Utah has so many mountains that even its flat parts have mountains.

That would be the Bonneville Salt Flats, where drivers come from around the world to set land speed records on its utterly flat natural speedway. But what do the drivers see when they glance to the northwest? The peaks of the Silver Island Mountains.

Utahns are proud of their state-spanning peaks, from the 13,000-foot summits of the Uinta Range in the northeast, to the Pine Valley Mountains overlooking St. George in the southwest, to the Wasatch Front, home to three-fourths of Utah’s population.

The people here have always felt there is something superlative about Utah’s mountains – but how could they prove they were the best? Kings Peak, the state’s highest summit, is only No. 76 on the list of highest peaks in the United States. As a whole, Utah has one of the highest average elevations of any U.S. state, but it still only ranks No. 3.

Then, in 1992, mountain climber Dub Bludworth of Salt Lake City crunched some numbers to prove that Utah is, indeed, the most thoroughly mountainous state. His data showed that the average elevation of the highest peak in each of Utah’s 29 counties is 11,222 feet above sea level – about 250 feet higher than runner-up Colorado.

Bludworth took his discovery to Lynn Arave, then a reporter at the Deseret News, who published a series of articles touting Utah’s newfound claim to fame. The state’s status as elevation champion to adopt the popular “Life Elevated” slogan, Arave told Utah Life.

But Bludworth didn’t just identify and compile data on Utah’s county high points – he became the first person to climb to the top of each one. Not long after Arave wrote about Bludworth’s feat in the Desert News, a new peak-bagging fever had taken hold among the state’s hiking community. People crisscrossed the state trying to summit each county high point, which total only 26, since three counties share summits. By 1999, there was even a definitive guidebook, High in Utah, devoted solely to telling people the best way to climb them all.

While reporting the story, Arave couldn’t resist trying to bag a few county high points himself, though he quit after climbing only 11. He soured on the idea of climbing peaks just to rack up numbers after he was nearly zapped in a lightning storm while trying to bag the state’s three highest peaks in a single day – he was so obsessed with bagging them all that he didn’t notice the ominous clouds rolling in over the Uinta Range.

Instead, he decided to focus on climbing peaks whose individual stories spoke to him. One of the first on his personal list was Ben Lomond, which rises high above Ogden in the Northern Wasatch Range.

Millions of people know Ben Lomond by sight, if not by name: It was the model for the iconic Paramount Pictures peak, first sketched in 1914 by studio co-founder W.W. Hodkinson.

“He grew up in Ogden, and if you go there, Ben Lomond is just larger than life,” Arave said. “It looms a mile above the level valley, so as a young kid, that had to leave a big impression on him.”

Deep in the West Desert, Arave and his son climbed Notch Peak, which has a sheer cliff on its northwest face plunging 2,200 feet straight down from the summit. He took in the spectacular view from the top, but he might have spent just as much time watching his son, then 9 years old, to make sure he didn’t fall over the edge.

No Utah mountain list would be complete without Mount Timpanogos, the most-hiked peak in the state. With waterfalls, wildflowers galore and a Matterhorn-like summit looking down on Provo, “Timp” has it all. Perhaps that’s why at least one Utahn has shrugged off the idea of bagging a bunch of peaks in favor of bagging Timp over and over again.

Ben Woolsey of Orem first summited Timp when he was 24. He made his 190th ascent around his 50th birthday, but he didn’t really get going until he retired at age 62. Woolsey was 75 when he completed his 900th climb, aiming to reach the summit an even 1,000 times.

Few of Woolsey’s fellow hikers find anything odd about his devotion to Timp –
he’s simply doing what they wish they could do. And that might speak more to the superlative grandeur of Utah’s mountains than any statistics ever could.