Peak-Baggers

By John Klebes

Don't try to hide, we know who you are!  This highly contagious disease has grown rampant within the Pioneer Valley Hiking Club.  I’m talking about peak bagging, that activity in which hikers attempt to reach the summit of some collection of peaks listed on a popular target list.  Peakbaggers just love their lists; sometimes to the total blindness to anything other then simply checking off another mountain from their list.  Who cares if it has a view, if it’s raining too hard to enjoy it, or if it’s to dark to see the views?  I just must check off another peak!

For example, the most popular list in our club is the AMC New Hampshire 4000 footer list.  We have many alumni who have achieved the goal of climbing all the 4000 foot or higher peaks on this popular list.  But they don’t stop there.  Once addicted peakbaggers have an insatiable need to continue to climb more lists.  Fortunately for those addicted there is no lack of lists:  You can continue to climb all the peaks over a certain threshold in a certain area--the 4000 foot peaks in all of New England States, the 14,000-foot peaks of Colorado, or the 8,000 meter peaks of the world. There are an infinite number of possible lists the creative peakbagger can dream up.  

The most popular lists in our Northeast area:

• Adirondack 46ers (a list of 46 high peaks that were originally thought to be 4000 footers)
• The AMC Four Thousand Footer Club Lists (4000 footers of New Hampshire, 4000 footers of all the New England States, and the 100 highest in New England)
• The Northeast 111 List (all the 4,000 footers in the Northeast including the Adirondack 46rs list (46 peaks), the New England 4,000 Footers (initially 63, now 67 peaks) and the two 4,000 footers in the Catskills (Slide, 4,180' and Hunter, 4,040'). The initial total was 111 peaks, and the Club has kept that name, though the total is now 115 peaks.
• The Catskill 3500 (all the peaks over 3500 feet in the New York Catskills)

And they don’t stop there.  How about all the peaks in winter, or all the peaks in New York that have ever had a fire tower on them, or all the peaks that ever had a ski run?  The lists go on and on.  I found one list that is simply a list of the 200 most popular lists!

Which list is my personal favorite?  The New Hampshire 52 With-A-View! (A list of mountains in New Hampshire under 4000 feet that offer a fine view.  These are the ones that basically don’t qualify for the 4000 footer list but because of their views shouldn’t have been missed!  Not to be confused with some of the mountains that did make the lists and have no view at all.)

But figuring out what mountains make that list is not as easy as you think.  Have you ever thought you were about to reach the top of a mountain only to find you were on a false summit.  Certainly a high point but in actual fact it was just bump on the ridgeline on the way to the true summit?  What makes a bump a new mountain and not just a minor summit on the ridgeline off another summit?  Most lists use a term called prominence to measure the height of a peak above the highest saddle connecting it to a higher peak.  (A saddle is the lowest point, or col, on the ridge connecting the two peaks)  The prominence is how high the higher peak reaches above this low point.  To create a list of peaks we have to pick some kind of criteria such as an arbitrary amount of prominence to determine which points are summits.

For the AMC 4000 footers the criteria for mountains on the official list are: (1) each peak must be 4000 ft. high, and (2) must rise 200 ft. above the low point of its connecting ridge with a higher neighbor.   The criterion for the Adirondacks was that each peak be at least 0.75 miles distant from the nearest higher summit, or that it rise at least 300 vertical feet on all sides.  As you can see it’s all arbitrary.  But, if it gets you to discover a new peak, live a new grand adventure, and just get outdoors and enjoy life – it’s all worth it!  Happy Peak Bagging!

~John Klebes