Too Many Pine Hills—Let’s Fix That

When it comes to New Hampshire’s mountains, I keep running into one odd problem: there are so many mountains with the same name. For example, yesterday I climbed Whiteface Mountain, which sits to the west of Lake Winnipesaukee, so I could close out the Belknap 12 peak list. But you know what’s just across the lake on the north side of Lake Winnipesaukee? Yep, another Whiteface Mountain. And that one’s part of NH’s 4000-footer list. All told, there are five separate “Whiteface” peaks to choose from in New Hampshire, and if you don’t specify which one you want to go to, Google Maps could take you to the completely wrong spot.

But Whiteface is hardly the worst offender. There are six peaks that share the name Parker: two Parker Mountains, a couple Parker Hills, a Parker Ledge, and, of course, a Mount Parker. Because obviously Mount Parker is nothing like Parker Mountain. Worse than that, there are seven “Black Mountains” in the state. Seven! They don’t even try to differentiate. And this isn’t to mention the scores of other mountains that have Black in their name or aren’t big enough to qualify as a mountain. Yep, you guessed it—there are FOUR Black Hills.

How Did We Get Here?

So many questions. Like why are there two Kearsarge Mountains, in totally different parts of the state? It feels like we could have given one of them an original name. Or why couldn’t we come up with anything original for the plethora of peaks using “Pine” in their moniker? There are over twenty-seven, seventeen of which are named Pine Hill. Where’d you go today? Pine Hill? Which one, the big one? No? The little one? The one in Wolfeboro? No?? Where the heck did you go?

There are twenty-two peaks using the name “Oak.” Twenty-four if you include White Oak and Red Oak. There are also three Maples, five Monadnocks, two Jackson Hills, and, well, you get the idea. If we kept digging, I’m sure we’d find tons and tons of peaks using the same name in the Granite State.

What’s to Be Done?

But for the most part, I’m okay with that. The different Monadnocks tie the southwest region of the state together nicely, and each one has its special place in hiker hearts. The Kearsarge thing is kind of quirky and creates a little bit of a Hatfield/McCoy aura around the two, so we can leave those as well. But I think we can all agree that seventeen “Pine Hills” is too many. One of those, or sixteen of those, need to go. As such, I’d like to propose that we change their names to something tied to a bit of local history, or even a New Hampshire celebrity that lived closest to it. Sandler Hill has a nice ring to it, and Adam is certainly deserving of some recognition as a famous New Hampshire son. Let’s give him one.

But if a hill is too small a thing to ascribe to a celebrity, and the powers that be feel only a mountain is worthy of them, then I’m sure we could find some other name for all of these hills than Pine. You know, something that connects it to a story about the area. Like a hiker who got lost in the area or will get lost there soon enough. I’m not making any plans, I’m just saying. There’s no Larson Hill in New Hampshire yet.

32 results for “Pine” in New Hampshire on Peakbagger.com. Yep, Pine Hill’s gotta go.