Obsession

PEAK BAGGERS:

WASHINGTON’S HUNDRED HIGHEST

People obviously climb for a lot of different reasons. There is a special group of climbers who climb, at least in part, to check off items on a list. In the late eighties and early nineties there was a legendary group of climbers in Seattle called the “Bulgers”. The Bulgers climbed hard, had an every-man-for-himself style, and signed summit registers with animal names. Many of them ended up working on a list of the hundred highest peaks in the state. This project was good for a lot of debate concerning the criteria for drawing up the list (what constitutes a discrete mountain, anyway?) and in addition to the Bulger list a couple of other lists also circulated. Here is a link to the Bulger list as published on the Boealps website in 1999, including a write-up of John “Lizard” Lixvar’s hundred highest. (Peggy Goldman’s book based on the bulger list isn’t nearly as interesting as Lixvar’s write-up.) Here is a link to the Jeff Howbert lists (home court / back court) that build on the work of Lixvar, John Roper and Steve Fry. Here is a link to the seminal article by Steve Fry in the 1983-90 Mountaineer “Annual”.

The list below is Fry’s list which I got emailed to me in 1993 without attribution by a guy who worked at Microsoft. You’ll notice that once you get past the top twenty-five or thirty you’re into some pretty obscure mountains.