Not too many people know what Hiking Challenges are and where to find them. Throughout this article, I will tell you about some hiking challenges, explain what is compiled on a hiking challenge, and where to find them.
Most of the New England Hiking challenges are on http://4000footers.com/lists.shtml . However if you are looking for hiking challenges across the globe I would recommend https://peakery.com/challenges/ . I will go into both websites and explain how to navigate the challenges.
I am going to start off in New England, this is where I am currently working on two hiking challenges which are 52 With a View (WAV) and the NE 67.
The 52 WAV also known as the Over the Hill hiking challenge is a list compiled of 52 mountains in New Hampshire under 4000ft elevation that all have spectacular views. The list shown up above is the list that I use. They do have a printable version if you go to the following page. http://4000footers.com/list_52wav.shtml. While navigating this list you will notice that it displays the elevation of each mountain. However elevation is not always the best indicator for difficulty. I will reveal a few simple ways to check the difficulty in the article "How to Choose the Hike for You". Some of the mountains on this list have a link dedicated to that specific mountain. Mount Roberts for example when you click on the link it offers information such as the elevation, the location (town and state), and some features with the trail (summit views, 52 WAV, and Castle in the Clouds). Also on this mountain page are some photographs of the mountain itself.
Unfortunately not every mountain on this list has a link. If you decide to use this website I would recommend using alltrails or Gaia GPS with it to get your trail information. I would only use this list as what it is, a list of mountains.
At least the NE 67 mountain list is better if you do want to use this site than the 52WAV.
What I really enjoy about the NE 67 list is that it is color coded by state. Also all the mountains on this page have links to them. Other than that this list has the same features as the 52WAV.
If you want more information that what these New England specific lists have to offer I would recommend checking out Peakery.
When you first go to Peakery under the challenges section you will see a spectacular and interactive world map.
In the top right hand corner it displays the number of challenges across the world and this number is updated as more challenges come out. Once on the page you can hover over each country and see how many challenges are associated with that country. I am amazed that the United States has over half the amount of challenges world wide.
I chose to look at all the challenges in the United states to display the Pros and Cons of this interactive map. As you can see there are states with clusters of hikes (New Hampshire, Vermont, Washington, California, and others). There are also states that do not have any hiking challenges (North Dakota, Louisiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and others). This feature is great if you are going to a state or country with challenges that are not clustered. This is what happens when you hover over a clustered area.
Once hovering over a clustered area the system seems to lag and makes navigating in these areas much more difficult. Also you can see some challenges are stacked on top of one another making it near impossible to navigate. If you are going to a heavily populated area of challenges then I would suggest either searching for the mountain or for the challenge you wish to pursue in the area you are traveling.
Here I searched for Mount Shaw and as you can see it comes up with every peak with shaw in the name. It also displays the mountain's elevation, prominence, region, the mountain range it is part of, the challenges that are associated with this mountain (there can be more than one), the amount of successful summits, and how recent the last successful summit was. This provides a lot more specific details in comparison to the New England hiking lists.
If you click on the number of successful summits it will display in what months the successful hikes occurred. This is great when planning what month to go, especially if you want to avoid the crowds. I completed Mount Shaw in the month of August and I saw 2 other people the 6 hours I was on the trail. Both were on the way down from the summit.
If you click on a particular challenge or search for a challenge this is the information you will receive.
It will display the amount of peaks in that challenge, the number of people pursuing that particular challenge and how many people finished it. This number is all relative because it only accounts for the people who have signed up for and track their hikes through peakery.
Also when looking at the challenges, there is a map that shows the locations of all the peaks, the peaks tab will list all of the mountains in the fashion of when I searched for an individual mountain, the summits tab is similar to the season chart the only difference is this graph is for all of the peaks in the challenge not for a particular mountain.
If you do decide to sign up for peakery (which I do recommend) you can log each of your hikes, and if you use a GPS tracker you can input the GPS file and it will keep track of the amount of summits you have completed (different mountains and the same mountain are 2 different numbers), the total elevation gain, the total mileage, and it will actually determine your level of hiking based on the routes you've take. For the website to keep track of all this information is amazing and the reason why I signed up for it. You can also log and share your trail stories for each hike you complete.
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