Fastest known time.

[Neil]

The first person who does it for speed gets to make the rules.

What if they consider bushwhacking down off of the mountain that they climbed via a trail, to be a bushwhack?

 

[Raymond]

Each method gets its own record. The people decide which are worthy of recognition and which aren’t.

 

[BlackSpruce]

Great an ADIRONDACKISH SECT is soon to be! For sure NBC/ABC/CBS will let go of track and fields and downhill skiing competitions to present 24/7 climbers speed whacking from peak to peak to peak to peak...!

Neil, there is big money potential for you out there, you could have a reality show going for months covered in pine needles, clothes torn, legs and arms bleeding, covered by flies... climbing over... crawling under... and as Raymond said "let the people decide who wins".

 

[Neil]

Great an ADIRONDACKISH SECT is soon to be! For sure NBC/ABC/CBS will let go of track and fields and downhill skiing competitions to present 24/7 climbers speed whacking from peak to peak to peak to peak...!

Neil, there is big money potential for you out there, you could have a reality show going for months covered in pine needles, clothes torn, legs and arms bleeding, covered by flies... climbing over... crawling under... and as Raymond said "let the people decide who wins".

LOL!
My agents are hammering out the details even as we speak. There is just one little detail however. Bushwhacking, as a spectator sport doesn't have the "camera appeal" of tennis or golf. Not to worry, we're working on changing that.
Who cares whether the hikers of yesterday were " better" or more "REAL". As the tools of the trade improve modern hikers work just as hard, if not harder, than their predecessors. But, they cover a lot more ground.

There is only one thing that "counts" in all of this whacky bizness:

Who is having the most fun?

Congrats to Spencer!

 

[Kevin Rooney]

Each method gets its own record. The people decide which are worthy of recognition and which aren’t.

Yes, that seems to be the convention the New Englanders have adopted, but ... those New Yorkers have a slightly different lean, like when winter begins/ends, which peaks are on "the list", etc - so they'd be free to adopt a different convention(s).

 

[Puma concolor]

This has all the promise of a "World's Fastest Turtle" contest.

 

[Raymond]

I was at work when I typed that previous response, so I couldn’t give it as much thought as I should have.

I think Cave Dog summed it up on his website, that if anyone wants to increase the difficulty of the feat, he or she must beat his time first, by using the harder rule. For example, if you don’t like that the speed round of 46 ends atop the 46th peak, you have to hike out to the trail head but still beat the time. Only then can you declare that hiking out to the trail head after the 46th peak is a condition. Or if you don’t use the East River Club’s private roads to approach Allen, you’ll have to not use them but still manage a faster time.

The bushwhacking game as established by John Winkler doesn’t seem to have written rules, except for his own journals or magazine articles, and as I understood it, he used trails except for climbing from what he considered to be the base of the mountain to the top, and that’s it. Not back down again or all the way out or anywhere else. Except for the actual ascent, trails were acceptable.

So Black Spruce, I’d say that if you want to make it tougher for Neil, you may have to go out and establish the rules by setting the record.

Or, if there are competing records, it may be left to the hiking public to decide which seems the greater challenge or worthier feat.

 

[Neil]

Lest this thread get too academic I should mention that my intentions are pretty tongue and cheek, although if someone creeps out from under a cripplebush and really attacks it as a speed challenge that would be fun to watch - if they wrote it up.

The only feat worthy of the name IMO is the feat of having fun while focusing on a goal.

 

[BlackSpruce]

I believe JW went down the mountain bushwhacking for some and he certainly was not into setting any rules or going for any kind of record, just out there having a grand time!

 

[Neil]

How's this for a simple rule: it has to be car to car entirely off-trail and no gps's are allowed. That pretty much raises the bar to a respectable height and would silence any "yeah-buts" lurking behind keyboards.

 

[Pete_Hickey]

How's this for a simple rule: it has to be car to car entirely off-trail .....

Dang!!!! I wanted to work on that, but from time to time I go down by bicycle, so I'm out of luck.

 

[TCD]

Neil, do you not have enough to do? Time on your hands?

You need a hobby...I've got it! Why not take up hiking?

 

[Neil]

Dang!!!! I wanted to work on that, but from time to time I go down by bicycle, so I'm out of luck.

Pete, if you traveled by bike back and forth from your home up Canaday way to the Dacks and hiked all 46 peaks you too would deserve a B.

 

[Neil]

Neil, do you not have enough to do? Time on your hands?

Time. One of the most common laments I hear these days is not having enough time. Strange as this might seem, I actually planned my life around having lots and lots of time, not money. Time to bushwhack, time to read, time to heal people, time to think, time to be.

I will never be a human doing. I'm destined to be a human being.

So, now that I've cleared that up, if you hike up a peak via a marked trail but bushwhack off of it would you count it as a bushwhacked peak? I ask the question because after whacking Dix via an outlier peak and the Beckhorn Slide we rode the herd path to Hough and bushwhacked off of Hough to the Boquet herd path. My partner was surprised that I didn't count Hough and I got the impression he viewed me as a hopeless case of OCD.

 

[Raymond]

It usually seems a lot easier to bushwhack down than up, so I think that would be a different feat, not part of the same one.

 

[BlackSpruce]

Neil,
Now, if like it is the case with Hough (and a few other High Peaks) I have in winter and in summer bushwhacked up and down same trip (and several times to make matter worse) do I have to do the same for all of the 46 to be able to say that I have bushwhacked the 46 since I did, even though quite involuntarily, set up rules for myself by my choice of means to a few of the peaks? As if I understand your latest post you may be incline to rile my accomplishments till the end of times...

 

[Raven]

Time. One of the most common laments I hear these days is not having enough time. Strange as this might seem, I actually planned my life around having lots and lots of time, not money. Time to bushwhack, time to read, time to heal people, time to think, time to be.

I will never be a human doing. I'm destined to be a human being.

Brilliant.

 

[Neil]

Neil,
Now, if like it is the case with Hough (and a few other High Peaks) I have in winter and in summer bushwhacked up and down same trip (and several times to make matter worse) do I have to do the same for all of the 46 to be able to say that I have bushwhacked the 46 since I did, even though quite involuntarily, set up rules for myself by my choice of means to a few of the peaks? As if I understand your latest post you may be incline to rile my accomplishments till the end of times...

This is the best post on the thread so far because it brings to light an important issue.

For starters I can't pass up the mention of accomplishments and riling or (in my words) judging. Accomplishments are nothing in my opinion, experiences are everything. The most important reason to do anything, whether it be a winter bushwhack up and down Hough Peak or an easy romp up the first Brother to pick blueberries, is to experience something that makes us feel good, not to accomplish something. And this brings me face to face with an inconsistency.

Most of us here keep track of the peaks we have hiked to the top of and we check them off against a list that was established by someone other than ourselves. Correct?

So, if the actual experience is the most important element of peakbagging then keeping track of our progress against a list that was created by someone else totally negates that and suggests that we hike these peaks in order to compare ourselves to a bunch of strangers.

But, every hike I have done has brought me right back to where I started from.

What has been accomplished? Nothing.

What has been experienced? Plenty.

Now, within the confines of bushwacking the 46: It doesn't matter what rules you set for yourself. However, setting forth one's own personal rules is very important in order to assure a consistent experience throughout the endeavor of bushwhacking to the top of each peak.

 

[iceNsnow]

Ha!! I like that " every hike brings you back to where you started " so nothing is accomplished!

BUT I must disagree on the statement that " setting forth one's own personal rules is very important in order to assure a consistent experience throughout the endeavor of bushwhacking to the top of each peak. "

I don't think that every peak lends itself to the same kind of adventure as every other peak and therefore it isn't possible for every bushwhack to be of the same degree as every other peak. Some mts need more than one route and others I struggle to find anything particularly noteworthy other than checking it off The List. I may need that Big Check Mark!

 

[Raven]

And this brings me face to face with an inconsistency.

Most of us here keep track of the peaks we have hiked to the top of and we check them off against a list that was established by someone other than ourselves. Correct?

So, if the actual experience is the most important element of peakbagging then keeping track of our progress against a list that was created by someone else totally negates that and suggests that we hike these peaks in order to compare ourselves to a bunch of strangers.

If I may jump in with some random comments as I have thought about this question often:

1. Everyone who hikes gets his or her ideas for destinations somewhere...a guidebook of some sort, a website, hiker friends, or maybe peakbagging lists. For those obsessed with mountains, whether peakbagger or not, "the lists" are a good place to start, so peakbagging to me is a nice way to get a broad view of the mountains, not always gems, some easy, some hard, the outstanding ones, etc....

2. The word "Peakbagger" means different things to different people. A personal example: when I completed the W48, it was on West Bond. I had done Bond and B.Cliff 6 years prior. I wanted to do an overnight for this one as I had for some others - so it took me 4 more attempts with a backpack before the stars aligned. I could have found easier, lighter, faster, and quite frankly warmer options for "checking it off." We all hike and experience the lists differently. TEHO, HYOH, etc. If blazing through the lists makes one happy, then hell yeah, but even among peakbaggers, we're each unique in our methods/experiences.

3. The experience is different for each "peakbagger" regardless of whether one is hiking a list someone else created and did first...there is always someone who "did it first" on some level - these mountains have all been climbed, named, and mapped. Your experiences hiking a list is a combination of many factors, only one of those being that someone did this group of mountains before. If you believe in impermanence (I do), the trail, you and everything else is in a constant state of change anyway - it's different every time.

4. Let's say I come up with the next great peakbagging list and I'm the first to do it. Have I done something new? On one level yes. On another, no - people before me have been coming up with lists of mountains to climb based on a set of characteristics for years. It's not a new idea, just a new spin off an old one. You can focus in or pull back your perspective a little when looking at this.

I come to the same thought most times when thinking about the more existential issues that accompany peakbagging. To me, the more essential question is not if one is a peakbagger, but rather whether or not one's soul is connected to the mountains.

Just random comments, all my opinion.