Where is 'America's most climbed peak'?

Larry Davis (left) has climbed New Hampshire's Grand Monadnock over 7,450 times.
 Click here to see his video.

 
 Promoters of Colorado's Pikes Peak say it is the most visited peak in North America and second in the world. (They don't identify the world champion, but it must be China's Tai Shan or Japan's Fuji.) Pikes Peak boasted up to 500,000 visitors in a year, though that number has declined while the famous cog railway is closed.

 New Mexico's Sandia Crest may also be in the running, with up to a half-million drive-ups each year, plus another 200,000 who ride the spectacular Sandia Peak Tramway from Albuquerque. New Hampshire's Mount Washington averages more than 250,000 visitors by foot, car, or cog railway.

 Closer to Le Conte, Tennessee's Clingmans Dome averages 600,000 visitors per year, according to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and North Carolina's Mount Mitchell State Park counted 375,471 in 2019. We can assume that many of those visitors stopped at the parking-lot overlooks and never walked all the way up the paved trails to the summits.

 An average year at Le Conte Lodge includes about 11,000 overnight guests and close to 40,000 including day hikers. (Pikes Peak averages 15,000 hikers annually, not counting the drive-up traffic).

 If you Google "most climbed mountain," you may find claims for New Hampshire's Grand Monadnock. Actually, Monadnock's greatest claim to fame is Larry Davis, who climbed the mountain for 2,850 consecutive days in the 1990s and made his 7,450th climb on January 6, 2017. From what I've heard, Davis has relocated and no longer regularly climbs Monadnock.
 Garry Harrington, author of Chasing Summits, told me in January 2020 he has climbed Monadnock about 1,200 times.

 On California's Mount San Antonio, also known as Mount Baldy, Richard Tufts has logged more than 1,000 climbs. Seuk Doo Kim, 78, was aiming to match Tufts and made over 700 climbs before he fell to his death in 2017. 

 In Tennessee, Dewey Slusher has climbed House Mountain more than 2,000 times. Dewey also has hundreds of climbs of Le Conte. 

 Other than Davis, I have found no one in the nation who has climbed one mountain more often than Le Conte's all-time leaders, Ron Valentine (estimated 4,000) and Jack Huff (about 2,500). According to Multiple Repeats by a Member on the peakbagging site listsofjohn.com, the national leaders (as of Sept. 8, 2021) is Mark Nichols with 2,190 climbs on an unnamed 5,529-foot peak in Cochise County, Arizona,

 Here is a list of climbers with more than 1,000 climbs on the same mountain (totals as of Sept. 8, 2021) : 

7,450 Larry Davis (Mount Monadnock, 3,165 feet, New Hampshire)

4,000 est. Ron Valentine (Mount Le Conte, 6,593 feet, Tennessee)

2,500 est. Jack Huff (Mount Le Conte)

2,190 Mark Nichols (Unnamed 5,529 feet, Cochise County, Arizona)

2,000 est. Dewey Slusher (House Mountain, 2,080 feet, Tennessee)

1,500 est. Tim Line (Mount Le Conte, worked 44 years at LeConte Lodge)

1,310 Ed Wright (Mount Le Conte, 6,593 feet, Tennessee)

1,250 est. Alan Householder (llama wranger, Mount Le Conte)

1,173 Rick Baugher (Kelly Mountain, 6,805 feet, Idaho)

1,135 Gerry Roach (Flat Top Mountain, 6,321 feet, Colorado)

1,081 John Prater (Green Mountain, 8,144 feet, Boulder County, Colorado)

1,039 John Kirk (Stafford Hogback, 6,482 feet, Colorado)

1,000 est. Richard Tufts (Mount Baldy, 10,064 feet, California)

1,000 est. Graham Cooper (Mount Le Conte)

1,000 est. Wiley Oakley (Mount Le Conte)

1,001 Alyson Kirk (Green Mountain, 6,855, Jefferson County, Colorado)

 Alyson Kirk also has 967 climbs of Stafford Hogback, so she and John could become the first couple with 1,000 apiece on the same peak.

 On the East coast, aside from Le Conte, the most persistent climbers on one peak are Rick Shortt with 137 trips up 3,721-foot Sand Mountain, Va.; and yours truly, Tom Layton, 137 on 5,555-foot Elk Knob, N.C. Those totals exclude unranked peaks (less than 300 feet of prominence). Rick told me he has over 200 ascents on High Rocks, the unranked but spectacular viewpoint on the eastern shoulder of Sand Mountain. Also, Stony Burk has more than 300 climbs on Mount Major, an unranked 1,786-footer in New Hampshire. 

 The Le Conte leaders are not represented on ListsofJohn because none of them logged their hikes on the ListsofJohn website.