New England 67 In One Year

Background: While hiking my first round of the 48, I thought "it could be fun to do all 48 in one year at some point." Well, nearing completion of that list in just under 3 years, it dawned on me I would do 39 of the peaks in the last 12 months of it. 48 wouldn't be much more of a challenge. So after giving up on that idea for a while, I came up with the idea of doing all of the New England 4Ks in one year. I wanted to hike the ones in Vermont and Maine anyways. After flying the idea by my wife, she was foolish enough to let me attempt it. Even during a year where we would be having our first child.

So after my first hike on January 25, 2014, I started counting the days. During the start, I spent more time snowmobiling than hiking, which used up some of my weekends. Having my own snowmobile for the first time interrupted my plans of trying to get a bunch of peaks done in winter. Then I took off the month of May from hiking since my wife and I became parents of a beautiful daughter at the end of April. After that though, I started hiking almost every weekend and some weekdays. Throwing in family functions when needed. And after taking 3 weeks to get the motivation to do Owl's Head in winter again, I finished my quest two days later on the last possible day on Mt. Mansfield. Completing both my first full round of the 67 and my 67 in one year at the same time.

Some of the numbers from the year:
9,871 miles of driving (luckily my car gets 35+ mpg)
394 miles of hiking
131,776 feet of elevation gain
38 days hiking which was 34 hikes having both a 3 day pemi-loop and 3 day extended presi traverse
I also hiked on over 120 miles of new trails this year

Lessons learned:
1. Try to get more hikes done early. The end of the year gets very busy otherwise.
2. Doing this in a year where you have a new child, you'll loose a big chunk of time there. One month for me.
3. Get Owl's Head done early. It took me two attempts to get this peak, both near the end. By the second attempt, I was lacking the motivation to do it some weekends.
4. Plan an extra day when travelling to do multiple hikes in one trip. I needed two trips to Baxter State Park due to unplanned changes in my hikes and not having an extra day. I also needed another trip to the Rangeley area due to weather effects on my hikes.
5. When hiking a wooded summit for the first time in a new area, try to get GPS coordinates of the peak ahead of time. I turned around too early hiking Mt. Abraham and Mt. Ellen in VT because I thought the high point I hit was the summit. This created an extra hike in VT.
6. Do what you can to make it fun. Hike the peaks you want when you want and try to get out on nice weather days when ever you can. As the list of remaining peaks dwindle, you might not look forward to a hike as much since you don't have as many choices to pick from.

List of the peaks in order
1-25-14 Tecumseh
3-2-14 Hale
3-9-14 Cabot
3-18-14 Cannon
4-6-14 Camel's Hump (VT)
4-24-14 Moosilauke
6-1-14 Abraham (VT)
6-14-14 Bigelow West Peak, Bigelow Avery Peak (ME)
6-16-14 Saddleback Mtn, Saddleback Horn (ME)
6-22-14 North Kinsman, South Kinsman
6-28-14 North Crocker, South Crocker, Redington (ME)
6-29-14 Spaulding, Sugarloaf (ME)
7-17-14 Flume, Liberty, Lincoln, Lafayette
7-18-14 Garfield, Galehead
7-19-14 South Twin, North Twin, West Bond, Bond, Bondcliff
7-26-14 Mt. Ellen (VT)
8-9-14 Mt. Abraham (ME)
8-10-14 Old Speck Mtn (ME)
8-21-14 Jackson, Pierce, Eisenhower
8-22-14 Isolation, Monroe
8-23-14 Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison
9-8-2014 Baxter Peak (ME)
9-9-2014 North Brother (ME)
9-13-2014 Moriah
9-27-2014 Tom, Field, Willey
10-4-2014 Hamlin Peak (ME)
10-11-2014 Zealand
10-19-2014 Whiteface, Passaconaway
10-28-2014 Carter Dome, South Carter, Middle Carter
11-02-2014 Waumbek
11-08-2014 Carrigain
11-15-2014 Killington (VT)
11-22-2014 South Hancock, North Hancock
12-21-14 East Osceola, Osceola
12-27-14 North Tripyramid, Middle Tripyramid
1-2-15 Wildcat D, Wildcat A
1-22-14 Owl's Head
1-24-15 Mt. Mansfield (VT)

Photo galleries from all of the hikes can be found HERE