What is Highpeaking and how does someone get into it?

What is Highpeaking?  It is the sport of ascending to the natural point with the highest elevation within a given area (the “highpoint”). Any route to the top – walking, climbing, driving an automobile, etc. – is considered a valid means of attaining the high point.

Now, at this point of writing this, I have summited 21 of the state high peaks. But let me back up and explain a bit about how I got into this. Originally, I was on a mission to explore all 50 US states. My only 2 rules I made for this goal was that I had to road trip through the state (other than Hawaii) and i had to do at least one interesting or unique thing while there. I made it to 45 out of 50 (including DC) before I crossed over to high pointing. Since then, I have returned to many states to get to the highest peaks before finishing my exploration of this country.

I have blogged about all of my high peaks thus far except for my first 2: Mount Katahdin in Maine and Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Since my first 2 were pretty epic, I decided that they needed to be blogged about.

I climbed to the summit of Mount Kahtadin on September 26, 2011 during a solo exploration of the entire New England area. It was my first state high point. I had no idea what high pointing was and I still didn’t until after I convinced a friend to join me up Mount Washington on September 9th, 2015. I never even considered climbing Washington until I took my solo New England trip. at that time, I enjoyed the tour van drive up Mount Washington, but since one can drive up to the summit, I thought it was a dumb idea to work so hard for a view you can easily drive to. That was, until the van driver picked up a hiker that climbed his way to the peak, but then needed a ride back down. The moment he sat down, I asked him, “Hey, is it worth the hard climb to the summit only to share it with a bunch of clean people that took the easy way up?” He didn’t hesitate, “Yes!” he said. “You see so many more amazing views than all those people that only drive up.” In that moment, I decided that I didn’t want to be one of “those people” and I started to plan a trip back to climb it! Thats all that it took.

I didn’t hear the term “Highpointing” until after conquering that second one. I was shocked to see that many high pointers considered diving to the summits (where applicable) as a reason to boast making it to the top. Once, I looked into this intriguing hobby, driving to a summit seemed like cheating to me and I vowed to hike / climb my way through as many as my body could physically do. I’m sure people have many different reasons for starting this epic adventure. For me, I’m doing it to challenge myself first and foremost. How much can my body take of this? It’s a healthy hobby to have, for sure. But, I’m also doing it to enjoy views that most people will never see. I do it to discover new places that I’d never end up at otherwise because many high points are in very remote areas. I do it to meet the amazing people that I meet while exploring these areas often off the beaten path. I do it to have (sometimes scary) life changing experiences that serve to make me stronger…not just physically. And last, but not least, I do it because i’m a photographer and I love capturing my adventures to share to the world. I’m a storyteller. I learn something new on every single trip that I take.

So, the couple of years that I lived in Alaska in 2000 opened me up to mountain climbing. I was the bored housewife to a man in the Coast Guard. I would go out hiking and exporting ALL the time by myself. I started climbing mountains on my own, without any plan of attack, without any gear, and without much knowledge of all that could go wrong. Every time that I had a scary experience, I would learn from it and keep going building upon my knowledge every. single. time. that I went out. I learned solely by doing at that point… not from books or friends or classes…just from doing. What doesn’t kill you; makes you stronger!

Fast forward to 2011. I was living in Florida at the time. I had a good job and 3 weeks of vacation saved up. I was planning a road trip to explore the entire New England area to check off more states when a friend suggested that since I loved mountains, that I should climb Katahdin because I loved mountains so much. So I did.

Mt. Katahdin, 9•26•2011:

Since, I lived in flat Florida, I had no idea how to train for a climb. I had never “trained” to climb a mountain, I mostly did them spontaneously. Granted now, I know how dangerous that could have ended up for me, but I learned. At the time, I was very much getting into yoga and I went to hard Power Yoga classes 3-5 times a week. When I told my favorite yoga teacher that I wanted to climb the highest mountain in Maine just by doing yoga, he supported me completely! In fact, he told me about times before the classes I would take, that I could come in early and he would train with me before my scheduled class. I took him up on his generous offer and before you know it, I was basically living at St. Pete Yoga when I was not at my full-time job as a Post Production Artist for HSN.

I should emphasize the fact that I ONLY did yoga. I did no walking, hiking, running or cardio in any form other than some faster paced yoga classes that got the heart rate up. Granted, I was pretty strong and flexible at that point, but nowadays, I would recommend adding hiking lots of miles (with a backpack for weight) for the much needed cardio endurance. Ive always hated cardio, but there is really no getting around it, if you want to have a less painful time on a climb or long hike.

I flew into Maine the day before I was planning on climbing the highest peak in Maine. I got a rental car and a room at a little hotel close to Baxter State Park. Because I can’t sit still apparently, I actually went exploring and hiking many miles right after getting settled in and ended up injuring my shin pretty badly. Something to do with sinking into quicksand like mud and forcefully pulling my leg out only to throw myself violently into the trunk of a nearby tree. Oops. My mom was actually happy to hear of my injury because she thought that that would scrap my climb the following morning….um nope! So, the plan was to climb Katahdin then serpentine all around New England hitting all sorts of amazing spots, then fly out of Connecticut back to Florida. Because of the length of the trip and all involved, I had no one willing to climb and / or able to climb with me.

When, I pulled into he parking lot for Katahdin, I noticed a carload of four young girls pulling in right next to me. We greeted each other as we got our gear on. I allowed them to go on ahead and took my time at the sign-in kiosk in order to put some distance between us. We quickly noticed that we were taking the same path up, but I kept my distance until they turned to me and asked if I could take a photo of them with the beautiful mountain in the background. They returned the favor…

It was a 4 mile hike through dense woods just to get to the base of the mountain after a long drive into the wilderness to get to the parking lot. I took a mini snack break at the beautiful Chimney Pond before starting the climb upwards. After following behind the group of girls for awhile, one of them turned to me and said with surprise, “Are you doing this alone?!” After, I confirmed that I was alone, she said that since we are hiking the same trails, that I should join their group. At first I was a little reluctant because I had overly prepared and was fully ready to do it on my own, but I eventually embraced the group towards the Summit.

At the summit, we were taking photos and I was enjoying my PB & J lunch while looking out at the spectacular view. All of a sudden, an older man with a long white beard popped up from the Appalachian trail behind us and said, “Woohoo!”. It was a comically exhausted and lackluster expression of excitement. We laughed and turned around to say, “Yay you made it to the summit!” to which he replied, “I just finished the entire Appalachian Trail solo!” We looked at each other in amazement and I said, “Well, hell! I would be screaming in celebration then!” He looked rough and exhausted. I left him to talk with others at the summit. People were asking him tons of questions about his long adventure. I went back to admiring the view and eating while I listened to his stories out of one ear.

As much as I wanted to sit and just stare at the view longer, we had to get going because the moment we made it to the summit, we noticed a very large wall of black cloud heading towards us. We still had the “Knife’s Edge” portion of the hike planned and that’s the most difficult trail on Katahdin. There are easy to moderate paths to Baxter’s peak and back down and one can avoid Knife’s Edge completely, if they want too. Knife’s Edge is only 1.1 miles in length, but it’s called the longest mile in Maine and for good reason. It is very technical with maximum exposure. Which basically means that you can see where your body will end up if you fall the 2,000 something feet to your death. You can see all around you on either side of this small “edge” of rocks while you navigate up and over them. More than 60 people have died on Maine’s tallest mountain since they started recording deaths in 1933. Most of those deaths occurred on Knife’s Edge.

There is so much to say about The longest mile in Maine. The climb is intimidating enough on a perfect day, but when you are doing it with the black cloud of death following you the entire way, there are no words. There were 2 men that were a little ways behind us and when we turned to keep an eye on the weather, we watched the black sky engulf them. The next time we looked back, they were gone. I assumed that they decided to turn around at that point. We decided to keep going because we were much further along and going back seemed like a much worst idea. We continued to out-climb the ominous cloud and stayed just out of reach of it for the entire length of Knife’s Edge and the entire decent.

As if the looming sky of darkness was not enough, at one point I looked down at the rock in front of me and saw blood. We were single file because there is no room for anything more. You literally have about a foot of space to climb on and the rocks that you are crawling over are sometimes loose. It’s not only a physical feat to do Knife’s Edge, but it’s super mentally exhausting. You have to check each rock to see if it’s stable enough to climb on… the entire way. I don’t remember how long it took us to do that portion of the mountain, but it was very time consuming. So, when I started seeing blood on the rocks and I knew it was not coming from me, I called ahead, “Hey who is loosing blood up there!?” Britney, the gal right in front of me said that she ripped open her finger on a rock, but quickly brushed it off as ‘no big deal’. Except that it was a deal because it was a good amount of blood. So, I told her to yell for the others ahead to wait and I told Britney to “straddle the trail with her thighs and hold on”. I did the same. I carefully took off my backpack (where do you even set a backpack where it won’t fall off) to get to my alcohol wipe’s and bandages. It turns out that none of them, between the 4 girls, had any first aid supplies on them. Gasp!

After she was all bandaged up, we waited for a huge gust of wind to pass before we tried to move again. With the wind, came a beautiful Raven surfing the gust over our heads. The wind is so strong up there, but at least you can hear it coming like a freight train. That gives you time to hunker down and grab a stationary rock to hold onto until it passes. Repeat.

I planned on climbing Katahdin in October because I wanted to be a “leaf peeper” from the highest vantage point I could get. It turned out to be the greatest decision. I climbed one of the last days before they were set to close the mountain. I’m lucky I was able to climb it at all seeing how a hurricane somehow made it all the way to Maine from stupid Florida. It totally followed me. So, that could have been why we were stalked by a dark cloud of death the entire way down. Anyways, as we looked over our heads at the Raven soaring by above, we then looked down and admired the sea of fall colors from down below. That moment is imbedded in my head for life. It was perfect. I was actually glad for the chance to stop for a minute and soak up the insane situation I was in…straddling at trail and bandaging up a stranger while storm winds want to drag us to our death, but still enjoying the Raven and colors all around us. So much perfection in that moment. I wish I had photos even though my camera would not do the vast scene justice. I have no photos from knife’s edge until the very end, but I did manage to get a small video while I straddled the trail. When we walked up to the path to climb it, I took one look out at what I was about to do and quickly and instinctively took a step back. I put my camera that had been around my neck into my backpack and I did not take it back out. I knew I needed the use of all of my limbs and I needed to focus. My first thought upon walking up to Knife’s Edge in person was, “Oh my god! I’ve been obsessively watching videos and photos, but NOTHING really compares to the real thing. What am I doing!?”

I can’t say how scary it was….there were times…ok many times when I asked myself, “what have you done! Welp, no turning back now!” During Knife’s Edge is when I loved the fact that I was with a group. The one girl had done Katahdin 4 times and Knife’s Edge every time. She knew the path to take even when I questioned it a few times because it just didn’t seem passable. I would see the blazes when she pointed them out and I still couldn’t believe it. “Wait a second…we have to scale up that while shimming around it at the same time?!” Whyyyyyy was a compelled to look down while doing that section? I had instant vertigo, so I just hugged the rock I was moving around, took a deep breathe and continued on vowing not to look down again until I was safely past that insane section. No going back…

Once, past Knife’s Edge, I felt like a beast and felt good about the decent ahead. The dark cloud was not as ominous anymore, but then the sun was setting soon. It’s always something. Haha! Then, I started to hit a wall physically and mentally. The problem with the beautiful Fall climbs is that you have much less sunlight. I knew I would be coming down at least partially in the dark, so I was prepared. I had a head lamp and 2 small handheld flashlights. Just in case…

Turns out, I needed every bit of the lights I brought. Why? Because the girls I joined not only did not have one first aid kit among them, but not one of them brought lights. None! This surprised me since the website states, in several places, that you should have some sort of light for emergency situations, even in the summer months, but most certainly in other seasons with less daylight. When the sun set, our pace slowed significantly as to be expected. Trying not to trip on the rocks you can’t see and crack our skulls open took lots of effort with that rough terrain. When I pulled out all of my lights, the girls all said that they were so blessed that they met me because of the first aid help and then the lights, both. But, I told them, that I was grateful I met them as well! If it was not for the comfort in knowing the one girl knew Knife’s Edge, I might have turned away the moment I stood at the start of it and looked at the insanity ahead with the cloud of death behind. Then once we were going for it, I liked knowing that she knew the path and I trusted her even when the path seemed crazy. After my shock that they had no light whatsoever, I handed my headlamp to the girl in front, gave one of the flashlights to a girl in the middle and then I lit us from behind with the remaining one. We were set to continue.

Even with all the light, the woods of Northern Maine are DARK! Like darker than i’d ever seen at that point in my life. At one point, we all turned off our lights and stood there in silence listening to all of the sounds in the complete darkness in the dense woods. That was an intense moment. It was so beautiful. We looked up at the sky and admired all of the stars that you never see with all of the city light pollution. We did not see any other people on the entire trail down. That would have been a scary situation alone!

The moment we popped out of the woods and were back in the parking lot, a park ranger was right there! He said our names and was relieved that we were safe. He said that he was starting to get concerned that we hadn’t made it back yet and was just about to go look for us. Wow! I was totally impressed by that! It was so nice to know that at Baxter State park, they take the signing in and out very seriously and check to make sure all that checked in are actually back down safely. Warm fuzzies.

We didn’t chat with the ranger long because I promised the girls that the moment we got back to my car that I’d share my case of water with them! Man, I’m so happy I was prepared and had that in the backseat. We dropped our heavy bags, I passed out water and we stood there in silence with only the sounds of us chugging a couple of bottles of water each. Ahhhhh! We had been fantasizing about that water for the last few hours of the tedious hike in the dark. Oh, it was sooooo good!

Even though we had some trail snacks left, we were craving real food. We decided to drive back onto town and find a place to eat. I followed them into town since they all lived nearby. Unfortunately, the only thing open at that late hour was McDonnalds. Ugh…

I ordered some fries just to have something hot to eat, but as a vegetarian, that’s about all that I wanted to eat there. I was bummed that all the pizza places were closed already. After we rested and ate, I said goodbye to the group and left to go back to my room at Pamola Motor Lodge. We found each other on Facebook beforehand because they took lots of photos of me on knife’s edge and on the decent and they said that they would share them with me once they posted them. I never saw them. I asked them a few times over the years, but I’m not sure what happened to them. Once I put my camera in my backpack to focus on Knife’s Edge, I didn’t pull it out again after that. So, whenever they were taking photos, I just asked them to share them with me…Fail. Never rely on others to captures your memories. Another lesson learned.

The next morning when I got out of bed to shower, I collapsed on the floor. Literally. Ouch. I had such a hard time dragging myself to the shower… and then showering. I was in so much pain! Why did I get a room on the second floor!?!? I dragged my large heavy suitcase down every step with excruciating pain. Step, ouch, suitcase drops down a step. ouch. repeat. By the time I made it to the front desk I just started laughing because i’m sure she heard how slowly I came down the steps. “I’m coming!”

She asked if I climbed the mountain. I said, “YES!”

“Did you summit?”

“YES!!”

“All by yourself?”

“Well, I met some girls and joined them…”

I told her how sore I was and how long showering took. I fully intended on getting chastised for not training enough, but then she surprised me! She looked at me and said, “Well, You made it to the top, you did Knife’s Edge, and you are standing here in front of me after having brung your big suitcase down the steps…”

“Yeah, but i’m really sore did you hear how long it took me to come down the stairs…”

She cut me off…”Do you know how many people don’t train at all and think that it’s going to be easy? Many men underestimate the mountain and can’t even get out of bed the next day. So, the fact that you standing here talking to me after summiting it and doing Knife’s Edge, is a win! You should be proud!”

*Cue amazing feeling*

She said that many turn around and never summit and others push on only to end up calling her to book the room for another night because they physically can’t more.

After talking to her, I felt amazing! Even though I was hobbling for 3 days after, her words stayed repeating in my head that entire time. I was even able to painfully climb up a waterfall at sunrise to photograph the beautiful morning mist on the water the very next day. But, I had to scrap a cliff climb that I had planned on day 2 after Katahdin in Acadia National Park. I was bummed because I was looking forward to that. That ended up being the only thing I planned to do, but couldn’t on that entire 3 week trip. I saw and did so many awesome and sometimes very creepy things in the macabre month of October. I loved all of it!

Part of that trip included that van tour up to the summit of Mount Washington. I wish I knew who the hiker was that we picked up at the summit. That man, with one sentence, convinced me to climb that very mountain 4 years later. It would have been sooner, but it literally took me almost exactly 4 years to find someone crazy enough to agree to climb it with me. I went from, “Ill never climb a mountain that you can just drive up. That’s pointless.” to “Who can I get to climb this beast with me?” after a 2 minute conversation with a stranger…

Mt. Washington and and Mt. Monroe 9•9•2015: I asked a friend that had never climbed a mountain to drive to New Hampshire to climb not only Mt. Washington, but Monroe with me…on the same day. Once you get above the treeline, you pop over to summit Monroe then come back and go on up Washington. Bob, my friend, said that he always wanted to do something like that, but never had the courage to just go for it and I didn’t want to do it alone. We started planning and training right away because we only had about a month to get ready if we were going to do it before potentially worst weather. This time I added cardio to my training routine. I’m learning…haha!

So, the plan was to go up the Ammooosuc Ravine trail and down the Jewel trail assuming it would take us approx. 8 hours. Most can do it in less time than that, but being tourists and wanting to capture every moment, we lost lots of time going up. The views were amazing! Waterfalls, ravines and lakes in the clouds, oh my!! We had perfect weather heading up, even with 40-50 mile an hour wind gusts! I was hoping, but not planning on good weather due to what I read on Outdoors.org, “In good weather, fabulous views abound from the summit and slopes of Mount Washington, but don’t count on it. Because the Presidential Range is in the pathway of several major storm tracks, Mount Washington is known to have a severe combination of wind and cold. The average annual temperature is 27.1°F, the summit temperature has never risen above 72°F, and the mountain holds the world-record for a wind speed of 231 mph, recorded on the summit in 1934. Hurricane-force wind, dense fog, driving rain, and snow occur even during the summer months, and sudden and extreme weather variations are common.”

At the summit, we barely made it in time to get some food at the little cafeteria. Turns our that most of it was meat stuff anyways and I wasn’t interested in any of that, so I made due with a brownie, PB&J, some chips, and a warm coffee. The coffee later on, turned out to be a bad, dehydrating thing to do. While buying the food, a man told us that a storm would be coming in, which we figured that out anyhow with the ominous views of a black sky encroaching. We had to decide within minutes whether we were going to take the last cog railway tour down or try to hike it…all while trying to stuff our faces before the cafe closed. The $46 per person ticket price and the fact that we thought we could make it to the tree line before the bad weather, made us decide to cram our faces and go.

About half a mile down the Gulfside trail, a path that leads to the Jewell trail, we stood there and watched in total awe as the ravine completely filled with fog, and clouds. At first we were enjoying the crazy apocalyptic view, but then within minutes, it quickly enveloped us. We thought being inside of a cloud was awesome until the cold rain followed. I quickly took one final photo (us looking like drowned rats) and then put my phone and camera in their dry bags and in my backpack for the rest of the decent. I can’t believe how quickly the weather can change up there. The visibility was less than 10 feet and rain was hitting our faces sideways as we tried to move our already tired bodies down, fast. It had to be in the 40’s…and with the wind and being wet…not fun. I felt bad being the slow moving one, but my legs were so sore already and I was getting very cold being wet. I had put on my wind breaker/rain jacket, but was too dumb to make sure I got rain pants. When we went to buy them before the trip, they were completely out of pants in my size. I realized at that moment, that I should have went to another store and made sure I had them.

This was one of my first serious mountain climbs and I still didn’t know exactly how best to train for such a thing and I was still figuring out which gear was really important to have. I had everything else I would have needed, except for those damn rain pants! Bob had gotten lucky with the store having both a rain shirt and pants in his size. He was doing much better than I because of it. We were both sore and ready to be off of the mountain though! In all this, the sun set on us and it got even colder and extremely dark! We were moving very slowly because we had to be extremely careful with every step as to not fall into the ravine…you know…since we couldn’t see a damn thing. We had to feel out every step before we took it as if we were blind. I did have a headlamp and a flashlight (see..prepared lol), but it was no help to blast light straight into fog. We could actually see slightly better with the lights off.

We were on the Jewel trail and then lost the path because we couldn’t see anything. All I had on from the waist down, was thin “mild weather” leggings and those were completely soaked to my body and freezing me. I was done. I was shivering at this point uncontrollably which is the first stage of hyperthermia, out of 5. I was seconds from hitting the SOS button on my SPOT GPS tracker. My plan was to jump in a hole of boulders and cover myself with my emergency blanket and wait for help once I hit it…if it came to that. This entire time Bob kept trying to give me his rain pants, but I thought there was no sense in both of us being wet, and miserable and I insisted he keep himself dry.

We thought about waiting longer for the weather to break, but that did not look like it would happen anytime soon. It was getting late. It was getting colder. I was hunkered down as Bob tried to find the trail when he saw a light in the distance. We yelled out to whoever it was for help. To our surprise, it was Kyle, an experienced trail runner that happens to like nighttime hikes. He was as surprised as us to see other people in that weather and at that time of night, which at this point was about 8PM. We had been on this mountain for 11.5 hours. We regretted our “late” start of 8:30AM at this point, but our 5:00AM alarm didn’t go off. He helped us find the trail which was even hard for him. He told us that he had lots of experience running on that path and he had a GPS navigator that he was using to find our way. He said he would have been “very surprised and impressed” if we had made it down ourselves having never climbed Washington before. Well, ok, that made me feel a bit better…

The amazing Kyle got us below the tree line, confirmed that we were OK to navigate the rest, and then ran off. It was still raining and the slick rocks and my foggy glasses made it hard to get around quickly. We hiked through the pitch-black woods of New Hampshire for hours. We saw no one else that entire time. I was glad that Kyle ran off because I had to pee so bad even though the thought of pulling my pants off in that cold rain sounded horrible because I still was not warm. My entire body was cold and feeling frozen stiff. To make things worst, I had to pee so bad that when i did, it shot out of me so fast that it hit a rock and splashed back in my face!!! Cool. Further down the path, I was so focused on my feet not slipping on rocks that I smashed my pee face right into a Birch tree that was hanging horizontally and low. And lastly, after being SO cautious for hours, I slipped on a rock and bashed my tail bone. SIGH… It was a back to back calamity of errors on that decent. When we made it back to the car it was 1AM. 16.5 hours later.

With every mountain I summit, I learn more and more of the do’s and don’s for me personally. I still have so much to learn in order to conquer some of the beasts out West. Mount Katahdin is still my favorite high peak to date out of the 21 I have done, but I have the least amount of photos from it…sad. And I planned a different trail down Mt. Washington to have different views to photograph, yet I only have one photo from that mountain decent. I couldn’t even see my surroundings let alone take photos. Even though I miss the photos I could have had on both, I love the fact that I was able to experience the weather extremes! I was drenched in sweat going up Mt. Washington and had hypothermia on the way down. The best of both worlds.

“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.” ~ Jack Kerouac