Hiking the Grand Canyon is one of those experiences where once just isn’t enough. I’m not sure you can take it all in even after doing it twice. How many times does it take? Not sure yet. This past weekend, I hiked across for the 4th and 5th time and still loved every minute of…
Tag: hiking
2021 Year in Review
2021 was a great year for getting some hiking stuff accomplished! I wasn’t so much about reaching a specific mileage tally or total elevation gain this time. Instead, my focus was more about knocking a few significant things off my list. My biggest goal for the year was to get all lower 48 states west…
65,000 Grand Steps from Rim to Rim
I got to do one of my favorite hikes last week for the 3rd time, a crossing of the Grand Canyon from rim to rim! This is an epic adventure that every hiker should do at least once. The views are like none other, the challenge is definitely noteworthy and the fact that one can…
Touched the Top o’ Texas
This makes 21/50 for me and brings my season of State Highpoints to an end for the year. 12 states in 5 months has been one heck of a ride! Guadalupe is one of the easier ones, I think! …right up there with Humphreys, Mansfield and maybe even Marcy. You climb a mere 2,800′ over…
Wicked Wind of the West on Wheeler
This was our second peak of choice after doing Boundary the day before. The original plan was to do a Whitney-Boundary combo but the wildfire situation in California forced them to close all their trails. That’s when our goal changed to 3 peaks in 3 days with Boundary and Wheeler in Nevada, followed by a…
An Unexpected Trifecta in New Hampshire
The second in my COVID Fall Series of State Highpoints took place in New Hampshire on the glorious Presidential Range. This prominent peak was my primary reason for coming to the East Coast from the very beginning. Vermont’s highpoint was only added at the last minute when I saw how close it was to where…
Fall Series starts in the East on Mansfield
Since September was a bust with Colorado, my focus turned to the plans I had in the East for October. This idea began taking shape back in May after COVID shut down the world and killed my EBC trip. At that time, I thought we would surely be through all this Coronavirus stuff by Fall…
Kings Peak and a Utah Trifecta
#3 in my COVID Summer Series of State Highpoints is Utah’s own, Kings Peak. The goal was for my neighbor Chad and I to do the Utah Triple Crown; which is all three of our tallest peaks, in order, in one day. Those peaks are Kings (13,528′) , South Kings (13,518′) and Gilbert (13,499′). However,…
Third Reunion with Borah Peak
An annual family reunion on my wife’s side leads me to the second in my COVID Summer Series of State Highpoints. On the 3rd weekend in July, for as long as she can remember, families from her mother’s lineage gather together for the Armstrong Reunion in the remote community of Mackay, Idaho (pronounced Mackie; pop….
Summer Series kicks off on Humphrey’s
Accomplishing state highpoints wasn’t a serious goal for me until COVID killed all kinds of other plans I had this year. A few of these have already been on my bucket list for a while now, but not with any kind of serious effort to git’em done. So with COVID making the door clear and…