The hills, mountains, glaciers, rivers and bush of the South Island are beauties to behold.
They form the backdrop to an extensive and varied playground attracting increasing numbers.
But behind that pulchritude and grandeur lie dangers.
Seldom have these hazards been more obvious than over this past holiday period.
There have been three deaths in Aoraki/Mt Cook National Park, one on the South Westland side of the Southern Alps and one west of Arthurs Pass.
What makes these fatalities especially sobering is that they cannot be blamed on ignorance and inexperience.
While each case has its own circumstances, most of those killed knew what they were about and knew their environment.
As well, each person does not seem to have been an on-the-edge risk-taker dicing recklessly with death.
The incidents will be examined by the coroner and add to the bank of understanding about what can and does go wrong.
In the meantime, reports from police and search and rescue give general indications of what happened.
This bleak past two weeks was preluded by the disappearance in late November of Stephen Dowall (52) on his way to Empress Hut near Aoraki/Mt Cook. It is feared he fell into a crevasse, and it does seems surprising.
Mr Dowall, a New Zealander who worked for the United Nations in Burma, was alone and not roped on such a hazardous glacier.
Just before Christmas, Australian Nicola Andrews (28), a keen mountaineer and biomedical engineering student, fell 300m from The Footstool near Mt Sefton.
She was part of an experienced and well-equipped party in good weather.
Not long after Christmas, married couple Stuart Hollaway (42) and Dale Thistlethwaite (35) fell about 700m - that is more than the height of Dunedin's Mt Cargill - from Mt Silberhorn, just north of Aoraki/Mt Cook.
It would appear one climber fell, pulling the other down, the usually life-saving rope becoming a lethal attachment.
The couple ran the Melbourne-based Vertical World Mountain Climbing company, where Mr Hollaway was a mountain guide.
Ms Thistlethwaite was also an audit manager with the Victorian Auditor-general's office.
Then came the death of Rangiora farming consultant and tramper Eric Jacomb (54) last Saturday on the remote Mawson Glacier.
He apparently slipped on ice and fell.
Although he was tramping ahead of the rest of an experienced party in rugged country, he was not partaking in higher-end climbing like the other four.
Sadly, the next day the terrible sequence continued.
Christchurch doctor Isabel Rivett was among a party of five mountain runners when she drowned after being swept away on a crossing of the Deception River near Otira.
All, it would seem, were high achievers who sought challenges.
And that is what the mountains bring.
They are not for the timid, and the very existence of risk - hopefully minimised and controlled - is part of the attraction.
What with rivers, exposure, avalanches and falls, hazards are multiple.
It is therefore particularly sobering when most of those who perished were known to be relatively careful and experienced.
There is undoubtedly menace in the mountains.
Most tramping or mountain running, while providing adventures and exhilaration of their own, are in a different league altogether from top-end climbing, and deaths seem especially cruel.
Knowledge and prudence minimise or eliminate almost all of these, but sometimes - as occurred last weekend - accidents do happen or fatal misjudgments are made.
We live with the chance of dying on the road most days.
The risks of most tramping should be no higher.
Serious climbing, however, is different.
Climbers themselves speak of being fully alive and stimulated by the demands of an exacting environment where any mistake can be costly and where not everything is predictable or able to be controlled.
In a risk-averse world, they can push themselves physically, mentally and psychologically and live - and occasionally die - with the results.
