SummitPost.org

Greg Enright wrote:Not only that, there are so many ways to climb a mountain, why always take the easy way?

Anyone can take the aesthetic route up solid granite walls with perfect hand jams, knobby dikes, and cracks that take pro nicely. To face 3,000ft of shifting sand and talus in the baking sun that you know will both physically exhaust you and mentally bore you to tears - and do it anyways - well, that's the stuff that real climbers are made of.

Bob Burd wrote:Anyone can take the aesthetic route up solid granite walls with perfect hand jams, knobby dikes, and cracks that take pro nicely. To face 3,000ft of shifting sand and talus in the baking sun that you know will both physically exhaust you and mentally bore you to tears - and do it anyways - well, that's the stuff that real climbers are made of.

Perhaps you should put this blurb in the official Sierra Challenge verbage, Bob!

Out of blatant curiosity, has anyone yet bagged the second highest seven summits?

If peakbagging is a disease, then I've got it. I just love to get to summits if its a scramble, a climb, or a slog, a peak is a peak. I am lucky enough to live in Western Wyoming where there are many amazing peaks around, but I still find myself returning to some of the same peaks up the same old boring trail or scree slope. I never find it boring though, its great exercise and its activity in the outdoors. I have known too many so-called climbers who only loved a bumper belay and hated to really hike. For me the peaks rule over the crags anyday. In the Tetons you sometimes have to hike up 4,500 feet just to get to a couple of hundred feet of scrambling, easy 5th class just to summit. Don't get me wrong, I love climbing, but isn't climbing just an offshoot of mountaineering. To be a mountaineer, you do need one thing, a freakin mountain. I am guilty, I have gone up some peaks just for the list, but I had a great time and I would do it again.

Holy guacamole, it's a pandemic! PBD virus! List Fever!

Just kidding. Really, lists are fine, easy routes are fine too. But taking the easy way on every peak? Climbing the same peak by the same route every time? Sure, I've done it, over and over.

But getting up some unfamiliar peak without peeking in the guidebook can be pretty fun. Parking at the wrong spot and starting your ascent without knowing if your route 'goes' is a great way to waste a day. If you're lucky, you even get lost for a while. If you're really lucky, you'll come back to civilization with a story so wild that nobody believes it.

How is it that this MLC SC topic comes into (seemingly) every thread?

mvs wrote:How is it that this MLC SC topic comes into (seemingly) every thread?

Its tentacles reach into every crevice, through every carabiner, around every facet of mountains and climbing and hiking. And every house of ill-repute as well. At least those in Nevada. You cannot escape its clutches...

As with any skill, craft, hobby and/or sport, humans require new challenges that keep them learning and growing. They require progression. They also need to see the fruit of there accomplishments. Hence the need to: Peak Bag.

I believe that one can take the easy way and still progress by choosing mountains that require more skills. Route finding, route quality/difficulty, scrambling, rock climbing, elevation, gain, distance, overnight, and impoved summiting times. Nobody has summited Everest as their first summit. I could say that taking the easy way wouldn't be such a bad idea your first time to check it off the list...

Benjamin

Greg Enright wrote:Peakbagger's Disease:
An affliction where one climbs as many peaks as possible via the easiest routes to check the peak off a list. Predominate symptom is boredom.

Can't tell you how many times I've read in a summit register or online trip report that one mountain or another is a boring slog. Most of the time the writer had ascended the mountain the easy way, just to check the mountain off the 'list'.

I really don't understand how someone can get bored hiking around in the mountains in the first place. There is always so much to see, wildlife, plants, sky, the list goes on. Not only that, there are so many ways to climb a mountain, why always take the easy way?

Try living in the east. The mountains do get a little boring sometimes. It is not like Colorado or something where there are 5 or 6 ranges, all with very different mountains. Half the high peaks in the Adirondacks seem like they are the same mountain.

Very embarrassing posting this. But I have started doing something here on my own that, well, I do find embarrassing.

Well. I am on my own now . And no luvly, youngish, dirndl clad Bavarian Serving Wenches have called in to help.

So it's all down to me to do it now.

Yes. You guessed.










I'm updating the list of summits I have stood on. On my hiking web site summary page.

I include any Hill/mountain that has a name and a height and appears on a UK Ordnance Survey map and/or a reputable list of hills and mountains.

Oh, I do feel better for admitting I still do such things.

mvs wrote:How is it that this MLC SC topic comes into (seemingly) every thread?

Just lucky, I guess.

Still updating my Peaks list on my web site summary.

145 hill and mountain summits since I started hill walking in August 2004.

And I still have those from my three most recent trips to add yet.

But included in the number above are some I've got to the top of more than once. Like Snowdon, (ten times), because I just enjoying doing it!

Bryan Benn wrote:Still updating my Peaks list on my web site summary.

145 hill and mountain summits since I started hill walking in August 2004.

And I still have those from my three most recent trips to add yet.

But included in the number above are some I've got to the top of more than once. Like Snowdon, (ten times), because I just enjoying doing it!

Why, you old peakbagger, Bryan! Keep it up! Better than being a sheepbugger I 'spose

Catamount wrote: Hans Kammerlander of Italy is trying to become the first ...
If he succeeds, he will eventually be forgotten in favor of whomever is the second to bag them all.

This made me laugh!