It’s October, and my highpointing season is finally is over for this year. The weather is changing. Snow is starting to fall in the mountains. I have no more peaks or obscure places left to visit until next spring.
Yet, as I look back, I’m pretty impressed. It was a massive highpointing year for me. I began 2021 with just half of the states under my belt, and I’d made a New Year’s resolution to try my very best to pass the 40-state mark.
Did I reach that lofty goal?? You bet I did!
After several dedicated trips throughout the year, I’m ending this year with a high point tally to 43 states!
Over the past ten months, I visited 18 new high points, hiked up to the tallest summit in the lower 48 (and the second tallest one too!), drove through two snow storms, hit a deer with a rental car at 40 mph, did a 7-mile hike in complete darkness, did another 15-mile hike in droves of rain, and met a fellow highpointer that I’ve been chatting with for over a year!
As I wind down from all that excitement, I’m already laying plans for 2022. The states I left on my bucket list are all “hard” ones – the high altitude peaks, some of which will require technical climbing skills, mountaineering over glaciers, and/or hiring a professional guide.
But before I get too caught up in future travel and logistics planning, let’s revel in the moment and appreciate what I was able to this achieve this year. I met my goal, and then some!
Here’s a brief recap of the highpointing trips I took in 2021 :
- High Points 26 & 27: A New Year’s Trip South. After a Christmas visit to New Jersey, it was time to make our way back to Texas for our final winter in our RV. We’d flown out to the East Coast with the intent of driving Keith’s car back south. Our original plan was to try to grab the trio of mid-Atlantic high points (Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia) on our way south. Unfortunately, an unexpected New Year’s ice storm in the Northeast forced us to cancel those plans for safety reasons. We made lemonade out lemons and knocked Black Mountain, KY, and Woodall Mountain, MS, off my bucket list instead. And with that, I now had the entire Southeastern US complete!
- High Points 28 & 29: Winter on the Plains. January found us down in Houston with a lot of extra time on our hands. And since we had a major airport nearby, I booked a cheap flight to Denver with the intention of grabbing two nearby states. During that trip, I was able to successfully visit Black Mesa, OK, and Mt. Sunflower, KS, but I’m not sure I’d recommend doing them in January. The snow and slush on the roads slowed my travel down immensely. But on the flip side, I was able to do a night hike up to Oklahoma’s high point under a full moon, and I caught the most gorgeous sunrise in western Kansas on that trip.
- High Points 30-35: The Spring Break Trip. We sold our RV in late March to a lovely couple Kansas City, however our new home in Oregon wouldn’t be ready for a few weeks. So this was the perfect opportunity to take a spring break road trip to the East Coast to visit family for Easter. Although it wasn’t the most direct route, our travels would be an excellent opportunity to grab six more state high points. Interstate-70 would already take us within striking distance of Taum Sauk, MO; Hoosier Hill, IN; and Campbell Hill, OH. Then we made our second bid of the year to visit Mt. Davis, PA; Backbone Mountain, MD; and Spruce Knob, WV. It was a lot of extra miles to drive (on an already long cross-country journey), but at least our high point stops forced us off the interstate and into some really pretty parts of the US.
- High Point 36: Mt. Whitney. 2021 was the second time I had Mt. Whitney in my sights since I started this highpointing journey. Last year, I scored a coveted permit to hike to the summit in the annual lottery, but the then Forest Service cancelled all the 2020 hikes in the wake of the pandemic. I signed up for the lottery again this year, but (sadly) I wasn’t selected. So it was on to Plan B, where I had to join the online melee for permits on May 1st. Luckily, I scored a two-day permit, and set off on a solo hike to the summit in late May 2021. Mt. Whitney, CA, was my hardest and highest high point, and I just narrowly avoided climbing this peak in a late season snow storm!
- High Points 37-41: The Great Lakes. Illinois’ high point isn’t a particularly challenging to climb, but getting access to the private property where it rests take some planning because it’s only open to the public for 10 days each year. I had my sights set on June 5th, the first summer date possible. And since I was going to fly all the way from Oregon to Chicago, I might as well visit my other four remaining high points in the Great Lakes region too, right? This solo trip took me to Mt. Arvon, MI; Timm’s Hill, WI; Eagle Mountain, MN; Hawkeye Point, IA; and finally Charles Mound, IL. It was also one of the more eventful of my highpointing trips, given that I hit a deer with my rental car while driving though rural Wisconsin! Ouch!!
- High Point 42: Finishing up the East Coast. I already met my goal of getting to 40 high points by June, so I could have taken the rest of the year off. However, August found me back out on the East Coast visiting family once again. And with only one remaining high point east of the Mississippi to complete, I felt compelled to book an overnight trip to the Adirondacks to tackle Mt. Marcy, NY. Unfortunately, this was one of the least enjoyable of my high points, as it rained the entire 15-mile hike and the views were completely obscured by clouds. But I still have a smile on my face because now I can focus on the ‘big’ states closer to home.
- High Point 43: Rocky Mountain High. My final high point adventure of the year came during a 5-day hiking trip in Colorado in early September. Even though I’ve hiked up some of Colorado’s 14er’s in the past, I still had yet to tick the state’s highest point off my bucket list. So, I booked another flight to Denver (my second one this year) and set my sights on Mt. Elbert, CO. Trekking up this high point on the North Elbert Trail was a real doozy, and the final two miles to the summit were some of the slowest miles I’ve hiked yet. But, I got to celebrate afterward with a fellow highpointer (@maddmountain) who I’ve been following on Instagram for more than a year. And now I can brag that I’ve summited the second highest peak in the contiguous US.
So there you have it. A summary of the 18 high points I visited this year. It took me seven dedicated trips, and many miles of driving through some pretty remote parts of the U.S., but now I’m down to my final seven states.
The only peak I had to bail on this year was Boundary Peak in Nevada. I’d originally hoped to climb it with some fellow highpointing enthusiasts during the 2021 High Pointers Club Convention in July, but the event was cancelled. Then I made subsequent plans to hike with a friend it in early September, but the massive wildfires and smoke in California and Nevada caused us to reconsider.
My 2021 efforts made me eligible for the Highpointer’s Club 40 state pin (for completing any 40 state high points) and the 30 state pin (for completing 30 state high points, with a minimum of 5 from each of the four regions). So I’m pretty stoked about that achievement.
Which states still remain on my bucket list to complete?
- Mt. Hood, OR – 11,239′
- Granite Peak, MT – 12, 799′
- Boundary Peak, NV – 13,140′
- Mauna Kea, HI – 13, 796′
- Gannett Peak, WY – 13,804
- Mt. Rainier, WA – 14,410′
- Denali, AK – 20,237′
Stay tuned for my next post where I’ll reveal my plans to (hopefully) bag five of these difficult peaks in 2022!