Hiking The New Hampshire Triple Crown
New Hampshire is a great place to hike with thousands of miles of hiking trails and large tracts of wilderness to explore. While a lot of hikers flock to the White Mountain National Forest to climb the 48 four thousand footers and hike the elaborate White Mountain Trail system, there are many more trails and mountains across the state to slake your thirst for new trails and vistas.
Much of New Hampshire’s hiking culture is concentrated on peakbagging and trail lists that hikers complete in order to receive patches or certificates. Here are just a few of the more popular ones: The White Mountains 4000 Footers, The 52 with a View, The Terrifying 25, The Trailwrights 72, The Belknap Range Hiker Patch, and many more.
But the three hardest lists and the ones that subsume most other lists are:
- The White Mountain 4000 Footer Grid
- AMC White Mountains Redlining Trails
- The New Hampshire 500 Highest
The White Mountain 4000 Footer Grid involves hiking all 48 of the White Mountain 4000 footers in every month of the year, for a total of 576 peaks. You don’t have to hike them all in one year, and you can climb multiple peaks in a day. This is the most popular of these three lists, and so far, 187 people have finished it (I was #177), some multiple times. It takes about 3300 miles of hiking with 1,000,000 feet of elevation gain to complete.
White Mountains Redlining Trails requires that you hike all of the trails listed in the Appalachian Mountain Club’s White Mountain Guide, which lists 664 trails for a combined length of 1478 miles. However, most people hike closer to 2500 miles to finish it because the trails are not contiguous and repeats are often necessary. So far, 110 people have finished The White Mountain Redlining Trail list. The list includes a few trails in Western Maine since the White Mountain National Forest crosses the New Hampshire/Maine state line, so it’s customary to hike the Maine trails to finish the entire list.
The New Hampshire 500 Highest requires climbing the 500 tallest mountains in New Hampshire, spread out all over the state, many in the middle of nowhere. Several hundred of these mountains don’t have trails, making this a very challenging list because you must navigate off-trail to climb them. No one’s counted the miles required to complete this list yet, but it’s a lot. So far, just 24 people have completed this list, including 2 who’ve hiked it twice.
New Hampshire Triple Crown Finishers
Anyone who completes any of these lists—The Grid, White Mountains Redlining Trails, or the New Hampshire 500 Highest list—is a hardcore hiker. Most of the people who have finished are recognizable names in the New Hampshire hiking community, which numbers in the tens of thousands.
While it’s hard to comprehend, a handful of people have completed all three of these lists. The first person who finished all three and coined the phrase “The New Hampshire Triple Crown” is named John Gutowski. John finished all three lists on June 1, 2019. Two other people also finished the New Hampshire Triple Crown in 2020: Bill Cronin and John McHugh. Zach Porter finished in 2021, as did Denise Stassis, the first woman to finish all three. Liam Cooney finished in 2022. Rick and Lisa Fregeolle finished in 2024.
The Challenge
There are many challenges to overcome in hiking these lists that go well beyond the physical effort required to hike the miles. Winter weather is one of the biggest obstacles to completing The Grid since the wind, cold, and snow depths limit the number of days you can safely climb the White Mountain 4000-footers. The biggest challenge to finishing the White Mountains Redlining Trail List list is finding and traveling to the trailheads for the trails on the list, which are not contiguous and scattered all over New Hampshire. But of these three lists, the NH 500 Highest is probably the hardest to finish because there aren’t trails to most of the mountain summits. Instead, you have to bushwhack off-trail, which is slower, much more strenuous and requires an expert map, compass, and GPS navigation skills.
The Honor System
There aren’t any official bodies or organizations that oversee The Grid, White Mountain Guide Trail List, or the NH 500 Highest Lists and you don’t have to prove that you’ve finished them by carrying a satellite messenger or any other such nonsense. Doing so would be impractical because finishing any of these lists often takes years while balancing family, work, and life commitments. Also, few people finish without interacting with others who have already completed or are working on a list to offer advice and camaraderie. If you claim you’ve finished, people trust that you have.
There is an unofficial website called 48×12.com that was originally developed to track Grid finishers. It has morphed to track finishers of the other lists and distribute hiker patches. However, registration there is completely optional. The people who hike these lists don’t do it for the recognition but because they love hiking and hiking throughout New Hampshire and adjacent states.
Additional Resources
See Also:
- Hiking the White Mountain Guide: Challenges, Strategies, Tips, and Tricks
- The Grid, Gridiots, and the Gridiocracy
- Backpacking the White Mountain 4000 Footers
I have done all of these, but I have never been recognized. Who should I contact? I didn’t know it was a thing.
Click on the rules links in the articles. That will take you to the contact information for the list managers at 48×12. om
Redlined the whites, climbed the 500 H mountains in NH and climbed all the 4ks in every month of the year but you didn’t realize it’s a thing? And you did that but don’t have the ability to do a simple web search to find out more about being recognized? Dude, your so FOS it’s laughable!
When I thru-hiked the AT I was pretty intimidated by the Whites, but 1,000,000 feet of elevation gain to finish The GRID? That’s insane.
Hi Philip, I look forward to your email every Sunday night. Great stuff in every one. I’m happy when I can just climb Monadnock every few weeks! Grid? too much for me. But I can dream about it. I cannot imagine how much time it takes to do these lists and have a job at the same time. Going to try for the Knife Edge again this summer, third try, maybe make it this time? Anyway, I learn a lot about hiking from this newsletter. Thanks for that.
The RMC 100 patch has been discontinued.
I’ll finish my redline sometime next Spring or early Summer. I was having a conversation with another hiker on the topic of “second rounds” and didn’t see anything in the guide taking a position on it but know you have done it and respect your opinion on these things.
If someone is going for a second round, does it start once the first round is completed? For example, someone might have done several Lincoln/Lafayette loops over the years it took them to complete the first round – does/can one of those count towards the second round?
Similar for Grid, if you just happen to have Jackson for July twice, can the second one count towards a second grid or does the second round only start once the first is complete?
There are no rules but there are differences between how redliners and gridiots view this issue. Redliners, or at least most of them, say that the odometer doesn’t restart until you finish the first round. That means you can’t count those out and backs from your first round and you have to start from zero again. Gridiots do count extra peaks that they hike during the first round for their second round.
Just to add – gridiots probably feel this way because they just want to “get it over” while redliners “want to make it last as long as possible.”
Thanks for the perspective on this! I completely get – and agree – that an out/back should not “count twice” but wasn’t sure where people might stand on a trail that might have been done years apart but within the timeline that round one was completed.
Whether or not I ever go for a round 2 I don’t know – I’ll likely start exploring other area’s first. So much different stuff to see!!