On a wintry Friday night after work, my husband Adrien and I traded the city lights of Nelson for our head torches, climbing into the cold darkness of Nelson Lakes National Park just over an hour from Nelson. The trail we knew so well up to Bushline Hut felt different in the hush of night, leading us to a warm fire lit by welcoming strangers, hot tea, and dark chocolate before sleep.
By morning the sky was clear and sharp, the Mount Robert Ridge crisp underfoot as we made our way to a frozen Rotomaninitua / Lake Angelus. We arrived at an empty hut, empty landscape, just us and the mountains. Adrien moonwalked across the ice, our laughter echoing loud in the stillness.
As the day faded, we climbed higher; crampons biting into hard snow, ice axes held tightly in our hands. The slope steepened until only the front spikes of our crampons could find purchase—every step deliberate, every movement measured. My heart pounded with adrenaline, the drop below reminding us this was no place to slip. The exposure sharpened my focus, and yet there was exhilaration in that razor’s edge between fear and awe.
At the summit, time seemed to hold its breath. No wind. No clouds. Just silence and an endless ocean of peaks stretching to the horizon. The mountains glowed in shades of molten orange, fading into pretty pink and deepening red—a sunset so rare it felt mythical. A “Mountain Unicorn,” we call it: fleeting and unforgettable, a moment engrained into our memory.
As we made our way over the edge of the summit the ridge fell away into a valley already swallowed by shadow, a vast black emptiness at our side—a place we knew we could never afford to slip. The crunch of crampons gave way to loose rock and shifting stone, each step slow, deliberate, testing the earth beneath us. As darkness settled, we turned on our headtorches, tiny beams cutting into an endless night. Poor visibility led us too high, straight into a bluff. We kept calm, knowing we weren’t lost, only off-course. A quick backtrack brought us lower and back onto the right path.
Beside us, Lake Angelus groaned beneath the frozen ice, the sound deep and primal, echoing through the silence like the voice of the mountain itself. The ice cracked and rumbled in the dark, a reminder of forces older and greater than us. I felt tiny, fragile even, but also profoundly alive, moving through a world both beautiful and terrifying in its power.
When we finally reached the hut, warm light spilling through the windows, it felt like we were home. The couple inside greeted us, having watched our tiny headlamps inch their way down the peak. The day closed with hot meals, exhausted laughter, and gratitude—for safety, for each other, and for the wild, humbling magic of the mountains.
Two nights. One summit. And a good reminder that the best adventures aren’t just about where you go, but who you go with.
Follow more of their adventures on Instagram @adri_cam_ventures
Photography Adrian Paris
