Speaking for the record-keepers, I use a very straightforward Excel spreadsheet to track a few basic details of each hike I do. It takes just a few seconds to enter the trail, time, distance and elevation gain. Doing so helps keep me on pace for the goals I set at the beginning of each year for distance and gain. This year my two focused goals were 400 miles and 100,000 feet, both about 30% more than last year. I'm right at 280 and 70,000 through this past weekend, so the record-keeping tells me I'm on track for both.
I know there are others who track many more details of their hikes/climbs, especially in the California and Colorado regions, but living where I do the vast majority of my hikes fall into the "training" category. I track these as essentially workout progress against a fitness goal. For those special hikes or climbs, I'll enter more details and some narrative in a Nomad hiking journal, for the sake of posterity or future reference.
It's really just a matter of personal preference. I've never kept a formal tracking system of the number of times I've been above a certain elevation, but that's because I only get to spend 2-3 weeks each year in the higher elevations of the west - at this point I can pretty much speak from memory that I've been above 13,000 feet on 11 occassions, and above 14,000 on 6. Small but very memorable numbers, which is why I don't need to keep a record of them. If I lived in the reasonable vicinity of higher elevations, I'd almost certainly keep track of elevation as well. It would take virtually no effort or time. Some people are wired that way, some aren't - it's chocolate and vanilla.
