Thirteener

Thirteeners are super tall mountains, taller than 13,000 feet! That's like stacking 100 school buses on top of each other, and then adding a few more! They are found in places like Colorado, which has more Thirteeners than any other place in North America. Think of them as the slightly smaller cousins of the even taller Fourteeners, which are over 14,000 feet high.

People love to climb Thirteeners! It's a big adventure. Some mountains are called Thirteeners even if they are a little bit taller than 13,000 feet. To be a real Thirteener, a mountain needs to be special and stand on its own, not just be a little bump on a bigger mountain. Climbers have rules to decide if a mountain counts, like how much it sticks up from the land around it.

Colorado is like a treasure chest for Thirteeners, with over 600 of them! It’s so many that it takes a very long time to climb them all. Some people try to climb every single one! In other places, like Wyoming, the Thirteeners are the very highest mountains in the whole state. Climbing them can be tricky because they are far away and sometimes hard to get to.

It takes a lot of hard work and bravery to climb all the Thirteeners in a big state like Colorado. It can take many years! One amazing person, Teresa Gergen, climbed over 800 Thirteeners that weren't in Alaska. She did it over almost 20 years! That's longer than you've been alive! It shows how special and challenging these mountains are.