Kansas and my brother's place near Boulder. Here my appetities might be too big for the time allotted, but I hope to do at least four hikes. The highpoint is madatory and the mountain quite frankly I'm least excited about. That might be the first hike. Second, we have unfinished business on Gray's Peak, where we turned around at 14,000' when she was 11. I was thinking we could do Kelso Ridge up Torrey's on the way, making it a training climb for Long's Peak, which I think will be the highlight. I also wanted to take her up Sneffels, but that is really far from Denver so maybe we'll do Crestone Peak or some other class 3/4 climb. We only have 7-9 days in Colorado, so I'll be psyched if we can have a little family time and still do all those hikes. Then it's back in the car, maybe to tag Black Mesa in Oklahoma but probably right to the Ozarks to climb Mount Magazine in Arkansas and Missouri's high point, which I think is called Tom Sauk.

That would be at least six and possibly nine high points, four friends houses to crash in on the way, and more high points in the south coming home if we wanted. Most important, I wanna stoke Cypress' fire for climbing mountains! Because if she likes Colorado, she'll really like Wyoming, and Montana, and Washington, and California...

PostPosted: Thu Dec 21, 2006 3:19 pm
by GEM Trail
Wow David for Tibet you guys are doing great! How's the money/awareness raising campaign going?

A pberzai you're really moving too.

Cypress and I are on a much slower pace. I gotta stretch it out over several years 'cos this is the best idea I've ever had for bringing us closer together! But I do have an idea that might "speed" things up considerably. I can't spill the details yet... but it's going to be great!

By the way I agree with above posters that the SP Highpoints page is AWESOME. It's a blueprint for dreams, really, with the biggest and most spectacular mountains at the top, peak after peak cascading down...