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It started humbly, summer of 2023. Sue, Brenda and Shelly took a bit of a Minnesota north shore “vacation.” The goal was to hike the highest point in Minnesota, Eagle Mountain in the Boundary Waters, a whopping 2,301 feet, chump change next to the endless supply of much higher peaks in our winter home of Arizona. We were just starting down from the “Summit” when Jodee Tomassoni showed up with two friends, hiding under a mosquito bonnet. The size and surprise of that coincidence is hard to measure. Less surprising, yet delightful, was the juvenile moose we met on the short-cut road to a good meal in Grand Marais. Note: we work hard and get sweaty but we clean up enough for a good evening meal, the kind where a chef is involved.

I don’t recall exactly but I think we started poking fun at low high points that very evening, between innings in the Minnesota Twins’ game that Shelly apparently requires—the way a hiker needs water. We may have googled a couple of states’ low points like Wisconsin or Iowa or my home state of North Dakota. Slowly over the course of the rest of the trip we fiddled with the idea and Shelly and Brenda, headed for their Rim to Rim, said, “Let’s Do It.” I promised I’d draft something for when they returned. The idea of “Summiting the Lowest High Points” took hold. We carefully avoided states like Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and of course Colorado. We started asking: How many in our party? How many is too many? How many isn’t enough?

When the pair of them (Shelly and Brenda) returned jubilant from their Rim to Rim, I gave them the one-page synopsis of a three or four-day adventure. But then we set up camp on a Google Share Drive Doc and—cutting to the chase—within a short time we had six participants, all of them editors of the Google doc, which empowered them to amend/add/subtract any detail in the 6-day adventure (eventually 7).

                                             Two Hikers from Flat Fargo - Dot and Sue