�����ԹϺ���

Everybody loves thinking of their favorite peaks in superlatives: the best views, the most challenging course, the least amount of tourists, the list goes on. But, which summit challenge is really the best: New England’s 4,000-footers or Colorado’s fourteeners? There are plenty of opportunities to argue this out: Colorado boasts 54 of the peaks and New Hampshire alone has 48 famed 4,000-footers. It doesn’t matter if you’re a or a , the answer isn’t as simple as you’d think. Two of our Backpacker editors duke it out.

It’s the Thin Air

I hiked all of New Hampshire’s 4,000-footers as a kid, but now that I am an adult, I have put away childish things. After climbing just ten Colorado fourteeners, I know that East is least, and West is best—I write that with all due affection for the pipsqueak peaks that cower in the shadow of Mt. Washington’s 6,288-foot summit, including Mts. Tom (4,051 feet), Willey (4,285), and Field (4,340). Even if you combined those three dwarves (Sleepy, Dopey, and Pointless), they wouldn’t add up to a named peak in the Rockies. And they shrink in comparison with —Democrat (14,148 feet), Cameron (14,238), Lincoln (14,286), and Bross (14,172)—where I danced above timberline for eight hours of uninterrupted sunshine and bliss. Longs Peak (14,255 feet), the capstone of fourteener fun, required me to plunge through the treacherous Keyhole, tightrope along the Narrows, and heave myself up the near-vertical Homestretch. The elevation gain alone (5,100 feet) beat out New Hampshire’s lilliputian Mt. Lincoln (5,089), the seventh-highest peak in New Hampshire. On Longs, the thrills, like the views, are endless. A hiker’s reward for summiting Mt. Washington? Parking lots crammed with Auto Road traffic, flat landers in Bermuda shorts looking for the toilet, and a reeking cog railroad that spouts black soot. George’s heirs should sue to have his name removed. To the Yankee whiners who complain about how crowded Fourteener summits are, I respond: They’re popular because they’re worth it. —Peter Moore

Praise For Small Peaks

Until I moved to Colorado to work for Backpacker, I had no idea how easy folks in the West have it. And before you launch into your defense of the Rockies, full of scary buzzwords like “acclimatization” and “glissade” and “class 4,” let me spare you the breath: You don’t know truly difficult hiking until you struggle up 1,500 vertical feet of straight-up-the-hill trail—the East doesn’t really “do” switchbacks—striated with logs, roots, and boulders, with a grabby layer of mud and slick dirt underneath. And views? Forget about ’em. That’s the experience of hiking a ; with few exceptions, there are none of the Rockies’ high-alpine trails or nonstop views. But here’s the thing: If you only climb fourteeners, you’ll never know the thrill of breaking through the canopy at the top of a , having finally reached the summit. You’ll be hard-pressed to replicate the feeling of flying down that same switchbacks-be-damned trail on the descent. And you won’t gain the same humbling perspective: It’s obvious that a Fourteener can kick your ass, but underestimate 4000-footer at your own peril. And isn’t that how we should view ourselves as well? All hikers are more than they seem, and we all harbor the ability to astound. —Eli Bernstein