These Highpointers Have 50 Goals

Things are looking up for Doug Heroux and Bill Conroy. Again. They are collectors, of a sort. Hobbyists with high ideals -- 50 of them.

The upwardly mobile duo have set their sights on reaching the highest point in each of the 50 states, from Alaska’s lordly Mount McKinley (20,320 feet) to Florida’s lowly Britton Hill (345 feet).

So far, the two have already bagged peaks in 26 states. More than three years into their quest, the team is lagging a bit behind the initial goal of knocking off 10 peaks annually for five years. They are too late to be among the first 10 climbers to complete the lofty pursuit, as they had hoped, but they should have no trouble being part of the first 100.

Heroux, of Waterbury, Conn., and Conroy, from Naugatuck, Conn., aren’t alone in their quest; others are on the way up. Highpointers, a national club, was recently formed (Heroux and Conroy are members), and now guidebooks and organized group ascents are available to all.

The team’s fascination for peak experiences grew out of a passion for hiking and climbing in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, still their favorite spot for training. Their idea of a good time is a midwinter climb up Mount Washington. There, on the Nelson Craig trail just a few weeks ago, Heroux was tromping through waist-deep snow and Conroy was blown 40 feet by a gust of wind. That was fun. And they actually liked waking up in a hoarfrost-coated tent, their drinking water transformed into a chunk of ice.

Connecticut’s highest point is on a shoulder of Mount Frissell, a mountain whose peak rises in Massachusetts. It is a hill they know well.

“It’s our practice mountain,” Heroux said. “We’ve done it in winter, in summer, in the rain, in the mud, in the dark.”

Frissell is basically a walk-up, and for Heroux and Conroy, a breeze.

Other summits are even easier; some require no climbing at all. The two sloshed across cornfields in a Winnebago all the way to the roof of Nebraska. At least half the nation’s high points are within equally easy reach.

But even easily climbed mountains may harbor unexpected challenges. An angry bull gave chase while the two were high-pointing in North Dakota. To reach their goal, Heroux and Conroy had to figure out how to get around the cantankerous beast.

And more malevolent obstacles may await. Some high points are on private property where trespassers -- even those who ask permission -- aren’t welcome. “I heard shotguns are involved in some of the high points,” Heroux said.

A few top spots are demanding, though, and four are very difficult: Washington’s Mount Rainier, Wyoming’s Gannett Peak, Alaska’s Mount McKinley and Montana’s Granite Peak. These require advanced climbing skills.

McKinley is so daunting that when Conroy first thought of topping out in 50 states, he listed the high points and then nixed the idea. No way could he climb to the summit of North America’s highest mountain. People die there.

About 15 years later, he teamed up with Heroux. The two decided to dust off the list of high points and hit the trail.

At Mount Frissell a few weeks ago, Heroux and Conroy are preparing for their climb beneath a threatening pewter-gray sky. They will curl around Bear Mountain, cut across the stony dome of Round Mountain, plunge into a valley and chug up the steep rocky brow of Frissell. In all, a hike of 8 to 10 miles.

Heading out of a trail-head parking lot, Heroux, a stringbean of a guy, shoulders a 35-pound backpack stuffed with essentials: a few plastic jars of premixed Tang, a couple of candy bars, a few pieces of triple fudge cake and plenty of pricey outdoor gear. “Just in case there’s a white-out, I’ll have everything we could need,” he says. Mostly though, the heavy pack is carried for exercise.

Conroy, a Kenny Loggins lookalike, carries nothing. The 40-year-old gets his exercise in more perverse ways -- donning a 60-pound backpack, for example, and boarding a treadmill set at maximum incline for a one-hour workout. Or maybe he’ll run a few miles; he plans to compete in the New York marathon this fall.

The two plod toward Frissell with the measured pace of those accustomed to walking great distances: sure and steady. They don’t waste breath talking. The clank of caribiners (metal rings that fasten ropes to the metal spikes used in climbing) dangling from Heroux’s pack fills the silence -- that, and the squeak of his Day-Glo green hiking boots.

Their path threads thickets of shoulder-high mountain laurel, fords creeks, and meanders through forests thick with mixed hardwoods. Hiking has little appeal, says Conroy. What drives them onward is the challenge of reaching a peak.

Sometimes the two practice climbing techniques while dangling like spiders from ropes in the rafters of a warehouse Conroy uses for his moving business. Heroux, 32, is a self-employed plumber. “We needed time to hike,” Heroux explains. “So we both started our own business.”

They also needed time to get in shape. Conditioning is the key to reaching the top of the tough summits.

Take Mount McKinley. There, climbers fly into a base camp on the Kahiltna Glacier, rope together, then stagger upward through oxygen-thin air, ever wary of yawning crevasses. With each climber lugging more than 100 pounds of gear, reaching the summit often takes two or more weeks. During their attempt last May, Heroux and Conroy said they felt lost in the gaping vastness, dwarfed by the mountain’s gargantuan scale.

Eventually, altitude sickness forced Conroy to turn back at 11,000 feet. “My lungs filled with fluid,” he said. “I could hear them gurgling. That worried me a little.”

Meanwhile, Heroux and a group of other climbers and guides pressed on to 17,000 feet -- eight hours from the summit -- only to be hammered by a storm and nailed down for days. “We were holding on for dear life,” he said.

The storm-enforced idleness depleted their food supplies, so the summit remained elusive for Heroux, too. They plan to try again.

Another tough climb, one the duo did notch, was Washington’s Mount Rainier.

It was on their first visit to the mountain, a tourist trip to a place called Paradise, that the men hatched their 50-state scheme. Awed by Rainier’s beauty, they decided to return the next year, take lessons and make the climb. They figured if they could reach Rainier’s summit, they could hit the other 49 high points. A year later, they came, they saw and they conquered.

Not everyone understands their high-minded obsession. “When you tell people you drove all the way to Delaware to stand in the middle of the street (where that state’s high point is located), they think you’re pretty strange,” said Heroux.

But in a sense, the high point quest is just an excuse to travel. “That’s the key to this whole thing -- to see the country,” said Heroux. “I don’t want to travel to England or something, there’s so much to see in the U.S.” Each trip has been duly recorded -- complete with maps and photos -- in a series of leather-bound scrapbooks kept by Heroux. After nabbing all 50 high points, he wants to hit every national park in the country.

Until their next major mountain assault, the two are content in dreaming up variations on a theme, new ways to reconquer nearby peaks. Lately they’ve plotted a way to bag the high point in each of seven states within a single 24-hour span. They’ll start at the top of Backbone Mountain (3,360 feet) in Maryland, then race to Delaware and on to New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts. The climax would be Rhode Island’s Jerimoth Hill: “You arrive at the top of a hill, park the car, see if the dog’s chained, walk into a guy’s backyard and stand on a rock.” Heroux said. “You’ve done Rhode Island.”