>>2859478
>the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas.
no

nothing quite that hard, but um, I liked the thread we had where people post trails for each other to do with coordinates and links and such

for me:
whetstone gulf
stony brook state park
return to letchworth
finally finish watkins glen

pa:
frozen run gorge view
see if i can find a better view of pine creek gorge from the west rim trail (180degree)
grays run vista from bodine mountain road (the other side of frozen run really, fascinating little explored area I think it might be mostly used by mineral extraction operations)
baldwin point
ive been putting off hiking gillespie point for ages now
dingmans falls reopens in the spring hopefully in the del water gap

va:
still havent seen little pinnacle of twin pinnacles but you have to wait until the visitors center opens in may to do the easiest hike for that, I also want to find some (other) nice views near whitetop/mt rogers
figure out if the road to hensley settlement is ever open to the public so I could hike to white rocks without ascending the cumberland front
return to high knob/flag rock near norton va, this is a very curious region of public land and I do wonder if there's any secret overlooks here

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>>2859479
>2859479

True, I derped and meant "highest outside of Asia", my bad.

My strategy for Aconcagua is as follows:

Day 1 - Enter the park after checking in with park rangers, show them your permit and get a trash bag (that they expect you to bring back down with all your shit/trash, otherwise you get fined) and take a short hike (3-4hs) to Camp 0, Confluencia, called this way because this is the confluence of two rivers (from two glaciers on the west and south side respectively. Here you check in with the park rangers again, set up your tent and go to bed. Elevation 3400mts

Day 2 - Starting early I'll take an acclimatization hike to the south wall of the Aconcagua, to Plaza Francia, this is a 4-6 hour chill hike. This is also where technical climbers start their climb which is probably the most dangerous way to go up this mountain. Plaza Francia 4200mts

Day 3-5 - I'll hike to Plaza de Mulas, the actual base camp, this is generally a 6-8 hour hike, where I'll have to check in again with park rangers, get a medical check-up, and I'll start porting my stuff to High Camp 2 (Nido de Condores) over the course of a few days. The altitude here starts being really shitty (4300mts) so getting good rest depending on weather conditions can start to get challenging.

Day 5-15 - Nido de Condores (5300mts), here I'll set camp and wait to get properly acclimated, and practice the approach to the summit (gear wise, route wise) while I check the weather reports for a good weather window. I'll also familiarize with the rescue patrols pace vs regular climbers, to understand pace wise where I should be.

Hopefully I'll have a good weather window before I start running out of food/fuel, I'll honestly probably pay a porter to help me port my stuff to plaza de mulas if I'm too tired after my summit push. Mule takes up to 23kg to the park entrance on the way back.


picrel, dead mule + the thunderstorm that welcomed me last time on my way to plaza de mulas

oh sorry first category was ny state

ky:
red river gorge - hopefully cruise liner rock and star gap, if not then that fire road that leads to a view that the guy owns and has you pay $5 to see (basically a few ridges to the east)
still haven't done hansen's point
there's an overlook at jenny wiley resort state park that used to have a chairlift servicing it

tn:
copper cliffs, just random cliffs I found on tn landforms have to see with bledsoe state forest how the heck to even find it
edwards point near chatt
sunset rock/lookout mountain I think there's like multiple overlooks on this mountain
obed river "the point"
still trying to find the best hike off of the cherohala skyway - the roadside overlooks were ok but I was left wanting

ozarks - ive been researching various places in arkansas and missouri still have more work to do on that

north georgia
rabun bald
the rest of tallulah gorge
there's a bunch of little hikes i found lately in georgia between atlanta and the nc border I forget the names offhand but a lot of like 400ft elevation gain or less
yonah mountain

nc:
blue ridge parkway (the touristy part near linn cove)
black balsam knob
cloudland (has to be finally open this spring?)

this is just what comes to mind

>>2859480
>>2859482

Gillespie Point looks beautiful btw, can you camp there?

Also your list is really cool, I'll save it for reference bc I had no clue about most of these places.

>>2859478
What summits have you done before?
My highest is 6800m and I found the altitude almost impossible to deal with. Basically killed my desire to do anything higher.

>>2859483
I genuinely don't know if there's a campsite at the overlook, I doubt it, but its on the mid state trail so there is camping nearby
I wanna say its tioga state forest but I could be wrong about exactly which one it is and you could email them about it
I've definitely seen some pretty overlooks with campsites right at them in pa
smith's knob you can camp at - that's also on my list
>bc I had no clue about most of these places.
that's my specialty

>Gillespie Point looks beautiful btw,
im slightly fearful the overlook will be slightly obstructed, but otherwise it seems an interesting point where you get a view into two slightly different directions at once (same at smiths knob)

sharp knob you can drive to and I distinctly recall there's a car camping site right next to it but I think you have to reserve and pay 5 dollars a night for car camping sites now in pa (officially)

smoke camp knob in wv you can drive to the top and there's a campsite right at the top
there's also a hiking trail from the bottom if you really wanted a challenge

I bet nobody here will make it to Brumley Falls (va) this year!

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>>2859485
A bunch on 4000-5000 in Mexico (really shitty terrain compared to other countries I've been to). 5200m is my highest summit, but with almost no acclimatization (overnight push).

It has been a coinflip for me, sometimes I have no issues whatsoever, others I feel like shit, but with enough time and doing some scouting to Camp Berlin and a bit higher than that on the previous days I think I'll get a feel for how acclimated I am (and know if I should turn back or not).

Symptoms for me are 80% of the time loss of appetite, no thirst, very light headaches, so it has been more about self policing myself to drink/eat as much as possible until SpO2 gets to 80-85%+.

>>2859487
thanks for all the info, I'll check it out for sure when I'm visiting, I'm always scared of bears in the US trails though ó_ó

>>2859489
Well good luck. AMS never really hit me until 5k but after that it hit me hard. Nothing medically serious and we were able to continue but, man, the exhaustion was rough. Make sure you schedule enough time to acclimatise properly.

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>>2859478
Sounds awesome, Anon. Stay safe!

My challenge for this year is to become comfortable with elevation gains of over 1000 meters in a tour. The most I've done so far was slightly below 900m.
And I want to get more proficient at planning hikes. Becoming less dependent on known routes.

>>2859478
>I'm going "solo", unguided
I like your thinking. Aconcagua looks more appealing than some of the other major Andes peaks (like Chimborazo and Cotopaxi) because you're not required to use a guide. Shame it's such a long flight from the US.

This spring I'm planning to go back out west for a week or two. Maybe out to the Cascades this time since I've never done any /out/ shit in that corner of the country. The biggest deterrent is having to endure multiple flights with layovers, which I normally only do for overseas vacations once a decade.

Alternatively, I may fly direct to LA or Vegas and knock out a bunch of big hikes in the southwest. Starting with that Cactus To Clouds hike on San Jacinto that seems fairly challenging (as far as easy-grade western switchback trails go).

>>2859568
I heard Aconcagua is full of trash and feces. Personally I'm kind of interested in Chimborazo because of the "furthest from the center of the Earth" thing, aka cope since I'll definitely never do Everest.
I also think Ojos del Salado (muh highest volcano) is more appealing than Aconcagua.

>>2859574
more like Aconcaca am I right?

>>2859478
>What challenges do you have in mind for this year?
Cook and consume a gourmet cheeseburger on an overnight backpacking trip.

>>2859565
Oh yeah, and I want to try camping on mountains when it gets warmer.

>>2859611
Very wholesome, looking forward to the photo and your report.

>>2859611
I'll join you with that challenge.

>>2859478
>>2859481
thanks for the info, it's good insight on how to climb easy but tall mountains. the most i've done is 3k summits so the conditions are completely different, but also in terms of planning because it's infinitely shorter than 2 week expeditions like that

how much do you calculate an expedition like this costs? i've never researched a lot but only the flight is in the thousands of euros for me i think

also, any recommendations for people looking to start summiting relatively high mountains solo? i'm in europe so alps is obvious choice, i've been told i should start with Gran Paradiso

OP here. Day -2: I just landed in Mendoza, I landed with 30° Celsius, sunny day and now there's a fucking hailstorm outside. It's crazy how the weather changes here.

>>2859651
It depends a lot on what amount of logistics and gear you're bringing/renting. Assuming you have all the gear (including double boots and a bomb-proof tent), you're looking at:

* Flight costs (depending on the European country can be anywhere from 2-3k USD)
* 2-3 days of hotel (for the paperwork day, + safety day and a night after you're down the mountain) 450-800 USD depending on type of hotel.
* Permits 300-500 USD depending how early you take them.
* Logistics support, like transportation in-out of the mountain, mules, etc. can go from 500-2000 USD.

So yeah, definitely a couple thousand bucks but it varies depending on how you want to do it. Some nationalities get a discount, locals get 50% off.

>>2859482
>challenges

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>>2859672
Made it to the first camp, going to acclimate and chill here for 2 days.

Weather was good coming in but it feels like it will be rainy/snowy for the next week pretty much.

I brought a bunch of ebooks and they have internet on the main camps in case I have to hunker down for a while on the next Basecamp (plaza de mulas).

>>2859854
Good luck anon. This is more impressive than any outing 99% of this board will ever do. I’ll be following your adventure

>>2859854
Good luck man, enjoy your time there. Reading seems to be so much better while /out than at home, everything just seems more interesting.

>>2859854
cool, let us know how it goes

>>2859906
not to be a dick but how impressive are non-technical summits like these are actually? my understanding is that there's a lot of logistics and fitness are necessary, but there are any number of technical peaks or ridges which are harder and more impressive despite being at less than half the elevation. but people focus on altitude because big numbers

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>>2859854
Made it to Plaza Francia today (south wall), to acclimate. Took me 6:30 hours to go and get back to camp. It was a pretty chill day desu, nothing too weird except for one huge rock we found that fell from one of the sides of the valley and crushed into another huge rock right in the middle of the trail. Woke up with 89% SPo2 and now I'm at 93% so I seem to be acclimating well.

>>2859955
From a technical pov Aconcagua normal route is a cakewalk really, you only have to use crampons but that's about it, no need to use your ice axe to self arrest, or climbing axes at all desu.

The challenge in a peak like Aconcagua is that it takes some time, you're going to have to travel internationally, and you have to do some calculations on food, weight, etc. It's pretty standard logistics but way more than the usual overnight or 3 day hike. Also you need to get specialized gear for altitude (very heavy duty 4 season tents, good hardshells) and for the cold (-30 with wind gusts up to 50-60km on summit day are no joke).

I'd say it's easy if you have time/money and knowledge of mountaineering at high altitude. Technical skills not required, unless you take the south face route (or the glacier routes on the last part of the mountain).

Pic from earlier today, I'm in the national park area and tomorrow I'll be in Basecamp 2 if all goes well. Weather report indicates a clear/windy day so it shouldn't be more than the 7hour hike.

>>2859955
Depends on what you consider 'harder'. At a certain altitude just walking over flat ground is a struggle. It's not just fitness but willpower that you need to keep pushing.

Personally I prefer lower but more technical peaks even if I consider some of them much easier.

>>2859984
Keep us updated mate, I'm interested to see how it goes.

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>>2859984
Day 5 update. Things got dicey weather wise since yesterday, which closed the weather window I had planned (mostly to port stuff to higher camps) and added like +30km of wind every day so I'm not feeling confident about summiting.

That being said, I went close to Nido de condores today to acclimate better, I made it to 5400 and had ½ or maybe an hour to Nido de condores but I headed back so I didn't get caught by any weird snowstorms in the afternoon.

I'm acclimating to prepare for the possibility of having to bring my stuff to Nido the day before and just push from there if a short weather window occurs. So I'll be climbing back and forth weather permitting to the higher camps to get in shape.

I'm not going to port stuff because if the weather gets worse I would have to go get my stuff and that would suck too much.

Pic is from from Espina de Pescado, a few hundred meters from Nido de condores.

>>2860405
are you meeting people? would you go for the summit with someone you meet there if you make friends with them?

personally i lack friends to do things with, i like to do stuff solo but sometimes i get to a summit and i find people already there or close by, and it ruins the experience a little bit. in those cases i sometimes would prefer to have gone with them the whole way, they are often really cool people

>>2860666
>are you meeting people?

Yeah, a few dudes we ended up sharing stories and other groups you run into. It's impossible to be alone in a Basecamp like this, especially if you're waiting for a weather window like we all are, you bump into everyone, overhear their strategies, thoughts about the weather, etc. I also listen in with my radio on the park ranger frequency to check weather conditions, people getting evac'd, and to pass the time.

>would you go for the summit with someone you meet there if you make friends with them?

Absolutely yes, I came in solo, but I've ran into people that are really cool and it's good to have someone to check the weather/gather Intel on what's happening higher up on the mountain. It would he impossible for me to summit solo, since we're all waiting for the same weather window, so if that were to happen I'll surely see a long line of guided (or unguided) groups and other solo bros, etc. I've met other 2 solo dudes, one Canadian and one Japanese.

Right now we're all waiting to see if the wind clears, it's impossible to go higher without your tents getting shredded. I've ported all of my heavy gear to high camp 1 (Camp Canada) and I'm waiting in Plaza de Mulas and doing acclimating hikes 600-700mts up and down every other day. If there is no window to summit, and I run out of time/food it would take me just 3-4 hours to get my shit from high camp 1 to Basecamp and then start the hike out of the park.

>>2860705
any update anon? I enjoyed reading your progress

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>>2861192
I had to come down yesterday anon. The weather keep getting shittier and the window I was expecting on the 14th closed and almost every party was getting off the mountain.

We had two weather windows that closed (11-12 and 13-14). Which kept us downcon BC to better acclimate and not deal with the high winds on camp 2-3 (the wind was the main issue, even on Basecamp).

We talked to guides in private and they confirmed that they were just going to push with their clients to "beat them up a bit" so they don't feel scammed from not progressing too much on the mountain. They also "faked" a summit night start so that the clients felt the shitty conditions before sending everyone back to their tents.

I saw only a Japanese guy and a couple of Russians getting to the summit this last week. The JP guy was absolutely insane and just soloed the whole way, after enduring shitty weather for a week in camp 2, respect to that guy. The Russians were apparently millionaires and just flew in a helicopter to base camp (saving themselves a 26km trek into the park), and used bottled oxygen to not have to acclimate so much.

I had a lot of fun just shooting the shit with some people on Basecamp, doing acclimating hikes up and down to the higher camps, testing gear, learning about how to read the weather on the mountain just by looking at it, and peeing in a bottle every night, if I had an extra week off of work I would've probably stayed longer for an apparent weather window on the 20th and to learn more.

The coolest thing I learned from a porter was that just by looking at the stars (if the sky is clear) at night, if you see them twinkle you have 24-48 hours of perfect weather, and if you don't see them twinkle you are in for a shitty day, and I can confirm that was 100% accurate.

Pic is from high camp 1 looking at the road to high camp 2, from the day I had to pack my stuff and head down to Basecamp.

>>2861196
damn, what a pity. good to hear it was a good experience even if you didn't get to summit though

what exactly is bad weather, is wind enough to make summit too dangerous/difficult? or did you also have snow? what exactly did the JP guy have to endure? and how are conditions exactly when you are in a good weather window?

please post again if you do things like this again, it was a very fun and insightful thread

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>>2861220
>what exactly is bad weather, is wind enough to make summit too dangerous/difficult?
Wind speeds above 60km/h are considered dangerous, I've experienced 60+km/h gusts and it can knock you off your feet if you're not on solid ground, it basically forces you to move very slowly and you can fall, etc. Obviously the higher you are the more dangerous that kind of wind is, because you have to deal with more stuff (altitude, fatigue, clothes/boots get bulkier the colder your environment is).

>or did you also have snow?
Yes, we had two days where snow fell on Basecamp and it wasn't really an issue, but snow + wind = you can't see shit. On camp 1-2 I had a few days of snow and wind before the wind just blew all of the snow away and then there was only snow from camp 2 and higher. Compacted snow as you go down can be an issue because you step, compact it, and then you slip, unless you're wearing crampons.

>what exactly did the JP guy have to endure? and how are conditions exactly when you are in a good weather window?

On a mountain like Aconcagua I wouldn't try it solo or without a guide/trained people with winds above 50km/h. Thunderstorms are definitely a "hunker down and wait it out in your tent" kind of thing because you feel the storm right next to you. We had winds that went up to 120km a few days (on the summit) which is why almost all expeditions had to abort, but most days it was 70-80km which is "very dangerous" territory.

The JP Guy probably did it under 70km, little to no snow (good because you can see the trail to the summit), moving at 0.8-1km an hour (snail pace) freezing his ass off unless he had overkill gear, for 7-10 hours. Such winds can I've you frostbite if you have any exposed skin (wind chill is like an extra -15° to an already low -25° celsius).

Pic is the weather report from the closest thing I had to a weather window. On mountain forecast you can check it out and the next week is all green, with winds under 40km.

>>2861235
Not to derail a bit, but: is mountain-forecast what people actually use? I used in when hiking in New Hampshire and it seemed fairly good, but I have no idea if real climbers use that. Is there some other method that's used, or is it all region-specific?

I was going to attempt to summit Aconcagua with an /out/ anon this summer, but timing didn't work out (we both got new jobs & moved). Maybe I'll do it next year. Cheers mate.

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I'm going to do a multi day hike in the alps with friends again end of June. I'm looking into the feasibility of ascending Monte Gran Paradiso, since it's labeled as an 'easy' 4000'er. Via the normal route it's mostly just walking up rock, then some 700m up over the glacier, with a bit of a rock scramble at the very top. We're in good physique and are used to traversing snow for hours. So far we always got by with regular crampons on normal hiking boots (I'm on lowa renegades now). I'm wondering whether or not that footwear will suffice for such an ascent though. Maybe actual alpine spike crampons can be fitted to non stiff hiking boots like lowa? We can rent most gear at the refuge, but not mountaineering boots, and we don't want to do a multi day hike on those just because we need them for one day out of many. Any thoughts?

>>2861657
On the mountain people used that one and the "snow forecast" version (just a reskin of the website by the same company but some people use both).

I normally use Garmin weather reports, I find them more reliable because they differentiate gusts from constant wind speed and do weather by shorter intervals, but Garmin devices costs money and extra subscriptions. If I had to pick one I'd use Garmin for day to day and mountain forecast for longer forecasts on weather windows if I had internet access.

It depends if you have internet access or not, if I didn't have starlink access at basecamp it would've been Garmin and radioing the park ranger on VHF every day. For 1-3, day hikes I just check the mountain forecast website and bring gear for that, hasn't failed me once.