American Dirtbag Becomes 2nd Person to Tick Off New Zealand’s 100 Peaks Challenge. Para-alpinism was His Secret Weapon.

Something historic, groundbreaking, and—I think it’s fair to say—paradigm-shifting has just gone down in the sport of alpinism. And there were no big corporate sponsors or throngs of media covering it. Starting on November 16, 2024, 25-year-old American Nathan Longhurst quietly embarked solo on the audacious 100 Peaks Challenge in New Zealand.

The NZ Alpine Club originally created this challenge in 1991 to highlight the beauty and variety of peaks in New Zealand. But it had proven perhaps a bit too ambitious. Until Longhurst came along, only one person—Don French—had completed the ticklist … 30 years after the list’s debut.

“Doing them all in a year or a summer season sort of never really crossed my head as a possibility,” says French of Longhurst’s effort. “… it is a horrendous thing!”

A paragliding “quiet crusher”  

I first became aware of Longhurst’s unique penchant for immersive alpine challenges when I heard about him climbing the Sierra Peak Section: 247 peaks in the Sierra in just 138 days. It’s hard to put into words how heinous that is! It’s definitely an athlete-level accomplishment, and I really wanted to meet this dark horse. What I found was a pure soul with no big sponsors or media glory—just a dirtbag climber living nomadically in their van. Having just started the Dirtbag Fund, I mentally filed him away as a worthy kid to support in some way.

When I met Longhurst, I found him to be a sweet, soft-spoken kid, not fond of hyperbole. But clearly, there was something special about him. For instance, he was, at the time, the youngest finisher of Washington’s 100 highest peaks list—it took him just 84 days. “It wasn’t so bad,” he said of that achievement. “After a couple weeks you just reach this baseline of suffering where you can keep going indefinitely,” he elaborated. “That’s what I love, is really immersing yourself in the experience.” He fully lived up to the climbing world’s label of “quiet crusher.”

Tackling New Zealand’s 100 Peaks Challenge 

Recently, Longhurst fell in love with paragliding and was looking to incorporate flying into his next superhuman sufferfest. “What I realized was you can climb so many peaks so much faster if you fly off and between them,” he explains. All this to say, he was uniquely suited for this obscure, yet formidable 100 Peaks Challenge. When I heard about his goal, I realized it was the perfect use of “Dirtbag Fund” cash—though it did make me nervous knowing how out there and close to the edge he would probably get. But that’s what made it compelling. With any good adventure, nothing is guaranteed.

See a map of the NZ peaks mentioned in this story:

When Longhurst set off to complete the grueling list in a single summer season, he recognized that, “there is a lot that can go wrong, and I probably won’t do it, but that’s what makes it so exciting.” Indeed, if he didn’t manage the many inherent risks in the challenge perfectly, it would also be incredibly dangerous.

Combining his love for ultra-running, climbing, and paragliding, Longhurst slogged his way through this remarkable feat of endurance, logistics, and creativity. Longhurst’s friend, Dan Cervelli—a fellow alpinist, who’s also on the board of the Dirtbag Fund—tracked his progress on a website dedicated to the project. Over 103 days, he soloed all 100 peaks, often descending by paraglider.

The stats are outrageous:

• 1,000 miles (1,609km) by foot, bike, or kayak
• 470,000 feet (143,256m) of vert!
• 84 paragliding flights, including three flights to cross rivers and several to reposition high on the next peak. The rest were descent flights from summits, most of which were first descents.
• 99 peaks soloed
• 1 peak (#97, Taranaki) with his dad
• 103 days to complete the challenge

The highs and lows of Longhurst’s experience

Unsurprisingly, a journey of this magnitude had its low points, including days of what New Zealanders call “bush-bashing” (the Kiwi term for bushwhacking). New Zealand is famous for some of the longest, most dense, and nearly impenetrable “bush-bashes” in the world.  Longhurst listed some of the challenges as bush-bashing, bad weather, and significant climate change-induced glacial recession, which he says made “for some really nasty and dangerous travel through steep post-glacial moraine walls.”

But perhaps the absolute low point of the endeavor came on peak number 76 (Mt. Irene), when Longhurst badly sprained his ankle on landing. “I heard a pop, and I was alone and very far from civilization,” he recalls. His self-rescue entailed 10 hours of “butt-scooting, bush-bashing, and a 20-mile kayak.” Miraculously, after sitting out a few days of bad weather, he was back at it. He discusses this ankle-spraining fiasco in a recent podcast interview on The Climbing Majority.

“After that, I became more aware of how being really invested in a big project and being super fatigued can affect risk management,” he admits. “Honestly, I’m not proud of some of the risks I took, but through the process, I became more self-aware and managed my risk more responsibly for the rest of the project.”

Ultimately, Longhurst felt that integrating paragliding into alpinism created more opportunities and allowed him to test out different strategies in his pursuit of the 100 Peaks Challenge. He also bagged a possible first ascent or two along the way. On Mt. Alba, he soloed the presumably unclimbed north ridge, which included a V2 arete lieback boulder problem, in his trail runners. Then he flew off the top.

Of Longhurst’s achievement, Alastair McDowell, who holds many alpine speed records in New Zealand, says, “His creative use of the paraglider to link remote peaks was very innovative and shows us what is possible in NZ with this new method of mountain travel. It takes locals years to learn the intricacies of approaches and routes, and often times peaks require multiple attempts. It’s astonishing that he managed to gather enough beta to climb all one hundred peaks without a single failure!”

How Longhurst used para-alpinism to his advantage

Thanks to “para-alpinism,” which many climbers will say is the “the future of alpinism,” Longhurst was able to tick off a literal lifetime of summits on his summer vacation. Essentially, para-alpinism is a form of alpinism that uses the paraglider as a tool for descent. It can also be used as a way to approach an objective. Instead of an entire day spent descending a peak, you are back at the base in a matter of minutes.

Ice climber Will Gadd, who started paragliding 30 years ago, but found the gear too heavy for practically exploring the mountains, says that Longhurst’s pioneering use of para-alpinism proves that “the dream is real.” He says that paragliding may just be “the coolest evolution in mountain sports.” But Gadd adds that para-alpinism is “super hazardous” and requires extensive skill—not to mention something like 1,000 hours of airtime—to do what Longhurst pulled off in New Zealand successfully. McDowell reflects that Longhurst’s “lack of ego” and his pure passion for being in the mountains is also what led to his success.

While the benefits of a descent via paraglide are undeniable, the paraglider does undertake additional risk and weather becomes even more of an issue. “The wing can be a benefit, but also a detriment,” Longhurst says. “Sometimes I wasn’t present in the moment as much as I would have liked to be, because I was constantly thinking about wind—whether flying conditions would be safe.”

Longhurst says that ultimately he was attracted to this challenge because it lends itself well to para-alpinism. “The peaks in New Zealand are steep and rugged, and have huge vertical relief, providing ideal terrain for climb and fly objectives,” he explains.

All in all, Longhurst flew off about 60 peaks, but also used his paraglider in innovative ways, including for glacier travel between huts in the high-alpine section of Mt. Cook. During linkups, he used his paraglider to reposition between peaks, sometimes landing at their bases or slope-landing on their flanks. In a few cases, he also top-landed near the summit, skipping hours of additional approach time in the process.

In a traditional sense, some of these summits don’t “count” because they weren’t climbed from the base. Longhurst fully acknowledges this. He has not claimed to have completed New Zealand’s 100 Peaks Challenge, according to the rules issued by the NZ Alpine Club. Another caveat to his accomplishment is that he climbed the main, high summit of Mt. Elie de Beaumont, instead of the west, lower summit included in the formal list. He didn’t realize this at the time.

But from the perspective of adventure—and the fact that he stood on each summit—Longhurst’s effort is certainly epic.

What’s next for this para-alpinist 

While he officially ticked off the 100 Peaks Challenge on February 26, 2025, Longhurst isn’t taking a break anytime soon. He’s planning to stay in New Zealand until early April and has been taking some speedflying laps.

After he summited his 100th peak, he told me that the spirit of this mission was driven by his philosophy to “do more of what you love.” He encourages people “to find a really difficult, scary, and challenging project, if it aligns with your vision of yourself and who you want to be in the world.”

Longhurst’s historic mission was supported by The Dirtbag Fund, which gives out yearly grants to climbers who are contributing to the sport and culture of climbing, while scraping by on next to nothing. The Dirtbag Fund will be presenting a short film documenting this mega-ultra-para-alpine achievement, which will likely debut at the New Zealand Mountain Film Fest in June.

When asked for any final thoughts, Nathan responded: “I’m so grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to experience these mountains in such an immersive way.  It was beautiful and scary, humbling and empowering … it was epic.”