Hike the Heartland: Mountains of Kansas and Iowa

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Outside Magazine March 2004

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Climb Every Mole Hill (cont.)


	(Joseph Rafferty)

"TRAVELING TO STATE HIGHPOINTS involves healthy outdoor recreation with concomitant learning of state and regional geography and history....It can expand the senses and bring joy to the heart." This according to a 1997 journal article called "Highpointing"—Summiting United States Highpoints for Fun, Fitness, Friends, Focus, and Folly, written by Thomas P. Martin, a health professor at Wittenberg University, in Springfield, Ohio.

Martin rated America's 50 state highpoints using a ten-point scale of difficulty, with Florida's 345-foot Britton Hill earning a mere 1 and Alaska's Mount McKinley, at 20,320 feet the tallest of them all, getting a 10. He informs us that highpointing was first mentioned in a 1909 edition of National Geographic and that a 1986 Outside item about the pastime spurred the establishment, in Mountain Home, Arkansas, of a national Highpointers Club, some of whose 2,700 members amuse themselves by seeking the second-highest point in each state. One of the leading guidebooks, Highpoint Adventures, published in 2002 by Colorado highpointers Charlie and Diane Winger, points out that more than 800 people have successfully climbed Mount Everest but only 100 or so have claimed all 50 U.S. highpoints.

Interesting. But we felt disconnected from Thomas P. Martin's world of wonder even before Iowa's flapping cornfields gave way to the arid vastness of the Great Plains. See, traditional highpointers are like birdwatchers: They have time on their hands, and they're willing to spend decades adding to their life lists. We had just one long weekend to get the job done, and as the Econoline chugged westward, our task seemed as immense as the sky.

The basic plan was to bag peak two in North Dakota, then work our way in a southerly and easterly meander through South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas before zipping back north to Kansas City to catch our flights. Friday night found us at the Butte View Campground, in southwestern North Dakota, sleeping under stars that never have been—and probably never will be—sullied by urban light pollution. Butte View also boasted excellent bathrooms, and the next morning its showers wooed six of us. Only Casper—who insisted we were moving too slow, since by this time we'd climbed only one peak in 26 hours of travel—begged off. Little did we realize that his refusal to groom when he had the chance would later imperil our entire quest.

We packed up and drove roughly 25 miles to White Butte, at 3,506 feet the highest point in NoDak. Like Hawkeye Point, White Butte towers above private property. Unlike Hawkeye Point, its owners don't give anything away. We had to pay a woman $20 to climb it—and she didn't even hand out key chains! Fortunately, the cost was offset by the stark beauty of the sandstone formation, which gave off fine white dust that coated everything. Even the bugs, which were big and plentiful. As a note on the summit register put it, "the crickets scared the crap out of me!"

We ate breakfast in Bowman, North Dakota, at a place called the Gateway Cafe, a fine establishment that furnished sticky buns and a local newspaper, The Dickinson Press. Its lead story: A 70-year-old woman touring nearby Theodore Roosevelt National Park had been seriously injured after getting gored by a bison, thrown 20 feet into the air, and impaled on a tree.

This troubling news gave us much-needed perspective. Though a three-hour drive and our highest summit—South Dakota's 7,242-foot Harney Peak—awaited, we were ready, willing, and punctured by neither horn nor branch: the Chosen Ones of the Great Plains!

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