***This page is a description of this peakbagging project, including both an explanation of the list itself as well as a bit of the story behind how it went and some nice photos!!! If you want to see an enumeration of all of the peaks done as part of this project, check out this page here!!!***
After completing the New Southeast 202, a list which I totally made up but did nonetheless, I drove to southern New York to start on my next peakbagging challenge, the Northeast 131. The list was originally conceived as comprising the most prominent peaks in the Northern Appalachians that were not on the Northeast 115 4000fters list. This original list stretched from the Catskills to the Chic-Chocs, but even during this phase it was still incomplete. For starters, I knew I wouldn't have the logistical ability to go to Newfoundland or Nova Scotia, even though there would normally be several peaks from those provinces on any such list. Additionally, some of the peaks I knew ahead of time I had no hope of doing, like Croydon in NH or Albert in QC due to private property access issues and alpine restoration projects respectively
Similarly to my saga the previous spring in the Southeast, I climbed for about a month before running into two substantial issues that caused me to rework the list. Firstly, I lost my phone for most of the summer, and with it my driver's license, which given logistical issues and a limited hiking season made it impossible for me to hike the Canadian peaks on this original list. Secondly, most of the bushwhacking peaks proved untenable due to the dense vegetation at higher elevations in the Northern Appalachians. The result was that the list shifted in two stages to it's current form: a list of 131 1000ft prominence peaks in the American Northeast. Along with the minor additional peaks I climbed during this time, this list stretches from the Finger Lakes to Acadia, and includes every sub-4000ft P2k in the American Northeast, along with many peaks that lie on prominent elevation-based, views-based, and fire-tower based lists
As for how I tackled this project, I started anyway and banged through several in the Catskills and the Taconics before heading off to Maine. It was here that I lost my phone, and with it my driver's license, which without a physical copy made it impossible for me to legally drive in Canada. Typically I would order a replacement, but I needed to concurrently update my address and get a replacement sent, which was too tricky for me to pull off while living mobile in my van. So after getting a new phone, I jumped to the Adirondacks and Southern Greens before heading to Baxter and ending at Moosilauke, where I worked for the fall, hiking peaks in the Northeast Kingdom and Central NH. The winter saw a predicted slow-down in peakbagging with most of the peaks I climbed being in and around the Upper Valley, but the early spring saw me climb a substantial number of peaks in New York. When May rolled around, I was working full time and the stress that caused substantially impacted my ability to keep pace on the project, but I was still able to finish the fire towers in New York along with almost all the remaining P2ks out east
As I am writing this in August of 2024, the 131 is being placed on pause for at least the next few years due to extenuating factors in my personal life that make peakbagging in the Northeast no longer tenable. That being said, I am certain that I will come back and finish this project one of these days, probably in the next five years but that remains to be seen. Put simply, I'm dying to get out west this fall, and I have several long term goals that will bring me back out east one of these days, but I need to get out there. But, for what it's worth, including all the additional peaks I've done, the total number completed for my project so far is 208, and aggregating that figure with tht 115 and 202 yields nearly 550 peaks out east, which is, by any metric, an impressive achievement. So even if it's a little disappointing that I'm putting the 131 on pause, what I've achieved so far and what I will achieve in the future more than make up for that. There will be more written on this page one of these days :)
