County Highpoint Frontrunners

County Highpoint Superlatives

Welcome to the County Highpoint Superlatives page. From here you may link to the front runners page, which shows who are the leaders in a quest to identify and climb to the highest point in many of the nation's 3141 counties and county equivalents. The information there is guaranteed to be both interesting and amusing.

County highpoints command a wealth of superlative statistics independent of any human effort to visit them. Thereby an "Apex" list of the toughest twenty county highpoints outside Alaska is provided. There is also a list based on other another measure of difficulty, i.e. county highpoints requiring a vertical elevation gain on foot of at least 5,000 feet by at least one documented route.

In sharp contrast there are lists for counties whose highpoints are relatively easy to visit (see below). Several more such human-independent superlative lists for highpoints may be accessed from the front runners page rather than directly from this page.

For those interested in making a name for themselves through their highpointing accomplishments, perhaps the best means is to consider visiting a county whose highpoint has never been previously visited by any member of the County Highpointers. Such "virgin" counties are many in number and are listed on a state-by-state basis under the state trip report pages. An overview of virgin counties in map format is also available.

Individuals interested in finding distances for various front runner list categories will find the distance calculator convenient.

There is also a floating glob radius calculator that may assist in finding one's standing for the eponymous records category. You are urged to read a description of its use prior to attempting a calculation.

NEW floating glob radius calculator NEW

Comprehensive state-by-state lists of all county high points in the United States are provided in County High Points by Andy Martin. Contact him for more information.

Links to Superlative Statistics

Front Runner Lists

Highest 50-100-150+ Elevation Map the corresponding lists
A work by Dave Covill showing the highest 166 county highpoints in all fifty states
(everything above 10,000 feet); and the highest 157 eastern highpoints (all above 3,000 feet)
in color-coded groups of 50 counties.

High Five Map (The five highest county highpoints in each state.)
- by Jerry Brekhus

Low Five Map (The five lowest county highpoints in each state.)
- by Michael Schwartz

Overall Difficulty Map difficulty ranking project
A work in progress by Edward Earl for ranking the difficulty (and ease) of counties by vote.
E-mail him with difficulty (and easy) rankings after removing the ".county"
portion of the address (present to foil web crawlers).

Difficult Counties (based upon the Apex and 5,000+ foot required effort lists)
apex peaks map 5,000+ ft required effort map

Easiest and most Difficult County in each State Map - by Ron Tagliapietra
Easiest County in each State List

Easiest Counties Map - by John Mitchler explanation
Easiest Counties Lists - (A-M) (N-Z)

County Highpoint "Triple Crown" Map Triple Crown List (offsite)
Triple Crown county highpoints are simultaneously APEX,
5,000+ feet of gain, and ultra (5,000+ foot) prominences.
There are only ten such triple crown summits in the lower forty-eight states.
County highpoints with at least one of these descriptors are also shown with colors
corresponding to the specific descriptor combination, e.g. cyan
represents the combination of 5,000+ feet of gain and ultra prominence.

-- -- -- -- next tour link -- -- -- --