First off, most of my ascents of mountains are simply hikes; often long hikes at fairly high altitudes, but still hikes. Rock scrambling is fine and basic snow climbing is fine, but I'm not really into technical climbing; too gear-dependent and I'm fundamentally a soloist. So, I'm using a rather loose definition of "mountaineering". Perhaps "non-technical mountaineering" is the appropriate phrase. I've been in enough places where I could have taken a death fall to not feel too guilty about the term and nobody is going to confuse me for a "serious" mountaineer.
Most of the trip reports I've posted here are for 13,000- or 14,000-foot peaks. As a friend of mine who has done plenty of "real" mountaineering plus treks as high as 19,000 ft says, "a lot of people in Colorado seem to think that 13,000 ft is not high. I strongly disagree". He may be overstating the case, but it is a non-trivial factor. No matter who you are, it is more difficult and more wearing on the body to hike at higher elevations; I can speak with some authority that it is a heck of a lot easier to do a 15-mile, 5000ft hike at 6-8 kft! I'm certainly not pretending that 14,000 feet is high-altitude mountaineering, either.
In any case, I grew up in Iowa and my first ever true hike was an ascent of a 12,000-foot peak in 1994 when I was 24 and I was quickly hooked on peakbagging. I wish I had had the early start that just about everybody else seems to have had, less demanding and/or higher paying jobs, a little more natural athletic ability, and a body that was a bit less injury-prone, but oh well. I especially like that mountaineering requires a lot more endurance than popular sports and it also requires brains if you want to do it right, which is a big plus if you aren't a natural jock. In addition, there's nothing fundamentally arbitrary about it; you either reach the summit and make it back home or not. And, there aren't a bunch of stupid people cheering you on.
I am a dedicated peakbagger; I rarely do a hike unless it involves a summit, even if it is a tiny summit. In fact, I don't even count it as a hike unless I have at least made a reasonable attempt at a summit; otherwise it just gets treated as it I went for a walk around the neighborhood. I am also a dedicated datahead, so I would still count it in my overall foot travel totals for both mileage and elevation gain. (Life would barely be worth living if spreadsheets did not exist!) I have a page of statistics on my peakbagging accomplishments, such as they are.
I don't really have any rules about what I count as an ascent, although I've only driven up a total of one peak, and I don't think I've ever done a "major" peak with a total gain of less than 1000 feet. However, I do have some "style" preferences. I do not use 4WD and won't own a vehicle that gets less than 30mpg on the highway (preferably 35+ like I get now). That tends to force me to do more strenous hikes than many people, which is fine with me, but it also leaves me out of many ascents for the next reason. I figure that at least in the Lower 48, if I can't climb a mountain in one day, I can't climb it, period. (I did break that rule once in an unsuccessful attempt at two peaks. I may break this rule again at any time.) Without the crutch of a 4WD vehicle to get up a crappy road there are many peaks where a dayhike is (perhaps literally) a marathon effort that requires physical and mental preparation of the sort that is difficult to do very often.
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File last modified: 17 April 2007