Monte Grigna Settentrionale

Di Luca Casartelli - DSC_5917.jpg, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43212514

For the introduction to the Poly-baggers' Register and Hall of Fame, see here.

2022 is the fourth year of the Tables, comprising a Hall of Fame (with various levels), a Progress Register (for between 100 and 499 ascents), and a Roll of Honour (for deceased poly-baggers who did not make the Hall of Fame before their deaths).

A total of 51 people and 13 deceased feature in the 2022 Table, with many recording poly-bagging of multiple hills.  The 2022 Table contains 160 entries - 60 in the Hall of Fame (55 in 2021), 97 in the Register and 3 in the Roll of Honour – there was a total in 2021 of 154 entries.

There are five new entrants to the Hall of Fame in 2022 – the late Claudio Ghezzi, Tom Lopez (two entries), Garrett Marcotte and Mark Trengove.

The late Claudio Ghezzi is a new entry directly into Level V of the Hall – currently the top level.  He died tragically on his beloved Monte Grigna Settentrionale 2410m, P1687m in the Bergamo Alps, Italy, while attempting to rescue some people stranded on a via ferrata on the mountain – for the full story, see here.

Gary Beck smashed through the Level II threshold for the Hall of Fame with his life-time total of 1,266 ascents of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) 1085m, P1039m, the highest mountain in Wales.

Three people managed over three hundred ascents of their chosen peak in 2022 – Fran Rautiola, ‘Habakuk Tibatong’ and Gary Beck.  Tom Lopez also clocked up over two hundred ascents.

Due to a number of new entries, Mount Le Conte 2010m, P415m in Tennessee, USA becomes the most ‘popular’ poly-bagging peak, with six poly-baggers.  My thanks go to Tom Layton for sharing with me his researches on peak-baggers for this mountain.  The lack of peaks with more than two poly-bagging entries continues to reflect the esoteric nature of poly-bagging.

Mount Monadnock 965m, P660m, in New Hampshire, USA still remains, if tenuously, as the mountain up which the most recorded multiple ascents have occurred.  I reported last year on my researches into reports of claims of huge numbers of ascents of Camelback Mountain/Cew S-wegiom 824m, P406m and neighbouring Piestewa Peak 794m, P360m near Phoenix, Arizona USA by Sam Wagman, Sandy Kloch, the late Nick Palomares, Jack Dunn and Joe Bartells (see here). 

So far, I have failed to make contact with any of these people, or with those who know them well.  Nor have my researches yielded any further information, save that Sam Wagman was still climbing Piestewa as late as February 2023, now aged nearly 88.

If anyone reading this Report does have a way of contacting any of them, please email me at the address given at the bottom of the home-page on this website, as I would be very interested in getting in touch with them, and/or obtaining further information, so they can be included in a later edition of the Tables.  

Mark Trengove

May 2023