Back in 2016, when I started getting a little more serious about finding new mountains to climb, I found a great website called Peakbagger.com. It compiles lists of mountains, complete with elevations and topographic maps to help you determine actual elevation gain. It also serves as a helpful tool to track where you’ve been. I find its mapping very accurate, and it has facilitated discovering the location of more than a few “true summits.”
The site is also, for a peakbagger at least, fun to explore, because it lets you see what others have been up to. I was immediately drawn to the climber Hall of Fame, which listed off the guys who had completed the most ascents, etc. The owner of the site removed the Hall of Fame moniker it appears, but you can still check out what other climbers have been up to. Like…
Arthur Josephson
When I first started using the site, the guy’s name I couldn’t escape was Arthur Josephson. He was a fixture at the top of the “most ascents” list. We’re talking thousands of ascents. At the time I had maybe twenty or thirty, and every time I excitedly logged a new climb, I’d find that Arthur had already logged ten more. Who is this guy? To me, Arthur was a legend.
It wasn’t like Arthur was going for big stuff. He just was going. All. The. Time. I had so many questions. How did he find the time? What made him so obsessed? Or was it not obsession, just love? How did he pick which one to do next?
What really got me was when I searched this peak in New Hampshire called Potash Knob, with no clear path to the summit. I was always curious about it because it’s near where I spend time in Lincoln, New Hampshire, and I had wanted to climb it for a hundred years. And who do you think was logged as the only known ascent of Potash Knob when I pulled it up on Peakbagger?
Yep, that’s right. Arthur Josephson.
Arthur was making me proud, once again, to be of Scandinavian descent.
View from the slide face between Potash Knob and Whaleback.
You can find more from that climb here.
(Note: A few other climbers ascended Potash Knob after I recorded the second ascent of it. I’m sure there will be many more—although it’s not a great climb! I’m also sure there were many before Arthur and me, but we’ll never know unless they log it in Peakbagger!)
Peakbagger.com
I started thinking about Arthur again because I’ve been using Peakbagger.com to log climbs a little more consistently as of late, and I wanted to see what Arthur has been up to. When you click on the Climbers tab, there’s a link to “Most Ascents Logged,” where I found that Arthur is now tenth.
Tenth? In 2016 there was nobody even close to him—now there are nine people above him? How can this be?
In first place is someone who doesn’t want to come forward, naming themself “Mountain Climber,” which makes me dubious it’s even a real person and not a collection of hikers. But assuming it is, at the time of this post, “Mountain Climber” has logged 10,762 mountain ascents.
Like, what?
That means that if they climbed a distinct peak, once per day, they would need to do roughly 29.5 years of continuous climbing. Huh? When do they have time to make money to buy food for their excursions? And they’re not the only one in the 10k ascent range, either. Am I missing something?
Ascent Leaders: I have questions!
Further Research Needed
Arthur now sits at 5,862 climbs, which means if he was to do all of those mountains in a row, averaging one per day, he would have hiked for a little over 16 years straight! I can’t even begin to compute.
Maybe he lived by a hill. You know—something close by to get his daily exercise. But still… he’s tenth now! Who are these people? What are all of these people doing? Clearly, I need to dig deeper into these numbers and find out what the heck is going on out there.
In the Mountains
If you’re a climber, hiker, or just love looking at the mountains, check out In the Mountains. And if you use Peakbagger, you can find me there at Matt Larson. I don’t know the owner of the site, but I figured it was high time I sent him a donation today for making such a useful tool. You can too, here: Donate