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Our sense of adventure packed, my 13yo son and I flew out from Melbourne, Australia to Queenstown, New Zealand to celebrate my 40th Birthday. Months of research had me work out a 13 day itinerary tramping the South Island. Both of us experienced in the outdoors I‘d made sure we had some challenges. Two years ago I developed a fear of heights. Prior to that I had never really feared anything. I didn’t want it to keep influencing my decisions. I chose to face my fear with Gertrude Saddle, rated as a double black diamond expert route. I thought “what’s the worst that can happen, if I can’t do it, we turn around?” I had prepared myself mentally and found myself excited and determined when Day 5 arrived. A motto in my life is ‘just start’. So that’s what we did, started. We wove our way through the valley, alpine flowers greeting us. Scampered over rocks, stopped by crystal clear rivers. Admired the sheer size of the mountains surrounding us. Then the accent began. The sides of the track dropped away to a waterfall on my right. Adrenaline started to take over my body. Afraid of slipping, I grabbed onto tussocks of grass. My son this whole time, totally fine. When my fear kicked in, my son kicked in! He was amazing! Confident and capable. I heard my years of words pouring out his mouth encouraging me. I was in awe of him. The river crossing was next and I knew from my research this was a dangerous section with many fatalities. Surprisingly crossed easily to then be faced with challenging scree. I couldn’t look to the right or to the left out of sheer fear, I could only look at the section of path that I could see under the peak of my hat. I felt if I looked that I would faint or vomit. At this point I was getting more petrified knowing the further we keep going up, the further we’re going to have to make our way back down. A brief rest came in the form of some solid rock faces. Huge glacier-like snow sheets that had started to melt made streams of water down the rock face making it slippery. We sat for a couple of minutes and witnessed a small avalanche on one of the mountain peaks surrounding us. With approximately a hour still to go we pushed on to the cable section. The cable in the rock assists you to climb beside the waterfall. Lifting myself over a ledge and there it was, Black Lake, in all its glory, along with four naked guys swimming, in all their glory. My son was disgusted that he had just climbed all that way to see naked men for his view! I found this highly amusing and a welcome distraction. He was pretty keen to move on quickly and continue to the saddle. I on the other hand enjoyed the ‘view’. The final section was a rock scramble over huge rocks with a final mental push up a steep rock face to reach Gertrude Saddle. Breathtaking! Views all the way through to Milford Sound. Unfortunately with time against us we couldn’t stay long. We took a path across a huge snow sheet. Half way along blocking our path was a hole in the snow sheet that disappeared to black. I knew we had to jump over. No time for my Cliffhanger movie fearful thoughts! Petrified I leapt. He leapt. What awaited me on the other side was a strange feeling of weightlessness. I looked around. Breathed in its beauty, finally able to notice things I hadn’t seen on the way up. My son and I talked and laughed all the way back down, ruminating about the accent. Fear is an opportunity for growth. It’s so important to address why that fear has raised its lesson filled head in the first place. I'm so grateful for my boy and his patience with me that day. An important reminder that our children can teach us so much if we allow them to take a leap into the unknown.