It has been a whirlwind trip with lots of hotels and driving, but highpoints number 1-7 of our Northeast 8 State Highpoints in 17 Days Trip are in the bag leaving only Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine and a physically demanding climb.
It’s 4:00 PM on Monday October 6th 2014 and Susan and I are standing on e summit of Mt Washington the highest peak in New Hampshire. It’s cold and windy, but actually quite good weather for this mountain which has notoriously bad weather.
The full Mount Washington Trip Report is posted here.
It’s 2:31 PM October 5th and Susan and I are standing on the cold and windy summit of Mt Mansfield.
Susan does not dig the weather, so we are taking a couple of summit photos and heading right back down. She did well taking only a single break on the way up.
The full trip report is posted here.
I needed to take care of some business and needed a quiet place to work and make some phone calls, so we dropped into the historic Algonquin Club in Boston. This is a private club, but is one of the many such clubs that have a reciprocal relationship with the Petroleum Club of Houston of which we are members. The club was oozing with old world class and exclusivity. It was a perfect place to spend an afternoon.
Jerimoth hill has long been considered one of the most difficult highpoints to complete as it is literally located in someone’s backyard. The land owner had a history of shooting at highpointers and holding others at gunpoint until the police arrived booking them for trespassing.
Yesterday Susan and I knocked out The Massachusetts highpoint which was a drive up. We woke up to rainy weather, but found it a bit cooler which was nice.
A Beautiful Drive
On our way to Mt. Greylock we drove through the idealized countryside of the Berkshires which is dotted with farms, cottages and old barns which left me wondering where the real homes are. I suspect these are cardboard facades put up for the tourists and the real homes are hiding behind them. No matter the case, this is a beautiful part of America.
We are now standing at the HP in CT. This is the hardest highpoint that Susan has done with me. She found the steep rocky sections challenging, but she took her time and got it done. It’s overcast but we can see color dappled valleys from Here.
The 2,380′ highpoint of Connecticut is not actually not summit of Mt Frissel which is in Massassachusets but the shoulder. To get here you climb over the top of Mt Frissell and drop down to the CT/MA state line. We are standing directly over the state line in the photo. The green marker near my right foot is the state lone marker, so that point is the highest you can be and still be in CT. If you climb back up higher you will be back in Massachusetts.
The Mt Frissell trailhead is right at the Connecticut and Massachusetts state line. The woods are very colorful here and I’m looking forward to getting up higher.
Susan and I are preparing to leave the trailhead now. Satellite tracking is active and I estimate well take 4 hrs or so allowing for photography.
At 1:00PM today Susan and I stood atop High Point, New Jersey. Yes, this highpoint is actually named “High Point”. In addition to the unimaginative moniker, it sports a copy of DC’s Washington Monument. Given the chance I would rename this one “Point Lacks Imagination”.
So I find myself waiting on Susan to get her makeup clothes and the like just right. I realize it is important that a girl look pretty while hiking so I wait patiently.
So how to occupy myself? I scanned an article on the plane yesterday so here is my first attempt at Origami.
Thought I might score some points with Susan by getting us front row seats to La Bette. Wow, it’s amazing what passes for theater these days. Susan was falling asleep, and I did not try to wake her as it seemed cruel to subject her to more of it. I tried to go to sleep myself but the main character who droned on for a solid hour kept SCREAMING. I was regretting the front row seats and just praying for the intermission so we could slink away. I am a country boy, but I know bad when I see it. So much for the spousal points, this has set me back weeks.
So if you find yourself in Philly, avoid La Bette like the plague that it is. This is a link to La Bette, whatever you do, DONT CLICK IT!
Around 5:00PM today we climbed to the dangerous summit of Ebright Azimuth. Well actually there was no climbing involved, as this highpoint is at the end of a busy three way intersection in a suburban neighborhood not far from the Philadelphia International Airport. We did have to doge traffic and that was sort of dangerous.
Susan and leave for the Northeastern part of America tomorrow and we plan to nail 8 state highpoints in 17 days while taking in the fall colors this area is famous for. Most of the highpoints in this part of the country are fairly easy, but it is a very ambitious travel schedule. I’m actually surprised that Susan agreed to it at all as she generally prefers a more leisurely pace, while I like to get things done. At any rate, we’ve been married 21 years and hopefully still will be when we get back.
After a tiny bit of urging (she hit me with a 2×4) from my good friend and marketing maven Winnie Hart @FlyTwinEngine, I have setup a twitter account and linked it to the Danger Blog. Winnie is the one on the right, no the left, heck, I can never tell…
Pardon the non climbing post, but I could not pass up the opportunity to participate in the social media phenomenon that has the likes of Bill Gates and George W. Busch dumping ice-water on their heads for charity. And the results are staggering. Typical annual donations to the ALS Orginization are in the 2 million range, jumping to 94 million since the ice bucket craze and is climbing 10 million per day. There are just over 500 of you on this list, so you may all consider yourselves officially challenged. If you do it, or have already done it, comment back to this post with your video link.
My Version of the Ice Bucket Challenge
Given that I’ve crossed more than one icy mountain river wearing only my hat, swam in glacial pools and bathed in streams
directly fed by melting snow, just dumping a bucket of ice-water on my head didn’t seem like all that much of a challenge.
This Sunday past, (August 10th 2014), I successfully summited the 14,440′ Mt. Elbert which is the highest mountain in Colorado. There was a software update that prevented one of the plugins from posting the real time satellite updates to the blog during the climb, yes this stuff even happens to me. But I got them posted after the fact and added some photos to them as well.
Here is the content from the climb:
Trip Report: www.robertdangerbyrd.com/highpoints/mount-elbert-trip-report
Blog Posts: www.robertdangerbyrd.com/tag/mount-elbert-co
Photo Gallery: www.robertdangerbyrd.com/gallery/mount-elbert
GPS Track: www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=2920123
You will find the post climb content and status for all of my highpoints here: www.robertdangerbyrd.com/us-state-highpoint-list
Back at the trailhead and feeling pretty good aside from some blisters. Got a few thousand photos, will post later. About to head back down the jeep road.
Finally got below the weather. It’s overcast, cool & easy going now. Making good time. Hungry, taking a food break now at 12,260′.
Feeing good, but it’s time to break out the hard shell jacket. It’s much colder, windier and snow turned to hail.
Not so pleasant now, should be below worst of weather soon.
Spent 20 minutes on the summit. Just had an impressive temperature drop, wind increasing, snowing on summit now. Storm moving in in earnest. Headed down now.
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