Recent content by Puma concolor

Seems like a good guy. Glad he’s OK. (y) College Graduation Speech

The latest … Donovin Sprague to lead hike and program on sacred Indian Peak Bear Butte Also, I’ll be heading back to South Dakota in early April for another round of logistics and planning. Approaching 80 registered attendees with still nearly 5 months to go until the Convention. Gonna be a...

Seeing a surprising number of registrations rolling in from the New England states! Keep ‘em coming and Keep Klimbin’!

So online registration is now live! State Highpointers 2024 Konvention Come on out to Rapid City, South Dakota this coming July to join a group of mountaineers (yes, we’re actual mountaineers) who all aspire to climb to peaks multiple times as big as anything the Northeast has to offer! Not...

Very cool. I attempted Lost Pond Peak via this route in winter about 10 years back but was thwarted by some cliffs up high. Congrats!

Had a chance to talk all things State Highpointing - including the 2024 Konvention - on the latest episode of the Trail Talk Podcast with Lauren Toner. Fun conversation! Episode 41: Trail Talk Highpointing Podcast

I’ve gone hiking in Maine regularly during hunting season for the past several years (including near Jackman). Mostly trail-less stuff. Wore a reflective yellow vest a few times and nothing distinctive a few other times. Hunters are everywhere - mostly cruising the dirt roads at 10 or 15 MPH -...

I mean, 5 day forecasts get nailed all the time. More often than not. Most of us here plan trips off of them. Just saying. My wife always teases me to not pay too much attention to the two week forecast but usually by the time it’s five days out, you have a pretty good idea. Perfect, no, but...

Been a pretty brisk November as things go inland. Eastern NY State by the Vermont border as well as up in Northern Maine. If all else fails, there’s always Anchorage.

Oh man! I would have definitely helped you out there if I’d known. Was very happy to have a rental 4WD Suburu Outback with brand new tires for Beaudry/Gold Brook Road on Friday morning. Turned off of Route 27 sometime around 7:30 AM. Those first few miles are pretty steadily uphill. And...

More rant. So I took a little bit of a wrong turn on my hike today and wound up on the Maine/Quebec border swath. I knew I was high on Caribou and spent quite a bit of time investigating various possibilities. During this, I repeatedly referenced the above Delorme topo pic and found it...

OK. So wow. If you follow the ”road” to the southwest (left and a little down) of the wind farm project, you get the real summit location as seen by the contours. Not sure why they slapped a wrong elevation and a misplaced fire tower where they don’t belong. And still no 3500’ contour circle.

So I’m up in way yonder Maine closing out the New England Fifty Finest. Did Saddleback (no, not that one) today for what is kinda sorta #50. Attempting Caribou tomorrow for some bonus credit. Long story, but Caribou is shorter than Kibby by a few feet and therefore doesn’t count for squat …...

While his status as the first to summit all 14 8K meter peaks may be in question, Messner’s status as one of the great adventurers of all time is not. Messner’s exploits took place and were well-documented before my time and as a young man, I read quite a number of his books and continued to...

So Hawley ran the Himalayan Database whereas Jurgalski’s “authority” comes from 8000ers.com, which he runs. This is all basically new information from last year that was “discovered” after Hawley had passed. The Guinness Book of Records just made its own assessment of the new data to reach its...