Some Mountains Beg To Be Climbed

We climb mountains for heaps of different reasons. Over the last year I have had many summits and many reasons to climb.

Some mountains you climb for the challenge: Reid Glacier route on Hood. Mount Washington. The North Buttress Couloir on Colchuck.

Some mountains you climb to check them off the list. Sometimes you climb a mountain just so have done it:  Mount Mcloughlin and Broken Top. And often you get more out of it than that. 

Some mountains you climb because the trail goes right over the top of them: Mount Pirongia, Mount Crawford, Mount Rintoul.

Some mountains you climb to destroy the one ring that rules them all: Mount Ngauruhoe.

Then there are the mountains so majestic that they beg to be climbed: Dragon Tail, Liberty Bell.

Crossing through Nelson lakes National park the mountains all begged to be climbed and yet the trail stayed away from the summits. I longed to climbed them all, but I had neither the time nor the equipment to make most of these summits possible.

Coming over Waiau pass however the summit was close (only a couple hundred meters left to gain to summit) and the route looked good (class 4 maybe a couple of easy class 5 moves.) I had to give it a shot. I got my hands on the rock and I began to climb. And I soon found myself on top. The mountains were too majestic to leave the entire range unclimbed.

Of all the reasons to climb a mountain, I believe this one is the purest: to look up at a peak and think “I need to climb that.” That draw trumps all of the other reasons I’ve climbed and because of that this was one of my favorite summits.

Notes and Stuff:

We are more than 2/3rds of the way done!!!

The south island has been way more scenic and way more rugged than the north island.

Sandflies are pretty horrible.

I have started taking a picture of camp everyday. I have one for each of my camps on the South island. I will post them at some point, but here are the few I took of the north Island.