I Thought Peak Bagging Lists Were Pretentious Garbage, Now I Have a Spreadsheet With 14 Tabs

Alice Butler · 2026-10-07T11:20:03.494089+00:00

Two years ago I met a guy on the Long Trail in Vermont who was cranking out 20 mile days to finish the 4,000 footer list, and I remember thinking he was missing the whole point of being out there. I was a wanderer, I picked routes by vibe, and I honestly looked down on the list crowd a little. Then last spring my knee blew up on a trip in the Whites and I had to bail halfway through a loop I had dreamed up from scratch, with zero plan B and no bailout route because I had never bothered to study the map beyond the pretty parts. A friend handed me one of those list guides and I started using it just to pick routes with known water sources and predictable shelter spacing, and somewhere along the way I got hooked on the structure itself. Now I keep a spreadsheet with 14 tabs tracking summits, mileage, and which trails I have done in each season, and it has actually pushed me into corners of the range I never would have wandered into on my own. But here is where I am stuck: does following a list make you a better hiker, or does it just make you a collector who walks past the good stuff to check a box? Where do you all land on this?

Opinions Matter

Loading…

I Thought Peak Bagging Lists Were Pretentious Garbage, Now I Have a Spreadsheet With 14 Tabs | Backpacking Routes - Opinions Matter