Hump Day Highpoint - Week 3

This week on our Hump Day Highpoint we feature the highest point of Illinois, 1,235 ft Charles Mound.

Charles Mound is interesting but not for any reasons that relate to its height or difficulty in climbing. Obviously at 1,235 ft this point is not really much of a mountain (hence the name mound). However, every highpoint presents its own unique set of difficulties and those of Charles Mound can be summed up in one word...access. Charles Mound is so uninteresting that no governmental authority has seen the need to acquire the land. Anytime a highpoint lies on private property one must be wary of the landowners. In Charles Mound's case, the land is owned by Wayne and Jean Wuebbels. I don't know anything about these folks but I can imagine the irritation that might follow from random people constantly wandering around outside your farmhouse. The Wuebbels (who wobble but they don't fall down) thus decided that their land would be open to highpointers, but only for four weekends a year. Thus if you want to ascend Charles Mound (without risking a criminal trespass charge) you must do so on the first full weekend of June, July, August, or September. You can't really blame the Wuebbels and they have been good sports about the whole thing, hosting the 2003 Highpointers Konvention (on a side note, the only other organization I can think of that intentionally misspells the word convention with a K is the Ku Klux Klan (click the link, it's worth it)).

One could make a case that Charles Mound is not even the highest point of the state of Illinois. That is because if you were atop THIS:

You'd be at a higher elevation.....and NO THAT IS NOT THE SEARS TOWER. Now we suddenly have several things to unpack. Let's start with the Sears Tower piece. When I was growing up, it was common knowledge (perpetuated by every junior high student's favorite reference work The Guinness Book of World Records) that the Sears Tower in Chicago was the worlds tallest building. At the time this was completely true. Since then however a number of things have happened:

#1 - The 1998 completion of the Petronas Twin Towers in Malaysia. Suddenly the tallest building in the world depended on whether you count the antenna on top as part of the building or not.

#2 - The topping out of the Burj Dubai in 2009. This building may or may not count as a building since it isn't actually finished though it is very close. If completed it will settle the antenna question by being taller than the Sears Tower by close to 1,000 feet. It also maintains Dubai's penchant for things being extremely tasteful.

#3 - The purchase of the naming rights to the Sears Tower by Willis Group Holdings in March 2009. After buying these rights, this nice British insurance company changed the name the Willis Tower in July 2009 no doubt outraging many Chicagoans.

But enough about buildings already....why isn't it the highpoint?!?!?!

When seeking the "highpoint" of a state the commonly understood meaning is that one is seeking the highest natural point. Therefore man-made points don't count. That means several things. The most obvious is that massive skyscrapers don't count, but man-made can mean other things as well. Piles of moved dirt don't count either. At one point some folks in Colorado decided that Mount Elbert wasn't as good a highpoint as the nearby and almost as tall Mount Massive. They decided to pile rocks atop Mount Massive to make it higher. Sorry, that doesn't count either. So to get back to the point, when the SHTTT heads to Illinois, rather than getting to hang out in Chicago we instead have to drive almost to Wisconsin to stand in somebody's yard....sometimes these rules kinda suck.

On a more somber note the SHTTT extends their sympathy to the friends and families of those climbers who recently lost their lives on Mount Hood which happens to be the highest point of Oregon. The events are a sobering reminder of the dangers inherent in climbing some of these mountains.