When Joshua Schibi was a college athlete in Massachusetts, his team climbed Mount Monadnock. Schibi grew up in a part of Connecticut with some nice hiking trails, but nothing like the 360-degree views from southwest NH’s iconic, solitary peak.

“I talked to one of the other climbers there and I was like, ‘Do you ever get sick of this?’” Schibi recalls. “And they were like, ‘Oh, this is …