Category: High Points

Humphreys PeakArizonaJune  2013 Y’know, this Highpointing adventure of ours is full of conflict for me.  I fight my demons so that I can scale these sometimes soaring places.  I grapple with my altitude anxiety, my discomfort with travel including the terror I feel when on an airborne craft and a bunch of other personal obstacles… Continue reading Heroes

Cheaha MountainAlabamaNovember  2013 Hiking boots are an incredible invention.  The amount of pounding and impact that you put on your feet while hiking is hard to fathom.  What the heck, let’s try.  The average hiker, whatever that is, puts about eight psi, or pounds per square inch of pressure on the boots with every step.… Continue reading Boots I — Hiking Boots

Mount GreylockMassachusettsMay  2014 We think we are very close to the summit of Mount Greylock.  We think we are close because we’ve been climbing for half the day, but we don’t know how close because it’s so foggy that we can’t see a damned thing.  There is a big tower out there, they tell us,… Continue reading Oh Sam Peabody

Cheaha MountainAlabamaNovember  2013 This is some tough climbing.  It’s a 1.2-mile hike that gains 1143 feet in altitude.  What makes it more fun is that almost all of that uphill is in the second half of the hike and as you get closer to the summit, it just keeps getting steeper.  Okay, that’s what we’re… Continue reading Speaking French

Mount GreylockMassachusettsMay  2014 Through the burbs and suburbs and exurbs we go until we get to North Adams where we spend the night.  North Adams in Massachusetts, I believe, is the location of the southern terminus of the Long Trail, the oldest long distance hiking trail in the U S of A.  It was completed… Continue reading One N or Two?

On the drive from Mount Driskill to Mount MagazineLouisiana to ArkansasJune  2012 Highpointing racks up a lot of miles on the road.  Brings up random, but essential, existential issues.  To wit… Kermit + whiskey + cigarettes = Yoda. Or alternately… Kermit + Tom Waits = Yoda.

Shenandoah National ParkWhiteoak Canyon TrailheadMay  2023 Some recreational areas place signboards at trailhead.  These vertical information centers inform you of what to expect on your hike:  route finding, elevation, distance, landmarks, hazards, attractions and maps. As we approach this particular trailhead, and therefore a signboard, we encounter a woman with a furrowed brow, staring at… Continue reading How Tough Is It?

Clingmans DomeTennesseeMay  2013 Getting our gear and lunch together, we leave our car in a small road-side clearing on Clingmans Dome Road, step into the woods and within a hundred feet, onto the Appalachian Trail.  We turn left onto this granddaddy of America’s long trails, the famous and fabled A T. Our destination, Clingmans Dome,… Continue reading Stringbean

Pittsfield/Mount GreylockMassachusettsMay  2014 Herman Melville was the author of the big fish story called Moby Dick. One of the stops on our drive from Mount Greylock, the high point of Massachusetts, is a home in Pittsfield.  It’s called Arrowhead and this is where Herman Melville, the writer, lived. We briefly tour a small part of… Continue reading Herman Melville & Friend

Mount MitchellNorth CarolinaJuly  2011 Clearly, wilderness trails in the eastern United States are nothing like the sidewalk by your home, nor anything like the tiled floor of the mall. The trail is rough and uneven, an irregular surface marked with dips and holes, roots and rocks.  Hikers often realize that, for the past twenty minutes,… Continue reading Sneakers