In mountaineering in the United States, a thirteener (abbreviated 13er) is a mountain that exceeds 13,000 feet (3,962.4 m) above mean sea level, similar to the more familiar "fourteeners," which exceed 14,000 feet (4,267.2 m). In most instances, "thirteeners" refers only to those peaks between 13,000 and 13,999 feet in elevation.
The importance of thirteeners is greatest in Colorado, which has the majority of such peaks in North America with over 600 of them. Despite the large number of peaks, over 20 peak baggers have reported climbing all of Colorado's thirteeners.[1] Thirteeners are also significant in states whose highpoints fall between 13,000 and 13,999 feet. For example, the Wyoming thirteeners are the highest peaks within the state, and only 5 individuals have reported climbing all 35 peaks, likely due to a combination of technical difficulty and remoteness.[2][3] In 2019, Teresa Gergen became the first person to summit all 846 thirteeners outside of Alaska, an accomplishment that took her nearly two decades to complete.[4][5]
Not all summits over 13,000 feet qualify as thirteeners, but only those summits that mountaineers consider to be independent. Objective standards for independence include topographic prominence and isolation (distance from a higher summit), or a combination. However thirteener lists do not always consistently use such objective rules. A rule commonly used by mountaineers in the contiguous United States is that a peak must have at least 300 feet (91 m) of prominence to qualify. According to the Mountaineering Club of Alaska, it is standard in Alaska to use a 500 ft (152 m) prominence rule rather than a 300-foot rule. These are the standards applied for the lists below. Regarding whether or not peaks in excess of 13,999 feet should be considered as "thirteeners", this article will count them as such for statistical purposes, but concentrate its focus on those peaks less than 14,000 feet since the higher peaks are already covered in the fourteeners list.
List of United States thirteeners by state
Thirteeners are found in nine U.S. states. This table summarizes their numbers based on each state's prominence criteria:
By the most detailed count, Colorado has 637 peaks that exceed 13,000 feet (4,000 m) and meet the prominence criteria, of which 53 are fourteeners.[6][7] The highest of them less than 14,000 feet are as follows (the rank includes higher peaks):
California has the second greatest number of thirteeners with 149[8] of them, of which 12 are fourteeners. The highest under 14,000 feet are as follows (the rank includes higher peaks):
Alaska has at least 41 thirteeners that meet its more stringent prominence criteria of 500 ft, of which 20 are also fourteeners. Different sources list varying numbers of 13,000+ ft peaks in the state,[9][10][11] mainly because many of the peaks (especially those that are sub-peaks of a higher mountain) are unnamed and have no spot elevations given on the USGS topographical maps. Using a 300' interpolated prominence criterion, there are 61 13,000+ ft peaks in Alaska.[12] The following list may miss a few peaks that should be included:
Wyoming has 35 thirteeners with at least 300 ft of interpolated prominence, but no fourteeners.[13] 31 of the 35 are located in the rugged and remote Wind River Range. Several of the Wyoming thirteeners require glacier travel and/or rock climbing up to the 5.4 YDS difficulty level to reach the summit, and most climbers spend multiple days backpacking to reach most of these peaks.[14] The highest of them are:
Utah has 17 thirteeners with at least 300 ft of prominence, but no fourteeners.[15][16] All of them are located in the remote Uinta Mountains near the Wyoming border. The highest of the thirteeners are:
Nevada has only a single thirteener that meets the threshold for inclusion, Wheeler Peak in Great Basin National Park with an impressive 7,568 feet (2,307 m) of prominence. However, the highest point in the state is Boundary Peak, which is a sub-peak of California's Montgomery Peak with only 240 feet (73 m) of prominence.[19]
Mount Rainier is the only mountain in Washington state that exceeds 13,000 feet (4,000 m), and it has two summits that meet the prominence criteria,[20] both of which are included on the list of fourteeners.
