We climbed Organ Mountain this past weekend, which at 13,801 feet, is the 106th tallest peak in Colorado. We chose Organ not because Christy and I are now setting out to climb all the top 200 Colorado summits (or Bicentennials), we were just looking for a new place to go, and to come up with ideas we often take a look at the list of Colorado peaks and pick one we haven’t yet climbed. So to Organ we went.

Some discredit the notion of ticking summits off the peak list as lacking creativity. Sure, there are some less-than-interesting peaks that get done mostly because they are on the list. But through the years, we’ve found ourselves in countless cool places we may have otherwise never known about, often arriving there because there was a nearby summit we wanted to climb that we learned of from the list. In fact, in just the past few months, Tijeras, Rito Alto, Buckskin Benchmark and Lightning Peak all come to mind as climbs that were pretty memorable outings, and all four peaks happen to reside on the list of Bicentennials.

On a related note, I recently came across an issue of the Colorado Mountain Club’s Trail & Timberline Magazine that reported recent peak milestone finishers and some of the numbers were pretty interesting. Of course they only account for those who have contacted the CMC about their achievements, and there are no doubt many others who haven’t, but to get a general idea, here are a few of the notable finisher stats. Here are the number of people who reported to the CMC, as printed in the Winter 2010 issue, to have climbed all of the:

14ers- 1396
100 highest “Centennials”- 182
200 highest “Bicentennials”- 65
300 highest peaks- 33
400 highest peaks- 22
500 highest peaks- 20
600 highest peaks- 20
All 13ers and 14ers (listed here)- 20
700 highest peaks- 7
900 highest peaks- 6
1000 highest peaks- 6
1100 highest peaks-5
1200 highest peaks- 5
1300 highest peaks- 5
All 12ers and higher- 5
1400 highest peaks- 1
1500 highest peaks- 1
1600 highest peaks- 1
1700 highest peaks- 1
All 11ers and higher- 1

Congrats to this years big milestone finishers, Gerry Roach and Debi Hruza for rounding out the twenty finishers of all 13er and 14ers, Teresa Gergen for being 5th to climb all 1300+ 12ers and higher, and to Ken Nolan for being the only one to climb all 1700+ Colorado summits 11,000 feet and above. Talk about a massive effort, clearly Ken’s not afraid of following a list.