Nathan Longhurst on the summit of Mount Hicks, with Aoraki Mount Cook in the background. Photo / Supplied
Nathan Longhurst on the summit of Mount Hicks, with Aoraki Mount Cook in the background. Photo / Supplied
American endurance athlete Nathan Longhurst is trying to do New Zealand’s 100-peak challenge in a single season, a list compiled by the NZ Alpine Club to motivate members.
Longhurst has so far ticked off 80 peaks in 80 days, having endured thunderstorms, loose rock, a sprained ankle from paragliding landings, and endless hours of bush-bashing. Track his progress here.
While climbing in Aoraki National Park in November, he disturbed an unstable microwave-size block of rock. He managed to avoid a death-fall by reacting quickly and holding it in place, releasing it only after swinging his body and leg out of the way.
On Mount Ward the following month, he had to make himself a snow mask out of duct tape to protect his eyes from the sting of snow blindness; he’d lost his sunglasses during a lengthy bush-bash a few days earlier, and now always takes two pairs.
And there was a point when he thought it was all over on his way down from the summit of Mount Irene, having badly sprained his ankle after a couple of sub-optimal paragliding landings.
“I heard a snap and felt all the pain, and for a second I thought that I broke something because of how loud it popped,” he told the Herald this week from his base in Wānaka, having been in the country for 80 days and having summited 80 of the 100 peaks. (At the time of publishing, he had completed 82.)
Nathan Longhurst with the ski mask he made out of duct tape after he lost his sunglasses during a bush-bash. Photo / Supplied
The injury occurred while Longhurst was in a remote part of Fiordland National Park. He had to hobble/butt-scoot for more than three hours to get back to his sleeping kit.
“Things felt pretty grim going to sleep that night,” he said, reflecting on the ordeal.
He had satellite communication and, in the morning, eyed a grassy patch near his sleeping spot where a helicopter could easily land.
“It was absolutely tempting to call for a helicopter. The ankle was still pretty swollen, but I thought: ‘This isn’t life-threatening. It’s gonna be uncomfortable to get myself out, but I won’t die.‘”
He then started up a nearby peak, knowing that if the winds were friendly, he could paraglide to his kayak on the shores of Lake Te Anau’s South Fiord, saving himself eight hours of bush-bashing.
“But I had this real moment of self-reflection: my ankle’s bad enough that if I go up there, there’s no way I’m coming back down. It could be 50mph winds and zero visibility, I’d still launch.”
He didn’t want to be in that position, a decision he’s proud of on reflection. He turned around started the bush-bash, thinking the project might be over.
“That’s absolutely what I thought. It was swollen enough and painful enough that I thought that I was gonna be on the couch for multiple weeks, and maybe just have to be done with it.
“But I paddled all the way back and then took a couple of rest days, did some stretching and some massaging and some ibuprofen.”
His ankle was still visibly swollen during his chat with the Herald, 10 days later, having ticked off four more summits.
“It’s slowly improving, so I’m fairly optimistic that I’ll be able to keep going. As long as I don’t mess it up again.”
The NZ Alpine Club published a 100-peak challenge in its centennial year of 1991. Only one person, Kiwi climber Don French, has completed it.
A very specific skillset
The NZ Alpine Club drew up the 100-peak challenge in 1991, the club’s centennial year, to motivate climbers to get into the mountains. Included are peaks both popular and remote, of varying difficulty, and mostly in the South Island.
Longhurst, 25, is trying to do them all in one season, solo, and using a rare blend of expertise in mountain and rock climbing, paragliding and ultrarunning.
He is no stranger to such endurance challenges. At 21, he became the youngest person at the time to climb all of the highest 100 peaks in his home state of Washington, US, which he did in only 94 days.
The following year, he bagged all 247 peaks of the Sierra Peaks Section list in the Sierra Nevada range, taking 138 days to cover almost 3000 kilometres (the length of the Te Araroa trail) and more than 200,000 metres of vertical elevation gain (the equivalent of going from sea level to the summit of Mount Everest more than 22 times).
But Longhurst has since added paragliding to his set of mountain skills, and it has made this 100-peak challenge unique.
It’s enabled him to climb Mount Tutoko, Fiordland’s highest peak, and fly off the summit, cutting what takes most climbers three days into a 12-hour trip.
He’s also done multiple link-ups by combining climbing and flying. He summited four peaks – Aoraki Mount Cook, Mount Vancouver, Mount Drake and Mount Magellan – on November 30, followed by four more the next day: Mounts Haast, Lendenfeld, Tasman and Torres.
“One of my favorite things is looking at the map, and how I can link up peaks. The wing is like adding a portal where all you need is the vertical elevation to burn. ‘If I’m higher here than I am here, then I can teleport myself from here to here’.”
On December 6, again using a combination of climbing and flying, he summited Mount Rudolf, Minarets, Mount Green, Mount Elie de Beaumont and Hochstetter Dome. The flying not only saved oodles of time, but enabled him to avoid terrain so dangerous he wouldn’t dare try it on foot by himself: steep, unstable icefalls above the Tasman Glacier.
This meant the success of one flight was particularly crucial, and it was far from a sure thing when he set out that morning from Centennial Hut on the west side of the Main Divide.
“It was way too windy to fly on top of Rudolf, and I thought ‘the day’s gonna be ruined. I’m gonna get stuck on the west side and run out of food, have to call a helicopter and bail, and the whole project is going to be over’.”
But after climbing Minarets and reaching a plateau he wanted to launch from, the wind had died down.
He took flight and traversed a ridge of summits, avoiding a dangerously “gnarly” descent towards the Tasman Glacier on foot.
He then landed on the shoulder of Mount Green, summited it, and then climbed nearby Mount Walter. This isn’t on the 100-peak list, but it gave him enough elevation to fly down to halfway up Mount Elie de Beaumont, thereby avoiding the more dangerous glaciated parts of its lower slopes.
From the top of Elie, he flew to a spot most of the way up Hochstetter Dome, completed that summit, and then flew down to Tasman Saddle Hut – where he waited out two days of stormy weather.
“Doing the big crux transfer and getting to Tasman Saddle Hut that afternoon was definitely a huge relief, a turning point in the project as a whole.”
This alludes to another essential ingredient for the project, but one he has no control over: luck.
Longhurst doesn’t fly unless the conditions allow, but so far he’s managed 72 flights, including flying from – or near – the top of about 55 of the 80 peaks.
Dangerous icefalls aren’t the only terrain that flying has enabled him to avoid. He’s also gained a bit of height and flown over raging rivers far too dangerous to cross on foot.
Nathan Longhurst flew off the summit of Aoraki Mount Cook on November 30, and then climbed three more peaks that day as part of the 100-peak challenge. Photo / George Heard
A case of not if, but when
Longhurst is relatively new to paragliding, having only started in 2023, and he has first-hand experience of the danger. He broke his pelvis during a flight less than a year into it.
He isn’t sure what happened because there were no witnesses, and his memory is hazy because he lost consciousness.
“I think I was doing some steep, dynamic turns close to the ground, and probably took some kind of collapse or deflation of my wing in bumpier conditions and just got spun into the hill.
“I ended up getting a plate and six screws in my pelvis. The whole middle of my body was pretty messed up. I had a week in the hospital and then a few more weeks in a wheelchair.”
It didn’t deter him though, as he insists it’s “absurdly fun”, but the incident made him very aware of the need for constant vigilance.
”It was a valuable lesson in humility, and made it very clear how quickly things can go wrong and how consequential they can be.”
The 100-peak mission so far has been mostly smooth sailing, thanks in no small part to how good the weather has been in the Southern Alps this summer.
With funding support from the Dirtbag Fund and an American Alpine Club grant, Longhurst arrived in Queenstown on November 17 and, within hours, had summited Double Cone.
He quickly bought a van fitted with a bed, and has been making faster progress than he expected. It’s taken him to gorgeous parts of the country barely anyone else has seen.
American Nathan Longhurst in the van he bought after arriving in New Zealand in November to start the 100-peak challenge. Photo / Derek Cheng
There have been low points, of course, such as sitting in his van in the rain on New Year’s Eve at a trailhead on the Rakaia River, with a questionable forecast and a multi-day mission ahead.
“I’m in the van, surrounded by food and comfort and a bed. I know that it’s gonna be really hard and I know that it’s gonna be scary. It’s just this huge mental shift to step out of the van and put the pack on and then start moving.
“The most mentally and emotionally difficult moments have all been before the start. But once I’m moving, everything’s sweet and I’m focused.”
There have been several “what am I doing here” moments, usually while climbing through particularly loose rock, or slogging through dense bush.
“I’ll be really present and invested, and then some thought will trigger this moment of sobriety, of coming to your senses: ‘It’s 10am on a Tuesday and I’m in the middle of this bush, hanging from one arm with my ice axes caught, and covered in mud because I just fell in a swamp. How has my life led me to this point?’”
And there was the ankle sprain near Mount Irene, which was the combination of two average landings: one where he got caught in “some sinky air”, having misjudged the wind, and the following landing where he “came down a bit funny on tussock”.
But perhaps the gnarliest moment was on the east ridge of Mount Dilemma on his way to Unicorn, “stemming up this slushy ice corner” in crampons and using ice tools.
“There was this unstable block. I was just pulling on it to test it, and that was enough to rotate the whole thing out. I held it back in place and had to take a long time to find a tool placement that was actually going to hold me.
“Then I stepped one foot out in a barn-door swing and let the block go by, and then fell back into the stem. I’ve never had to do a manoeuvre quite like that before, definitely a little more intense than I would have wanted.”
Nathan Longhurst on the summit of Mount Rudolph, with Aoraki Mount Cook in the background. Photo / Supplied
A deeper level of focus
The 100-peak challenge is an inherently risky mission, and some of the risks could be mitigated by roping up with a climbing partner. But going solo has a unique appeal.
“When you’re around other people, a pretty significant part of your brain is dedicated to how those people are perceiving you, and being aware of what you’re doing and what they’re doing,” he said.
“I love being out in the mountains with other people who are close to me, but I definitely find a much deeper level of focus and presence when I’m by myself. All of my brain is focused on what I’m doing, and what’s right in front of me.”
Longhurst would have struggled to find partners for many of the peaks anyway, given how remote and rarely climbed some of them are.
“For all but maybe five peaks so far, the whole time car to car [from leaving his van until returning to it], I haven’t seen a single other person. I love it.”
And that additional mental space has been welcome – the mental aspect has been more challenging than the physical (Longhurst’s summer job is as a trail running guide).
“Obviously the big risk-management decisions are hard, but maybe even more so it’s just the complex approaches. It’s not like you can turn your brain off while you walk up a trail, because the amount of trail I’ve walked on is probably less than 10%.
“The whole time you’re approaching, every two steps you’re making little micro route-finding decisions about which way I go over this rock, which way I go through this bush-bash, hours and hours and hours of that.”
If he then summits, he has to make very consequential decisions about whether to fly, and if so, how.
“And then you get out at the end of the day and you have to make decisions about what to eat [he has devoured many, many meat pies], and how to get to wherever I need to be for my next set of peaks.
“I’ve had very little mental downtime for months.”
So what’s the first thing he’ll do if all goes well and he finishes the 100?
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Derek Cheng is a senior journalist who started at the Herald in 2004. He has worked several stints in the press gallery team and is a former deputy political editor.
