North America

USA

Eastern USA

• Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) Four Thousand Footer Club has a set of challenges where after climbing top peaks of NH/NE you can receive a patch.
• NH Division of Forests & Lands - after visiting some of their fire lookout towers you can receive a patch.
• The White Mountains 4000 Footer Grid is a set of challenges to hike top peaks of NH in each month of the year.
• ADK 46ers are the hikers who complete the 46 4000' summits in the Adirondack mountains of northern New-York. There is also a separate badge for those who complete the list only during official winter (solstice to solstice).

Canada

Québec

• Rando Québec - certificat du randonneur émérite - This is a list of 75 hiking trails, not necessarily reaching summits, that grants 3 badges, one for every 25 trail a hiker finishes: bronze, silver, and gold.

Europe

Poland

• Polish Tourist and Sightseeing Society (PTTK) has massive set of pins (possibly hundreds) for various achievements. For example:
  • Górska Odznaka Turystyczna (Mountain Tourist Badge) (pl) - with few different levels awarded for hiking X numbers of kilometers in Polish mountains
  • Szlak Wisły (pl) (Vistula Trail) - for kayaking (or sailing) whole length of Vistula river
  • bunch of local badges for summiting top X peaks in different mountains in the country
  • many more - there are multiple branches of PTTK each creating their own badges for their local area. List (not extensive) can be found here (pl) and here (pl).
• Polskie Towarzystwo Tatrzańskie (pl) (Polish Tatra Mountains Society) has a similar system, but focusing on mountain hiking achievements. Some of the badges (pl) include badges for finishing various Polish long distance trails (100-500 km).

UK

• Dartmoor Letterboxing is mainly restricted to Dartmoor, Devon. It's something of a precursor to geocaching: boxes with stamps and visitor books are hidden - or kept behind the bar in pubs etc. The 100 club issues patches for finding 100 (and multiples).
• Long-distance cyclists can join Audax UK and then buy patches for various achievements starting from 50 km rides, seeing the country as they do so.

Austria

This concept is known in German as "Wandernadel" and implemented by a lot of local tourist assiciations, usually in the form of a "book" you can stamp at designated stamp stations on interesting locations. Examples are Vienna, Schladming, Gastein, but there are many more if you google the term.

(The same seems to be true in parts of Germany, there's at least a Harzer Wandernadel.)

posted about 5 years ago

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