US State Highpoints

The fifty state highpoints

Highpointing is the most democratic mountaineering project in America. The list runs from Denali at 20,310 feet, which needs three weeks and serious expedition skills, to Florida's Britton Hill at 345 feet, which needs a parking spot. Somewhere in the middle are the ones that make it a hobby: Guadalupe Peak in Texas, Mount Marcy in New York, Katahdin in Maine, Mount Washington in New Hampshire, and the big western summits — Rainier, Hood, Gannett, Granite, Borah — that demand glacier travel or long backcountry days.

The Highpointers Club, founded in 1987, keeps the official count. Roughly 300 people have finished all fifty, mostly because Denali stops almost everyone; finishing the "lower 48" is far more common and a respectable goal in its own right. Around half the highpoints are drive-ups or short walks, which is why families take this on and why it's such a good excuse for a road trip through states you'd never otherwise visit.

Planning the list

Group them by region and the logistics work out. The Northeast has eight highpoints in a week by car, New Jersey to Maine. The Midwest's are mostly farm hills with a plaque — Iowa's Hawkeye Point, Indiana's Hoosier Hill, Illinois' Charles Mound (open only a few weekends a year, on private land). The Mountain West is where you need fitness and a calendar: Gannett Peak in Wyoming is a multi-day backpack, Granite Peak in Montana involves exposed scrambling, and Rainier is a guided glacier climb for most.

Click a highpoint badge or its pin to mark it reached, again for want-to-climb. The companion lowpoints map is the tongue-in-cheek mirror image, and if you've done Canada's, the provincial highpoints are here too.

The drive-ups and the epics

A rough breakdown: about a dozen highpoints you can drive to or within a few hundred feet of, including Mount Mitchell in North Carolina (the highest point east of the Mississippi), Clingmans Dome in Tennessee, Mount Washington by auto road, and Brasstown Bald in Georgia. Another twenty or so are day hikes of varying seriousness — Humphreys Peak, Guadalupe Peak, Wheeler Peak, Boundary Peak. Then the hard dozen: Denali, Rainier, Gannett, Granite, Borah, Hood, Mount Marcy in winter, and the rest. The Highpointers Club convention each summer is where finishers and aspirants compare notes, and the club's guidebook is still the best single source on access and private-land etiquette.