Franc Ridge, May 8th, 2022

After finishing my trail crew during the fall of 2021, I moved back to New England and decided with a friend to climb the Kinsmans, since the first time I had tried to climb both during November 2019, I had only succeeded in hitting the North Peak. We had a delightful hike together, but we discovered that it was tradition for people to take American flags up each of the mountains in New Hampshire's 48 on the anniversary of 9/11 and have what I can only describe as "nationalism ragers" at the summit. Each summit had a whole flagpole erected, and there must have been at least 50 people at each. I found the spectacle grotesque, both because of the fact that the American flag is the symbol of a genocidal nation that stole the land that these events were held on, but also because of the fact that the nationalism in the US that surged in the wake of 9/11 was used to justify utter brutality towards people in CASWANA and as cover for absolutely heinous acts of torture and genocide. At the bare minimum, something like that should not be celebrated - much less every year

Something else annoyed me on top of all of that: I knew that the demographic of people who participate in events like that are the same demographic who get pissy when pride month rolls around - and I knew that they would be insufferable if queer people tried to do a similar thing. I briefly considered trying to organize an event like that, but I quickly decided that I didn't have the organizational capacity to coordinate something like that. I then wondered if I could just do it myself, since I had already established myself as a peakbagger. But if one person was gonna do something like that, I would clearly have to one-up them, so I decided that fall that I would do the entire 115 the following summer, and take a pride flag to the top of each peak. Originally I wanted to take a rainbow flag up, trying to be inclusive of the wider queer community, but the surge in transphobic laws across the country that winter and spring convinced me that a project like this would have more meaning if it highlighted specifically my trans identity than a more broad queer identity - which I of course do possess

That being said, the whole idea was still intimidating nonetheless. I had no idea how popular I would get doing something like this, and even a little bit of publicity is sure to bring out people who just want to harass whatever queer person is in front of them, and I of course wasn't enthusiastic about the possibility of being that person. Particularly as a trans woman, given how demonized we are by so many different people and institutions, it can be dangerous to stick out your neck like that - especially when you're bound to post photos where you don't look good and/or don't pass. Transmisogyny is a real thing, and even though I wasn't familiar with it's conceptual framework at the time, I was well aware of its influence in the world around me. Because of this, I was back and forth all winter about whether or not this would be a good idea. What did it for me was seeing a video of a trans girl in Tennessee (where I had just moved from and where I had started my transition) get essentially banned from her school and then arrested for truancy. That pissed me off enough that I knew I had to do something

The result was me deciding to test the waters and take a trans pride flag up Franconia Ridge in New Hampshire, a pair of peaks that are very well known and ones that I wasn't intending on doing until much later in the month. But I knew I had to do something, so I hiked up it and had a wonderful time up on the ridge. I got two delightful photos of myself even though I had absolutely no idea how to pose with a flag yet. A nice footnote is that it was another transfemme who took the first photos of me doing this. I would eventually redo these two peaks so that I could have a tighter continuity of climbing in the summer, but these photos are frankly much better than the ones I got later on, so I decided to place them here. At the time of writing, these were the first two of more than 500 peaks I would do this for - and who knows how many peaks to come? :)