Everybody loves thinking of their favorite peaks in superlatives: the best views, the most challenging course, the least amount of tourists, the list goes on. But, which summit challenge is really the best: New England’s 4,000-footers or Colorado’s fourteeners? There are plenty of opportunities to argue this out: Colorado boasts 54 of the peaks and New Hampshire alone has 48 famed 4,000-footers. It doesn’t matter if you’re a or a , the answer isn’t as simple as you’d think. Two of our Backpacker editors duke it out.

It’s the Thin Air

I hiked all of New Hampshire’s 4,000-footers as a kid, but now that I am an adult, I have put away childish things. After climbing just ten Colorado fourteeners, I know that East is least, and West is best—I write that with all due affection for the pipsqueak peaks that cower in the shadow of Mt. Washington’s 6,288-foot summit, including Mts. Tom (4,051 feet), Willey (4,285), and Field (4,340). Even if you combined those three dwarves (Sleepy, Dopey, and Pointless), they wouldn’t add up to a named peak in the Rockies. And they shrink in comparison with —Democrat (14,148 feet), Cameron (14,238), Lincoln (14,286), and Bross (14,172)—where I danced above timberline for eight hours of uninterrupted sunshine and bliss. Longs Peak (14,255 feet), the capstone of fourteener fun, required me to plunge through the treacherous Keyhole, tightrope along the Narrows, and heave myself up the near-vertical Homestretch. The elevation gain alone (5,100 feet) beat out New Hampshire’s lilliputian Mt. Lincoln (5,089), the seventh-highest peak in New Hampshire. On Longs, the thrills, like the views, are endless. A hiker’s reward for summiting Mt. Washington? Parking lots crammed with Auto Road traffic, flat landers in Bermuda shorts looking for the toilet, and a reeking cog railroad that spouts black soot. George’s heirs should sue to have his name removed. To the Yankee whiners who complain about how crowded Fourteener summits are, I respond: They’re popular because they’re worth it. —Peter Moore

Praise For Small Peaks

Until I moved to Colorado to work for Backpacker, I had no idea how easy folks in the West have it. And before you launch into your defense of the Rockies, full of scary buzzwords like “acclimatization” and “glissade” and “class 4,” let me spare you the breath: You don’t know truly difficult hiking until you struggle up 1,500 vertical feet of straight-up-the-hill trail—the East doesn’t really “do” switchbacks—striated with logs, roots, and boulders, with a grabby layer of mud and slick dirt underneath. And views? Forget about ’em. That’s the experience of hiking a ; with few exceptions, there are none of the Rockies’ high-alpine trails or nonstop views. But here’s the thing: If you only climb fourteeners, you’ll never know the thrill of breaking through the canopy at the top of a , having finally reached the summit. You’ll be hard-pressed to replicate the feeling of flying down that same switchbacks-be-damned trail on the descent. And you won’t gain the same humbling perspective: It’s obvious that a Fourteener can kick your ass, but underestimate 4000-footer at your own peril. And isn’t that how we should view ourselves as well? All hikers are more than they seem, and we all harbor the ability to astound. —Eli Bernstein

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A small joy on the trail—actually, no, make it a large one—is finding an item exactly where you thought it would be in your pack, tent, or stuffsack. (And yes, I am fun to hike with. Why do you ask?) On the flip side, going into a trip disorganized can ruin your sojourn in the woods. Staying organized on the trail has always involved varying degrees of gear Tetris, which requires lots of finagling and usually leaves dead space; the changes that. The PackStack is a zippered, half moon-shaped nylon pouch that expands to fit layers, accessories, or whatever else you choose to store in it. Using one PackStack even begets using another: one nests neatly on top of the first, so you can maximize every inch of pack space. “Using two PackStacks—a larger one to hold my clothes and a smaller one for my odds and ends—felt like storing them in a dresser at home,” one editor said after a gear-heavy, five-day excursion through Panama’s Parque Internacional La Amistad. “Everything inside stayed neatly stashed, and pulling the sacks out and putting them back was a breeze.”

Hillsound offers the PackStack in a regular version ($17 and up) as well as a waterproof model ($29 and up) that’s seam-sealed and has a waterproof zipper. Both regular and waterproof versions are available in a size tailored for backpacks between 40 and 60 liters, as well as one for behemoths over 60 liters; both of those sizes come in short and tall varieties. The models range in capacity from 5.6 liters (40 liters, short) to 11.1 liters (60 liters, tall) and weigh from 3.3 to 4.3 ounces. All PackStacks are made with 210-denier Cordura Lite, which stood up to months of hard use with no rips or holes. That’s good, since we plan on taking the PackStack on every multi-day mission for years to come.

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Nobody’s ever said water duty is their favorite part of hiking. With the ($45), though, the task just got a whole lot easier.

This affordable, compact, 3.3-ounce kit comes with two components: a durable, one-liter soft-sided reservoir—helpfully labeled “dirty”—and a hollow-fiber filter that’s small enough to fit inside a toilet-paper roll. To get clean water, simply fill the reservoir (a hard plastic handle helps with skimming it through streams and lakes), screw the filter onto the top, and squeeze. The QuickDraw’s 0.2-micron pores sift out bacteria and protozoa (but not viruses, which are removed only by purifiers). And believe us, this thing is fast: by applying constant pressure on the reservoir, we filled a one-liter Nalgene in about 20 seconds—the fastest rate on the market for something this light and inexpensive. “Even when I was hiking with groups, I brought this filter rather than a larger gravity model,” one editor said. “It’s so small that it can fit in a hipbelt pocket, and it’s the most efficient filtration system I’ve ever used.”

The filter itself rests inside a durable ABS-plastic housing, so dropping it won’t destroy the sensitive fibers inside. The dirty-water reservoir is built to last thanks to its thick plastic construction, and we haven’t seen any holes in ours after a full season of use, a far cry from other, flimsier reservoirs.

Screw threads lock the filter onto the reservoir as well as other Platypus products, Smartwater bottles, and 28-millimeter plastic bottles. (You can also drink straight from the clean-water side of the filter.) Our test unit slowed down only once, and a simple backflush returned it to its regular flow. With the QuickDraw, filtering water is over in a blink, and you can get back to what you’re out there for: enjoying your hike.

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Here’s the truth: it’s been years since a hiking boot impressed us. Are our grading criteria too rigorous? Possibly. Are we jaded? Almost certainly. But the fact remains, nothing blew us away for almost half a decade. That is, until now. The ($180) is the all-purpose boot we’ve been waiting for.

We put the Anacapa through almost every conceivable hiking scenario—rocky alpine, muddy jungle, dirt singletrack—and it kept our feet comfortable, our strides natural, and our footing secure through all of them. The boot’s chunky EVA midsole (37 millimeters thick at the heel) cushions weight, the wide last allows feet to splay, and the tapered toe lends it the feel of a heavy duty trail running shoe.

On a four-day trip in Wyoming’s Wind River Range, the Anacapa Mid piloted us down the rolling trail into Titcomb Basin with a 35-pound pack on; foot soreness was the furthest thing from our minds. Despite all that cushioning, the boot is maneuverable: on that same trip, we scrambled up 13,711-foot Fremont Peak and the boot proved nimble as we rock-hopped to the summit.

At one pound per shoe, the Anacapa Mid is light enough for day hikes, a rare quality in a boot this comfy and supportive, and its nubuck-and-polyester upper breathes well in warm temps, even with a Gore-Tex insert. That membrane proved protective in Panama’s rainforest, where it sealed out muck and water.

The only gripe we have about the Anacapa is that the EVA on the outsole—where it’s not covered in Vibram Megagrip—has deteriorated a bit after 150 miles of hiking. The flaw is only cosmetic so far, but it might become a structural issue in the future. Still, this boot excels on the trail, and we’re willing to ride it as far as it will take us. 1.8 lbs (women’s) / 2 lbs (men’s)

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