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monsterscallinghome t1_isomunw wrote on October 17, 2022 at 3:29 PM

Reply to comment by LifeSucksAnyway in FUCK MASSACHUSETS by A_Sad_Badger

I dunno, I've climbed Aconcagua in summer and there was definitely snow at the top (we didn't summit, but spent two weeks hiking & camping around the foothills & lower slopes on horseback.) I'll give you points for Guatemala, though - Volcan Fuego is definitely a mountain. Seeing the lava glowing against the stars while riding the night bus from Guatemala City to San Salvador was wild, something I'll never forget.

LifeSucksAnyway t1_isotbmy wrote on October 17, 2022 at 4:15 PM

Aconcagua is kind of cheating because it’s the highest mountain outside of Asia haha

Being serious though, I just think it’s very close minded to define a “mountain” by the residual snowpack on its summit, after all there are plenty of mountains with high elevation which A: don’t have snowpack year round and B: start at high elevation already. Topographic relief is generally the biggest factor in what makes a mountain physically large, which is why Tahoma feels so much larger than Mt. Elbert, for example, despite being slightly lower in elevation. It’s just hard for me to look at something like Katahdin and be like “ah yes, that is a hill now since the snowpack generally melts around late July, woe is me and my silly east coast rock piles”

All that being said though I’d love to travel to the PNW, I have friends who say the high elevation meadows are quite nice

monsterscallinghome t1_isoyp2p wrote on October 17, 2022 at 4:53 PM

You're very pedantic, but also correct. I was poking fun at the phrase "flatlander," after all, which is itself superfuckingsilly for each and all of the points you've just made. Katahdin is beautiful, and while I was born in the NW, I'll die in Maine where my child was born.

Do go check out the alpine meadows in the PNW, though. Just steer clear of Seattle/the popular parts of the Cascades and go straight from Sea-Tac up to the Olympic Peninsula and the Hoh National Rainforest, then hit the Okanagan Wilderness in north-central WA state by way of the ferry at Anacortes and the roads through the Cascades up near Bellingham. Way less populated and even more beautiful.

LifeSucksAnyway t1_isp3uu2 wrote on October 17, 2022 at 5:29 PM

> You're very pedantic, but also correct. I was poking fun at the phrase "flatlander," after all, which is itself superfuckingsilly for each and all of the points you've just made. Katahdin is beautiful, and while I was born in the NW, I'll die in Maine where my child was born.

Flatlander is a silly and outdated term anyway so full agree

Thanks for the recs btw, I’ll be sure to save those if I ever make it over there. Douglas Fir is an S tier tree