The Eclectic Traveler

The Highpointers Club maintains a memorial to Jack “Guru Jakk” Longacre, the founder of the Club, in a glade on the slopes of Russell Mountain. The glade has a view up to the top of Taum Sauk Mountain, the Missouri highpoint. In the glade are two telephone poles with arrows pointing to the various state highpoints. I’m in charge of maintaining the signposts, so developed a web page with an inventory of the arrows, their conditions, names of the highpoints with elevation, distance and bearing from the Glade. Right now, a couple need replacing because of weathering plus there are four states missing: Maine, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin. Hopefully, some of the folks from the Club will volunteer to make these arrows so I can install them the next time I’m down to Taum Sauk.

In August, we set out once again to attempt to scale Kings Peak, the Utah state highpoint.  This would be my fourth attempt, having been stymied by weather or altitude issues on earlier tries.  We picked a good weather window and succeeded in getting to the top in good order this time.

The illustrated trip report is posted for your reading pleasure. Note that the topo map with GPS track is a big file when viewed at full resolution, 4000 x 5000 pixels and about 17 meg. Also, the Java version of the summit panorama has a full-screen option so you can use all your available display real estate to view that.