This whole highpoint deal

Amidon to Bowman, North Dakota Saturday, July 31, 2021

OK, today I climbed the highpoint of North Dakota, my eighth highpoint on this trip, exactly 12 weeks after the first one, Campbell Hill in Ohio. On that day, I promised to explain why I was so fixated on highpoints. As today’s is the last new one I’ll be doing for quite a while, I suppose I should finally get around to trying to explain.

I have tried, partially, in earlier posts and my Denali chapter. I guess it started with my love of my maps. I was an early subscriber to National Geographic, but the maps I loved best were in the Rand McNally road atlas. I would stare at states I didn’t know, places I had never been, and would wonder about all the points of interest. Every state had a little black triangle marking its highest point, and I would find myself searching for it on each page. In the summer of my freshman year of college, Brian and I were touring back roads West Virginia, and noticed that we were quite close to that little black triangle.

Sure, why not? Funny how the locals, people who had lived their whole lives within 5 miles, had never heard of it. That should’ve tipped us off. But eventually we found someone who could give us directions, and drove up to Spruce Knob, elevation 4,862.

The view wasn’t that good, maybe it was hazy that day. There was a little observation tower, and I remember how the trees were so windswept that they only had branches growing out of one side. Brian, who had already climbed Mts. Washington and Katahdin, mused that it might be cool to try and do them all. What I should’ve said was you’ve got to be kidding me. What I said was sure, why not.

That was 48 years ago, August 1973. For the life of me, I can’t recall what possessed me to take the bait, to put this monkey on my back. Highpointing was not a thing back then, less than five had completed them all; one of them, Frank Ashley, had written the aforementioned pamphlet, Highpoints of the States, and he had only done the lower 48. It was until 13 years later that Jack Longacre of Missouri sent a letter to Outside Magazine that led to the formation of the Highpointers Club. https://www.insidehook.com/feature/action/the-highpointers-club-turns-30

Mutual friend Eric scoffed at the ridiculousness of this project, then turned around and did 49 of them, all but Denali. His wife Ellen has done 39. That’s the thing, it kind of sneaks up on you. I warn you, it’s habit forming.

Brian I think is stopping at 45 (the last five require guides, unless you are a very experienced mountaineer). I only have 37 with today’s highpoint, but my ace in the hole is Denali, and I’ve done all but one of those “last five”—the easiest one, Mt. Hood. I do have a reasonable chance of doing all 50.

Over 300 people are “50-completers” by now (far fewer than those who have climbed Everest), and I believe the fastest time is 22 days https://www.colinobrady.com/50hp. I was wondering what kind of record I could set, possibly the slowest time? Climbing the big ones is undoubtedly a thrill, but over half of them are easy, often just a quick walk from the car. To me, doing those seemed kind of silly, just trying to complete a list. But what if you got there under your own power?

In 1981 I celebrated a life transition by biking from Washington (med school) to Boston (residency). Along the way, I tagged the Elbright Azimuth in Delaware, the second lowest of them all at 448 feet, but this time, not so silly. You see, I’d just ridden the bike past Delaware Bay, sea level, so I could rightly say I had “climbed” the state. Now that was something. Sea to Summit, just like the name of that outdoor company. I checked with the Highpointers Club and searched the web, it didn’t look like anyone else had done this, or even though of it. Maybe I could be the first “human-powered highpointer”.

Over the years, as my travels took me close to some of the highpoints, I would avoid going over there, wanting to “save them” for when I could do them by bicycle. The idea took shape to do them all in a single mega-trip, starting at the Atlantic.

The start of this blog chronicles the beginning of the journey last year, just after retirement, when I biked from my home in Vermont to the ocean in Maine, then to Pinkham Notch to hike up Mt. Washington. I was only able to post the first day, I’ll fill the rest in later. One day after Mt. Washington I had an equipment breakdown and Jane had to come get me, thereby “breaking the thread”. I would have to “zero out” at sea level again before doing the others, fortunately I found that spot in Troy whether Hudson was still tidal, so I could do that without having to go back to the ocean. Over a total of 30 days last year, I did all of the New England highpoints (except Maine, which I’d sea-to-summited in 2002) and Mt. Marcy in New York. Like I said, I’ll have to blog days 2 to 30 later. Covid kept me from doing the rest until this year. The blog is intact for these last 106 days.

So I’m not sure if this lengthy preamble adequately explains my goals and rationale, but I will have to break it off to get down to the business of documenting what happened today.

Coming into Amidon yesterday I noticed a police car in a speed trap, and was surprised to see the same car there early this Saturday morning. Closer inspection revealed there was just a dummy in the car, Ralph at the bar last night explained that the town couldn’t afford to hire a policeman.

Getting to White Butte involved 18 miles of dirt roads, but they were of good quality. I encountered four other hikers, a gentleman visiting from Nîmes, France; a father and daughter traveling across the country, and a local hunter, John, who is getting in shape for deer season. He had a pistol on his belt.

None of the others had heard of highpointing, they were just out for a Saturday stroll. I signed the register, John took my summit photo, and I looked out over the bleak expanse of western North Dakota.

Under each of my highpoint photos, the caption reads the total number I’ve done, and the number in the sea-to-summit mode. What about the other 20? I plan to revisit the ones I drove up on this trip, but not the big ones out west—Rainier, Whitney, five of the Rockies—I’m too old to do those again. For those, the plan is simply to bike to the trailhead parking lot where I had started before, thereby sea-to-summiting in two stages.

White Butte was more of a hike than the others, but it still wasn’t much. The whole process, changing my shoes, packing my fanny pack, chatting with the others, scattering Dad’s ashes, took three hours. The rest of the trip was fairly easy, not too hot, favorable wind, and I got into Bowman by 3 o’clock. Every grocery store in town was closed. The next couple of days will be challenging, there is a “food desert” until I reach the Black Hills.

Distance 35 miles, 4,675 total. Time 7 hours with stops. Elevation gain 1,364 feet

©️ 2021 Scott Luria