Since we were about an hour’s drive to the Nevada state highpoint, we decided to take an extra day to climb Boundary Peak.. At 13, 147′ and classified as an easy, but long Class 1 trail, we decided it was a no-brainer. When we got to the trailhead and read the trail register we were a bit disappointed as many of the comments noted how horrible the scree was, how people aborted the trip because it was too hard and how it took over 5 hours to get to the summit – so much for an easy day! Well, it turned out not to be the case – the scree was highly overrated, the trail was steep but not too long and another bluebird day greeted us at the summit.

In the background reading I had done on the area it was mentioned that a herd of wild horses lived in the Fish Lake Valley which is at the base of Boundary Peak. How cool would it be to see a herd of wild horses? Unfortunately, upon reading in the local newspaper we found that the BLM had conducted a “drought” gather and removed approximately 150 of the 228 horses two weeks before. Of course the fate of those removed horses is always a big mystery as rumors range from that of the ranchers that lease the BLM land dictating the roundups as the horses interfere with their cattle to the BLM housing and feeding the horses until they are adopted to the horses being sold off en masse to brokers that send then to slaughter. I guess unless one was there to watch the roundup and follow the horses it will always be speculative, at best…

A mad dash from Utah to Minnesota for the Thanksgiving holiday allowed us to hit two more state highpoints on the way. The first of which was Nebraska which we had to find in the dark. It is at an elevation of 5424′ and located on the High Point Bison Ranch which is close to the tri-state corner of Nebraska, Colorado and Wyoming. Another drive-up but a state highpoint, nonetheless!

Most of the climbing guides list the NE approach to Montana’s Highpoint, Granite Peak (12, 799′), as the standard route. This entails some Class 4/5 scrambling w/exposure and rappelling on the way down. Because of this, Granite Peak is typically listed as #4 in difficulty for State Highpoints behind Denali, Rainier and Hood. Wanting to go unguided and unroped, that route was a bit much for us so we kept researching the climb. We found a link to a great trip report that described a SW approach that promised a couple short sections of Class 3 scrambling which sounded more like what we wanted to tackle. Through one of my Denali teammates, we hooked up with a fellow Highpointer from Everett, WA, that had attempted this route about 5 years ago but got stormed off about 500′ from the summit. We felt pretty comfortable that he (Craig) would be able to lead us up to the summit… Hold that thought …

We met in Cooke City, MT on the 23rd and then ended up spending an extra day in the area as a storm passed over the mountain and dumped about 12″ of fresh snow. We started up the trail the morning of the 25th in good spirits with another Highpointer from Missouri (Kevin) joining our informal team . The trail from the Lady of the Lake trail head to our campsite in the Sky Top Lakes Basin was about 10 – 12 miles. (Although 2 members of the team had GPSs, we never could figure out the exact mileage!) The scenery was absolutely stunning with clear skies and amazing wildflowers – probably the most beautiful approach hike I have ever been on … We took a long time to make it in to camp as we were hauling pretty big packs with crampons, ice axes and the dreaded, cumbersome bear can for all our food. Luckily we never saw any bears – just a few curious mountain goats near our campsite.

We got a fairly early start up the mountain on the 26th and at that point we all realized that one of the team (Craig) was not doing well. On the approach to the mountain, he seemed to be taking more and more breaks. Once to the mountain, Joel basically had to take over as the informal leader and help find the route, which in some places was covered in snow and ice. Unfortunately all the snow from the storm earlier in the week had not melted – what was left had melted somewhat but then frozen overnight. We never ended up using crampons but were glad we all had our ice axes. There were a couple areas on the route that someone before us had left fixed lines to help get over areas that were quite slick from the ice. We probably wouldn’t have been able to navigate over those areas without then.

We all made it to the top with Joel’s route finding expertise, took a few photos and then had to head down as Craig kept getting progressively worse with Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS.) We all didn’t realize how bad he was getting until he mentioned at the summit that he felt nauseous and was contemplating pushing the SOS button on his locator beacon! That would have been a $7000 helicopter ride out … in retrospect, he shouldn’t have even attempted the climb on that day.

After what seemed like many, many hours, we made it back to camp where we cooked a couple hot meals. Craig had no energy so we tried to make him eat and rest but it was a little unclear if he ate much because he disappeared into his tent. During the night we were all woken up to pretty severe coughing and we knew we needed to get him to a lower elevation ASAP. Then the real task began … Pretty much all the gear was taken out of Craig’s pack and Joel and Kevin ended up with it – I took some of Joel’s gear to balance the loads out and off we went. It was a seemingly endless march out with all of us trading off trying to motivate Craig to move. He was so out of it, weak and tired that he would walk about 100 steps and stop. He would then fall asleep if we let him sit down. It was comical in a way as we ended up playing “Bad Cop, Good Cop” with him – Joel and Kevin yelling profanities at him, telling him they were going to throw his pack away and then me trying the nice, gentle, reassuring ploy with him. We even had another climber (Eric) join our group on the way down and he helped me out on the “Good Cop” team! Craig didn’t know which way was up or down when we were done with him. In the end, he was able to persevere and hike out on his own although we were averaging about 0.8 mph and it took over 11 hours to hike out. UGH

As a final note – we were all successful, mostly due to Joel taking over as team leader (Thanks Dear!) Craig attained State Highpoint #48, Kevin #47, Joel #11 and I am now at #18. Altitude sickness is no joke and could strike anyone at any time. I think that Craig has over 500 various summits throughout the US and had never gotten sick before – to this day we still don’t know what lead up to him getting sick but we are all glad he made it home safe and sound!

Taking advantage again of the proximity of a state highpoint to a business travel route, I took a 1 1/2 hour detour on my way to Decatur, IL and hit the Missouri State Highpoint. At 1772 ft., Taum Sauk Mountain ranks 41st in order of prominence. It was a beautiful drive with the dogwoods in full bloom and there were only a couple other cars in the parking lot when I arrived. Another not-so-stenuous hike (0.2 miles on a paved trail) from the car and I was at the top of Missouri. There is a nice loop trail to a waterfall that would have been nice to see but time was running late. Besides, I was ill-prepared for the 92 degree temperature that hit me when I opened the car door – UGH … not sure if that is typical Missouri heat for the first week in May but I’ll keep my 70 degree Utah weather for now!

The last of the three “drive-up” highpoints on our trip was Woodall Mountain in Mississippi. We headed directly from Cheaha Mountain in Alabama, up through NW Alabama, passing through Muscle Shoals (of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s, “Sweet Home Alabama” fame for those of you hipsters that read this blog!) into Mississippi.

Woodall Mountain is a whopping 806 ft and the highpoint consists of a couple of signs, a bench and a large rock in the middle of the turnaround. We did see a couple giant daddy long leg-type spiders catching the last rays of sun on the afore-mentioned rock.

Once we snapped a few photos we geared up for another 15 hours in the car to make it up to New Ulm, MN by Thanksgiving. YEAH.

Our total mileage on this roadtrip was 4818 miles – seems to put some of those good old-fashioned family car trips to shame! I guess with the gas prices down to $1.59/gallon in some areas of the SE, it made it a little more palatable!

Since our last State Highpoint venture had been in November of last year, we decided to get serious again and knock off four more in another epic (3800 mile +) road trip over the Memorial Day Holiday week. Our target was the Midwest, specifically MN, WI, MI and IL. The entire trip was crafted around the IL Highpoint access as it is on private land and only open 8 days each year. More on that later …

The first order of business was to stop in New Ulm to see Joel’s folk’s house as it had been recently remodeled . It looked great and they seemed quite pleased with it. We had a nice dinner and then it was off the next morning to Grand Marais, MN, with a stop en route to visit with one of Joel’s hunting buddies to bring some of the gear back to him that he had left after their hog hunt last winter.

Joel’s older sister, Joanne and her husband met us at the hotel in Grand Marais, as she had asked to be included on the MN State Highpoint climb.

Eagle Mountain (elev. 2,301′) is about 20 miles outside of Grand Marais, MN, in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. The hike is 7 miles round trip with an elevation gain of 600 feet, most of which is in the last 1/2 mile. There had been some recent rain and more rain was predicted on the day of our hike so we decided to get an early start to try and stay as dry as possible. We were the only car in the parking lot when we arrived and we took off at a quick pace. Joanne was a welcome addition to our little group and she did great. We all “summited” with minimal huffing and puffing, had a quick snack at the top and then headed down as the bugs soon discovered us.

On the way in we saw a lot of moose poop. On the way out, we saw the manufacturer of said poop, standing about 10 yards off the trail. I came around a corner and was really startled to see her/him. It seems that a few foul words flew out of my mouth as I came to a screeching halt. Joel was at the rear of the caravan and figured I had seen a bear. Since we weren’t sure if it was a cow with a calf nearby, we make a quick exit and didn’t stop to take any photos. On the way out we met a couple of park rangers who indicated that it was actually pretty rare to see moose in the area anymore so we felt pretty lucky to have even seen her/him.

Mt. Arvon (elev. 1,979′) is located on the UP of Michigan about 12 miles E of L’Anse. Originally described as a 2 mile round trip hike due to a myriad of unmaintained logging roads in the area, our friends at Plum Creek (since bought by Weyerhauser) put a nice little cleared parking area about 40 feet from the summit marker. So, what was once a 2 mile hike is now about a 30 second stroll from your car.

The Visitor’s Center in L’Anse was able to give us up to date road conditions and they have put signage up at every intersection, making the complicated logging roads easy to navigate. They also give out summit certificates once you make it back.

The only slight snafu on this drive was that due to the significant rains they had had recently, a beaver dam had been breached and part of the road was washed out. We didn’t have any issues with the Jeep but heard later on that at least one party had to pull off the road and actually walk up the road to the summit. Glad someone got some exercise on this one!

Last year I had been in the NE and hoped to add the MA highpoint to my completed list. Unfortunately they had closed the road to the War Memorial at the top due to ice and snow and I didn’t have the right hiking gear with me to do the 6+ mile round trip.So, when the opportunity came to be able to tackle 4 highpoints in 4 days recently, I took a few extra vacation days and decided not to do any of the primary routes of which 3 of the 4 were either drives to to summit, gondola rides or via cog train, but to hike them all.

I arrived at Mt. Greylock on a very foggy morning so I decided to drive to the top (contrary to what I just stated!) The summit sits at an elevation of 3,491′. Once on the top, I wandered around waiting to see what the weather would produce. It ended up clearing off so I put on my hiking boots and did a reverse highpoint, of sorts. I found part of the Appalachian trail that headed down to a trailhead on Notch road, then turned around and hiked back up to find the top sunny and warm. The total trip down and up was 6.2 miles so I got a bit of a warm up for the big effort that was to follow the next day – Mt. Marcy, the NY state highpoint which is a 14.8 mile roundtrip with 3200′ of elevation gain.

The second State Highpoint of  the day was a drive through the countryside to a trailhead marker. The actual highpoint is called Hoye Crest and lies on the ridge of Backbone Mountain at an elevation of 3,360 ft. A quick jog up part of an old logging trail, left turn at a cairn, a bit of bushwacking and the “summit” was gained in about 1.1 miles – 2.2 miles roundtrip. Nice to get a bit of exercise on this one!

It was a pretty nice day but still a bit foggy and the views from the top were not that great. Apparently a lot of folks come up here and want a non-selfie photo as there was a nice post with a flat shelf on it to set up your self-timed camera. I headed back down to the car where Dad was finalizing the route to the West Virginia Highpoint.

I would like to thank my employer for sending me to all reaches of the US – so far this year I have been able to conquer 5 state highpoints that were close to the facilities that I was visiting. Mt Katahdin in Maine was one of those. The day was dreary and the forecast indicated rain but I went ahead and drove to the Katahdin Stream Campground in Baxter State Park.

Due to the late season snow melt off the Hunt Trail that I took had only opened up 2 days prior so my timing was impeccable! It was a 10.4 mile roundtrip that included quite a bit of Class III scrambling (hands and knees) over huge granite boulder fields. It was cold and windy at the top but the rain held off until I started down. I was happy that the rental car had heated seats so that could dry off a little on my way to Houlton, ME, where my next audit was.