Nerd - Climbing; what mountains to start with
dfranke: The Adirondack High Peaks are a nice range for newbies and casual climbers (which probably all I'll ever be).  Wright and/or Algonquin Peak via Avalanche Pass is a stunningly beautiful hike.  Wright Peak, the easier of the two, is a little tougher than I'd recommend if you've never been up a mountain before, but with a bare minimum of experience (I'm talking a couple weeks at most), most healthy adults ought to be able to manage it as a day hike.One particularly neat thing about Wright Peak is that in 1962, a B-47 bomber crashed into it near the summit, and you can still find bits of wreckage scattered about.