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Mar. 28—By the time Nathan Longhurst was standing on top of the Footstool, a 9,080-foot peak in the Southern Alps of New Zealand, a crowd had gathered in the valley below.
Larry and Maren Longhurst, his parents, had been watching the top of the Footstool and Mount Sefton since 8:30 a.m., standing just off the boardwalk of a popular trail with Nathan's girlfriend Syd Clark and climbing friend Dan Cervelli.
Hikers passed by all day. Maren was careful not to gush, but she told anyone who asked that her son had spent the New Zealand summer climbing and paragliding his way through the country, that the two peaks they were staring at were about to become Nos. 99 and 100, and that he was going to glide down to them when it was over.
Naturally, more than a few hikers stayed put. Who wouldn't want to watch? Maren said about 100 people gathered to see the grand finale.
Nathan's day had started around 2 a.m., when he left a hut in the valley on the other side of the mountain and started up Mount Sefton. He caught sunrise on the trail. It may have been the best climb of the trip, he said later.
He was on the summit a couple of hours after sunrise, unpacking his ultralight paragliding wing. He launched and swooped over to a hanging glacier just below the top of the Footstool. His parents watched through binoculars.
"Little tiny Nathan," Maren said, " 6,000 feet above us."
Maybe an hour later, after he climbed through loose rock, he was standing on top of the Footstool.
Peak No. 100, and the launch site for one more flight.
"That flight was super, super fun," Nathan said during a Zoom interview a few weeks later. "Flew straight down this big, big steep mountain face, and landed right where they were waiting for me."
It was a moment full of "smiles and joy and relief," he said, the end of about four months of frenzied climbing and flying and the completion of an ambitious project: To complete the New Zealand Alpine Club's 100 Peaks Challenge.
Until last month, only one climber had stood atop all 100 of the peaks on the list, and had done so across three decades.
Nathan, a 25-year-old climber who grew up in Spokane, did it in 103 days, beginning in mid-November almost immediately after he got of an airplane in Queenstown.
The project blended traditional climbing with paragliding. He flew off 63 of the peaks and flew between some of them to string together multipeak days that otherwise might not be possible.
Jason Hardrath, a climber from Oregon and friend of Nathan's, said the two-sport combination sets this project apart from other mountaineering achievements, making it a feat of sheer athleticism and creativity.
"He's definitely in that category of having done something that's uncommon among the uncommon," Hardrath said.
Challenge to challenge
Nathan is still in New Zealand. He spoke to The Spokesman-Review about three weeks after finishing the project via Zoom. He was sitting in Cervelli's driveway, where he's been parking the van he's been living in since arriving in New Zealand in November.
"This has sort of been the home base," Nathan said.
He plans to return to the U.S. in the coming weeks and will be back in Spokane in early May to give a presentation about his project.
It's the latest in a series of impressive mountaineering feats he's racked up over the past few years. In 2021, he became the youngest climber to complete the Bulger list, which includes the 100 tallest peaks in Washington. A year later, he was the first to climb the 247 peaks of the Sierra Peaks Section List in a single climbing season.
Over the past few years, he's lived in a van, based mostly in Salt Lake City while traveling to climb or paraglide elsewhere. In the summers, he guides supported trail running trips for Bellingham-based Aspire Adventure Running.
The roots of his mountaineering career are firmly planted here. The third of five kids, he grew up mostly near Rockford. There was a lot of room to roam. Maren said he was often out hiking, climbing trees, building bike trails.
"He's just always loved to be outside," she said.
He liked pushing his endurance to the limits. He ran track and cross country for a few years, but Maren said he quit because the races were too short. He'd already done a marathon by the time he was 13, and he ran a 50K by the time he was 15, she said.
He was always looking for the next challenge. He picked up rock climbing in middle school at a local climbing gym and loved it. Soon he was climbing in the Dishman Hills. Later, he was taking trips to Leavenworth, Washington.
Climbing provided measurable goals, a satisfying way of knowing he was honing his skills.
"You find this hard route, and then you work on it, try it over and over again," he said. "When you succeed, you feel like you've progressed."
There was also always something new to go after. Conquering one route meant he could move on to a tougher one.
Mountaineering became a way to combine his passions for climbing and endurance sports, and he decided to build a life around it.
He met Hardrath in 2021. At the time, Hardrath was trying to climb the entire Bulger List in a single season. Nathan joined him for 65 of the climbs. Hardrath ended up finishing in 50 days, a record. Nathan finished in 94.
After finishing that list, Nathan said, he felt a need to move on to the next challenge. He did the Sierra Peaks list the next year.
Then, in 2023, he picked up paragliding. He'd wanted to try it for years. Utah is a good place to learn, with easy access to mountains where gliders can launch, so he signed up for a course to learn.
He did more than 1,000 flights in his first year, many of them being simple laps near home.
"I knew once I started flying, I would be completely obsessed," Nathan said. "That was the case. I started flying and was just instantly hooked."
The sport took him to new places. He flew in the eastern Sierras and Switzerland. And, about a year ago, he took his first trip to New Zealand.
He did some climbing and flying, including an attempt on a speed record on Mount Aspiring. When he left, he knew he wanted to go back.
"I was really just sort of taken by the peaks down there," he said.
He read about the New Zealand Alpine Club's 100 Peaks Challenge, a list of peaks created in 1991 to mark the club's centennial year, and its only finisher, New Zealand climber Don French. French climbed the entire list over the course of 30 years.
"I'm kind of obsessed with peak lists, so of course I was intrigued," Nathan said.
Single season
The list doesn't go by height. Instead, the club chose a diverse set of climbs on the south and north islands. Famous destinations like Mount Cook, the country's highest peak, are included, but so are more remote peaks.
As Nathan looked at the list, he began to wonder if it was possible to get to all of them in a single season.
He plotted them on a map. It seemed overwhelming.
Not only were there 100 peaks, but they were 100 very different peaks. There was rock, ice and glaciers.
Then there's the weather. Nathan said the conditions for climbing start to shape up in November, and that by the end of March there could be major snowstorms.
"There was definitely a lot of doubt as I started to dive into it," he said.
The more he thought about it, though, the more he knew he wanted to try. He got a grant from the Dirtbag Fund, a nonprofit founded by climber Cedar Wright that helps climbers finance big projects, and he made a plan. Cervelli, the friend in New Zealand, set up a tracking website.
On Nov. 17, he landed in Queenstown, in the southern portion of the South Island. About five hours later, he guesses, he was on top of Double Cone.
Peak No. 1, in the bag.
The next day, he climbed Stargazer and Mount Aspiring. Near the end of that first week, he climbed one mountain and flew to two others, landing a short climb shy of the summit on one and near the top of the other.
He went on like that, taking only occasional days off — a total of 31 during the project. On those days, he was usually making a long drive between climbs in the Toyota van he bought to live out of for the season. Gas station meat pies became a staple of his diet. He'd eat four or five in a day.
At other times, he spent long stretches in the backcountry. To climb Mount Irene, the southernmost peak on the list, he paddled a sea kayak 20 miles and bushwhacked several miles to reach the summit.
He flew off of it, but sprained his ankle on the landing. That took a couple weeks to heal, he said, but he kept climbing on it.
With each peak, the website updated his progress. His parents were watching closely. They booked tickets to visit not knowing whether he'd finish the project while they were there.
"We wanted to make sure that he didn't feel any pressure," Maren said.
But when they got there, it was clear it would be close. They got to join him for peak No. 97, a mountain called Taranaki on the North Island.
Maren and Clark, Nathan's girlfriend, climbed about halfway up. Larry joined him at the summit.
For both of them, it was a bit of a throwback. They were together for Nathan's first "real alpine peak," Little Annapurna in the Cascades when he was about 12.
This time, Larry found it was tough to keep up with his son.
"Nathan's extremely fast. His conditioning is incredible," Larry said. "I do a fair amount of trail running, so I'm in decent shape, but not anywhere close to him."
It was late February. Right after that climb, Nathan and Syd drove to the South Island, where he planned to collect the final three peaks.
First, he climbed Lean Peak. He wanted to fly over to the other two, but the conditions weren't right, so he hiked back down to a hut.
After sleeping for a few hours, he got up and started climbing in the dark.
About 10 hours later, it was all over. He was beaming into a camera with his parents and Syd and Cervelli. He did an interview with a TV station. Then they went out for cheeseburgers.
That was a little more than a month ago. He's still in New Zealand, where he's been hiking and flying some more, albeit with lower stakes.
It's not easy to come down from a project like that, when there was a clock running in his mind at all times. He did say it was a little easier with this project than others, however.
"Maybe it was just because this one was finally hard enough and challenging enough," he said. "I've been totally content to just relax."
Continue reading...
Larry and Maren Longhurst, his parents, had been watching the top of the Footstool and Mount Sefton since 8:30 a.m., standing just off the boardwalk of a popular trail with Nathan's girlfriend Syd Clark and climbing friend Dan Cervelli.
Hikers passed by all day. Maren was careful not to gush, but she told anyone who asked that her son had spent the New Zealand summer climbing and paragliding his way through the country, that the two peaks they were staring at were about to become Nos. 99 and 100, and that he was going to glide down to them when it was over.
Naturally, more than a few hikers stayed put. Who wouldn't want to watch? Maren said about 100 people gathered to see the grand finale.
Nathan's day had started around 2 a.m., when he left a hut in the valley on the other side of the mountain and started up Mount Sefton. He caught sunrise on the trail. It may have been the best climb of the trip, he said later.
He was on the summit a couple of hours after sunrise, unpacking his ultralight paragliding wing. He launched and swooped over to a hanging glacier just below the top of the Footstool. His parents watched through binoculars.
"Little tiny Nathan," Maren said, " 6,000 feet above us."
Maybe an hour later, after he climbed through loose rock, he was standing on top of the Footstool.
Peak No. 100, and the launch site for one more flight.
"That flight was super, super fun," Nathan said during a Zoom interview a few weeks later. "Flew straight down this big, big steep mountain face, and landed right where they were waiting for me."
It was a moment full of "smiles and joy and relief," he said, the end of about four months of frenzied climbing and flying and the completion of an ambitious project: To complete the New Zealand Alpine Club's 100 Peaks Challenge.
Until last month, only one climber had stood atop all 100 of the peaks on the list, and had done so across three decades.
Nathan, a 25-year-old climber who grew up in Spokane, did it in 103 days, beginning in mid-November almost immediately after he got of an airplane in Queenstown.
The project blended traditional climbing with paragliding. He flew off 63 of the peaks and flew between some of them to string together multipeak days that otherwise might not be possible.
Jason Hardrath, a climber from Oregon and friend of Nathan's, said the two-sport combination sets this project apart from other mountaineering achievements, making it a feat of sheer athleticism and creativity.
"He's definitely in that category of having done something that's uncommon among the uncommon," Hardrath said.
Challenge to challenge
Nathan is still in New Zealand. He spoke to The Spokesman-Review about three weeks after finishing the project via Zoom. He was sitting in Cervelli's driveway, where he's been parking the van he's been living in since arriving in New Zealand in November.
"This has sort of been the home base," Nathan said.
He plans to return to the U.S. in the coming weeks and will be back in Spokane in early May to give a presentation about his project.
It's the latest in a series of impressive mountaineering feats he's racked up over the past few years. In 2021, he became the youngest climber to complete the Bulger list, which includes the 100 tallest peaks in Washington. A year later, he was the first to climb the 247 peaks of the Sierra Peaks Section List in a single climbing season.
Over the past few years, he's lived in a van, based mostly in Salt Lake City while traveling to climb or paraglide elsewhere. In the summers, he guides supported trail running trips for Bellingham-based Aspire Adventure Running.
The roots of his mountaineering career are firmly planted here. The third of five kids, he grew up mostly near Rockford. There was a lot of room to roam. Maren said he was often out hiking, climbing trees, building bike trails.
"He's just always loved to be outside," she said.
He liked pushing his endurance to the limits. He ran track and cross country for a few years, but Maren said he quit because the races were too short. He'd already done a marathon by the time he was 13, and he ran a 50K by the time he was 15, she said.
He was always looking for the next challenge. He picked up rock climbing in middle school at a local climbing gym and loved it. Soon he was climbing in the Dishman Hills. Later, he was taking trips to Leavenworth, Washington.
Climbing provided measurable goals, a satisfying way of knowing he was honing his skills.
"You find this hard route, and then you work on it, try it over and over again," he said. "When you succeed, you feel like you've progressed."
There was also always something new to go after. Conquering one route meant he could move on to a tougher one.
Mountaineering became a way to combine his passions for climbing and endurance sports, and he decided to build a life around it.
He met Hardrath in 2021. At the time, Hardrath was trying to climb the entire Bulger List in a single season. Nathan joined him for 65 of the climbs. Hardrath ended up finishing in 50 days, a record. Nathan finished in 94.
After finishing that list, Nathan said, he felt a need to move on to the next challenge. He did the Sierra Peaks list the next year.
Then, in 2023, he picked up paragliding. He'd wanted to try it for years. Utah is a good place to learn, with easy access to mountains where gliders can launch, so he signed up for a course to learn.
He did more than 1,000 flights in his first year, many of them being simple laps near home.
"I knew once I started flying, I would be completely obsessed," Nathan said. "That was the case. I started flying and was just instantly hooked."
The sport took him to new places. He flew in the eastern Sierras and Switzerland. And, about a year ago, he took his first trip to New Zealand.
He did some climbing and flying, including an attempt on a speed record on Mount Aspiring. When he left, he knew he wanted to go back.
"I was really just sort of taken by the peaks down there," he said.
He read about the New Zealand Alpine Club's 100 Peaks Challenge, a list of peaks created in 1991 to mark the club's centennial year, and its only finisher, New Zealand climber Don French. French climbed the entire list over the course of 30 years.
"I'm kind of obsessed with peak lists, so of course I was intrigued," Nathan said.
Single season
The list doesn't go by height. Instead, the club chose a diverse set of climbs on the south and north islands. Famous destinations like Mount Cook, the country's highest peak, are included, but so are more remote peaks.
As Nathan looked at the list, he began to wonder if it was possible to get to all of them in a single season.
He plotted them on a map. It seemed overwhelming.
Not only were there 100 peaks, but they were 100 very different peaks. There was rock, ice and glaciers.
Then there's the weather. Nathan said the conditions for climbing start to shape up in November, and that by the end of March there could be major snowstorms.
"There was definitely a lot of doubt as I started to dive into it," he said.
The more he thought about it, though, the more he knew he wanted to try. He got a grant from the Dirtbag Fund, a nonprofit founded by climber Cedar Wright that helps climbers finance big projects, and he made a plan. Cervelli, the friend in New Zealand, set up a tracking website.
On Nov. 17, he landed in Queenstown, in the southern portion of the South Island. About five hours later, he guesses, he was on top of Double Cone.
Peak No. 1, in the bag.
The next day, he climbed Stargazer and Mount Aspiring. Near the end of that first week, he climbed one mountain and flew to two others, landing a short climb shy of the summit on one and near the top of the other.
He went on like that, taking only occasional days off — a total of 31 during the project. On those days, he was usually making a long drive between climbs in the Toyota van he bought to live out of for the season. Gas station meat pies became a staple of his diet. He'd eat four or five in a day.
At other times, he spent long stretches in the backcountry. To climb Mount Irene, the southernmost peak on the list, he paddled a sea kayak 20 miles and bushwhacked several miles to reach the summit.
He flew off of it, but sprained his ankle on the landing. That took a couple weeks to heal, he said, but he kept climbing on it.
With each peak, the website updated his progress. His parents were watching closely. They booked tickets to visit not knowing whether he'd finish the project while they were there.
"We wanted to make sure that he didn't feel any pressure," Maren said.
But when they got there, it was clear it would be close. They got to join him for peak No. 97, a mountain called Taranaki on the North Island.
Maren and Clark, Nathan's girlfriend, climbed about halfway up. Larry joined him at the summit.
For both of them, it was a bit of a throwback. They were together for Nathan's first "real alpine peak," Little Annapurna in the Cascades when he was about 12.
This time, Larry found it was tough to keep up with his son.
"Nathan's extremely fast. His conditioning is incredible," Larry said. "I do a fair amount of trail running, so I'm in decent shape, but not anywhere close to him."
It was late February. Right after that climb, Nathan and Syd drove to the South Island, where he planned to collect the final three peaks.
First, he climbed Lean Peak. He wanted to fly over to the other two, but the conditions weren't right, so he hiked back down to a hut.
After sleeping for a few hours, he got up and started climbing in the dark.
About 10 hours later, it was all over. He was beaming into a camera with his parents and Syd and Cervelli. He did an interview with a TV station. Then they went out for cheeseburgers.
That was a little more than a month ago. He's still in New Zealand, where he's been hiking and flying some more, albeit with lower stakes.
It's not easy to come down from a project like that, when there was a clock running in his mind at all times. He did say it was a little easier with this project than others, however.
"Maybe it was just because this one was finally hard enough and challenging enough," he said. "I've been totally content to just relax."
Continue reading...
