The NH 48
In the summer of 1985, at the end of my first week-long vacation from Meditech, I hiked what's known as The Pemi Loop . For me, it was just an interesting-looking loop to spend a few days walking. Sometime on the first day, I summited one of New Hampshire's 48 4K peaks , Bondcliff, and I went on to top seven more 4Ks on that hike. Like the Loop itself, I wasn't aware at the time that those peaks were regarded as anything special. In the years that followed, I climbed more of the 4K mountains, but not as part of any effort to get all 48. I found a mention in these reports from 1991 of specifically "bagging" a 4K peak (West Bond) and another in 1999 (Galehead), but it wasn't until 2018 that I really began focusing on the list, following a group hike up Mt. Eisenhower . That hike brought my peak total to 20. I'd recently retired and I got inspired. My first priority was three "orphan" peaks, usually climbed in pairs with a second nearby peak, b...