Jerimoth Hill

Rhode Island's highest point is not a terribly difficult climb. The route finding is easy, the distance is minimal, and the elevation gain unremarkable. The view from the summit is ... blocked by the trees.

Jerimoth Hill, all 812' of it, is in western Rhode Island, not far from the Connecticut state line. State Route 101 crosses the hill near the summit, so the final leg is an almost level trail not more than a few hundred yards long. The summit is marked by steel ammo canister - I didn't add my name.  Nearby are some storage sheds and what I assumed were telescope mounts - Brown maintains the site as a potential observatory.

Until recently, this was one of the more difficult high points to reach, as the the owners of the adjacent land weren't keen on visitors, but now the summit is marked on the highway and the trail is open to all. There are residences nearby, visible through the woods.

For other state high points, some perhaps more familiar, or at least a bit more dramatic, check out hshipman: highpoint.

Panorama Point

Our trip west was pretty simple. Madison to Des Moines. And then Interstate 80 pretty much the whole way to the Bay Bridge. One of the few places we left it was on the west edge of Nebraska, where we took a series of zigzagging gravel farm roads to Panorama Point.

Panorama Point (5424') lies just a short hop from the corner where Nebraska runs up against Wyoming and Colorado. Nebraska, like Kansas, slopes gradually upward so its highest point inevitably lies near its western border.

The monument marking Nebraska's high point is a bit more conventional than the one on top of Mt. Sunflower, but both lie on private land atop broad hills that would be hard to mistake for mountains. This marker was placed by the Kimball Chamber of Commerce, apparently allowing them to refer to their town as the high point of Nebraska! (Although Kimball itself lies in a valley 25 miles away). The thing that looks like a grill is actually an old metal drafting table with the summit register tucked inside.

We could make out the snow-capped front range of Colorado in the distance below the clouds. I hadn't been sure whether we'd actually be able to see the mountains from Nebraska or not, although I recalled that they were visible from Pawnee Buttes just south of here in Colorado (one of which I had climbed back in either 1980 or 1983).

The sign warned of ranging bison, but they were nowhere to be seen. We did pass the old schoolhouse, several miles away, but it didn't look like it had been used in a very long time.

Mt. Sunflower

It's not every day that I get an opportunity to drive across Kansas, so I wanted to make the most of the roughly 24 hours I had allotted!

Driving from west to east, the obvious place to start is Mt. Sunflower, the highest point in Kansas. Given the general tilt of the Great Plains, it makes sense that the high point is near the state's western edge and, in fact, it's only about 1/4 mile from Colorado (we'll run into the same basic situation when we visit Nebraska's highest point next week).

Mt. Sunflower is on private land, but is well-signed and freely accessible. And the summit is nicely marked - someone put some effort into this! The final approach isn't too difficult, even for a passenger car, and there is plenty of parking. One could actually traverse around the summit without ever leaving the car. The elevation (4039') is clearly noted. The summit register is in a mailbox.

I am adding "highpoint" label to the blog, now that my collection has reached critical mass. I have no intention, or need, to collect them all, but I'll pick them up when and where I can. Note that while I reached the summit of some of these, some remained elusive and we'll have to settle for views from afar.

Other high points on hshipman

West Texas

I wonder what M would have said if I'd told her her surprise trip would be to Los Angeles and West Texas? I guess its a good thing I didn't tell her where we were going ahead of time.

Carlsbad was the farthest point on our big 48-hour loop southeast from Albuquerque. But in order to complete our clockwise loop, we needed to head west towards Las Cruces before heading north again. And that meant Texas for a few hours. And El Paso. I had long since decided against the side trip into Juarez!

This drive is pretty desolate, but there's a neat section that skirts the south end of the Guadalupe Mountains and El Capitan.  The part of me that collects obscure state high points would have loved to hike up Guadalupe Peak (the highest point in Texas), but this was not the trip for it. Maybe the next time I'm passing through!

Harney Peak

I like road trips, but not just for the endless driving. It's nice to have some distractions - like tourist traps, side trips, and occasionally a more ambitious outing. It's also nice to combine road trips with esoteric hobbies, like collecting beaches, noting important watersheds, and where feasible, chalking up new high points.

Previous high points:  hshipman: Hawkeye Point 2012

Harney Peak is the highest point in South Dakota and another to add to a growing list (not a list I have any intention of actually completing, by the way). I was glad that D was willing to join his old man for this 7-8 mile round trip to the stone tower on top of the 7244' summit of the Black Hills.

The tourist brochures like to claim that this is the highest point between the Rockies and the Alps, although D and I questioned the technical accuracy a little bit.

Hawkeye Point

Hawkeye Point, the highest point in the state of Iowa (1670'), is a spectacular summit just south of the Minnesota border.  It's surrounded my corn fields and is marked by flags, a monument, and the grain silo of the Sterler Farm (the Sterlers allowed access previously, but with their passing, the site is now publicly-owned).

I've been gradually building my high point collection.  Some like Denali (AK), I'll never climb, but at least I've seen from from close up.  Similarly with Mount Rainier and Mount Hood.  Mt Whitney (CA) and Mt. Elbert (CO) I climbed the summer after high school.  Mt Katahdin (ME) and Mount Washington (NH) I climbed earlier, although the latter I've come back to many times, including by car.  Devon and I reached Brasstown Bald (GA), Mount Mitchell (NC), and Black Mountain (KY) on a road trip a few years ago.  We all drove up to Mount Greylock (MA) two years ago.

Hawkeye Point was an easy climb - but far less crowded than some of the others.

Camp Muir

Camp Muir is at just over 10,000', high on the southeast side of Mount Rainier. It sits at the crest of the Muir Snowfield, about 4.5 miles and 4500 vertical feet above Paradise. It's the standard overnight spot for folks heading to the summit and a strenuous day hike for the rest of us.

The only thing that slowed D on the way up was his old man, since he was patient enough to stop and wait for me to catch up every few hundred steps. But a little more than four hours after leaving the parking lot, he arrived at Camp Muir. I staggered in ten minutes later. We munched on our salami and cheese and most of a package of cookies, and then headed down, sliding down chutes in our rain pants where it was steep enough and walking the rest. It was just over two hours back down.

Camp Muir is a dark speck between rocky hummocks just to the right and above the center point of the bottom picture - the tree is pointing just right of it. If you look carefully at the expanded image, you can see the tracks leading up the snowfield towards it.

Mount Rainier

My notion of an early start isn't the same as D's, but that gave me lots more time to drink my coffee and ponder the campfire.

Monday morning and not a cloud in the sky! And there was still room in the main lot at Paradise, too. We hit the trail a little after 11 -- with a few brief exceptions it was snow from Paradise all the way up to Camp Muir.

Mount Washington

I'd never driven up Mount Washington until two years ago - and now I've done it twice. The Subaru made it with little problem. We were warned at the base that the top was in the clouds, but I wanted to do it anyway and although it was socked in when we got to the summit, it cleared while we were there.

It may be the first time I've ever been on the summit when their wasn't ice on the railings and rocks, but it was still much more pleasant than at sea level. The wind was blowing - though closer to 30-35 than to 231 mph. The summit and the drive up are impressive by New England standards, but were put in perspective by the 12,000' Bear Tooth Highway less than two weeks later.

Mount Greylock

One more walk in Central Park. One more breakfast at Norma's. D helped me load the rocket box back onto the car and pack up the camping stuff. And we headed out of town - back west across the GW Bridge and up the Palisades Parkway. We drove around Storm King and then up the Taconic Parkway to the Turnpike (I-90) before heading into Massachusetts.

We wound up the road to Mount Greylock and made it to the top before the sun set. We were back in North Adams for a late dinner at Subway and to Northampton for the night. The weather is getting much warmer and much muggier. It looks like we timed our three days in the city just right.

Black Mountain

The highest point in Kentucky lies just over the Virginia line, and probably directly over enough coal to light Atlanta for a day or two. The road between Appalachia VA and Lynch KY winds up and over the ridge -- the Virginia side is a big strip mine and the Kentucky side is a historic coal mining town, so one can probably assume that the fossil swamp (the coal) lies beneath Black Mountain, too.

Compared to yesterday's summits, this one is pretty lame. Not just because it is lower (4145'), but because it lacks a certain respect. It is privately held by a coal company, although apparently the mineral rights to the coal beneath are now owned by the state? - presumably to prevent the top from being removed to get at the coal beneath. The waiver we downloaded online and signed before arriving made it clear who WAS NOT responsible for anything foolish we might do on the summit.

The waiver also required us to agree that we would not "under any circumstances, nor at any time, assert that the property ... has become or should be deemed a public park." Which I will not assert. On the other hand, I think Kentucky should make the second highest mountain in the state a park (if it hasn't already been strip mined away), so if this one were to collapse, or the mountaintop were to accidentally be removed, they would be ready to give the highest point a bit more honor than they have this one! Sort of a public lands investment strategy.

I understand the desire to exchange fossil carbon for heat and light, but given that these coal beds pretty much underlie most of western Appalachia, it doesn't bode well for the future scenery of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia!