Alaska provides ample opportunity for just such a thing.

On the slopes Pioneer Peak for two days last month, the wondering started for us after we'd been hiking with 40-pound packs up 45-degree inclines for more than two hours, each ridge revealing three more just like it. We gained about 1,000 feet for every mile we hiked.

The peak is a 6,400-foot spike of rock that dominates the Chugach Mountain skyline over Palmer, looming like a kingdom over the Matanuska Valley.

Our goal was to reach the summit.

"Holy s -," said my friend Dave the first time we sighted the peak from the trail "We're going up there?"

Though he didn't know it, Dave was speaking for all three of us.

In mountaineering circles, a real mountain starts at 14,000 feet. But we're nothing more than avid backpackers - not wind-burned K2 veterans - so this was plenty mountain for us.

Nonetheless, the mountain is special in that one needs to hike every mean foot of it to reach the top. Unlike some smaller peaks, there is no road leading most of the way up.

Notably, the distance from the truck to the summit is roughly the same as the distance from Genet Basin on Denali to that summit.

Sure, that summit is 20,320 feet, and packed in with snow, and rife with crevasses and freak weather changes, but there's no need to split hairs.

Exhausted and ready for food, we camped the first night at 4,000 feet - our planned base camp - in sight of the summit.

In the morning, we would walk the ridge leading to the top.

Aaron was out front most of the way, as we moved through ice fields with vicious drop-offs that would mean death to any loose-footed climbers with no ice axes (such as us).

And when there wasn't snow, we were negotiating almost vertical spires of jumbled, jagged rock. On either side were cliffs, and most of the rocks wiggled when grabbed.

"Don't go the way I just went," Aaron would call out occasionally from up above. And each time we looked up, a new wall of rock would be glowering down at us.

Next, it started snowing.

"Well, that's funny," Aaron said. "It's June, right?" And we all laughed that hearty laugh that seems to say, "will there be a rescue helicopter in our future?"

When we crossed an ice field at about 5,300 feet on a near 70-degree slope with a massive drop off at the bottom, the "why are we out here" factor was amplified once more.

"Ok," Aaron called out. "The bad news is, this peak is not the top."

It was the third "peak" that was not the top.

"But the next one is, and we're almost there," he said.

A few minutes later, he let loose with a shrill cheer. It could only mean he'd reached the top.

We took pictures at the top, shook hands and soaked in the view.

"We have to get back down now," Aaron remarked, smiling.

"Yeah, I don't know what we're so happy about," I replied, and we all laughed that same laugh again.

Getting down was arduous. It was filled with careful route planning and near falls, and the distance back to camp seemed to increase with our fatigue. We started out from base camp for the summit at 9 a.m., reached the peak around 1, returned to base camp by 3:30, and reached the truck at 8:30 p.m.

Among the highlights, Dave went tumbling down a snow field; Aaron slipped and fell a few feet toward a ledge; and I grabbed a square rock the size of a 1970s-era television set which came loose and missed my leg by inches, and only because I jumped out of the way.

For the entire descent, I had little points of pain on my knees and shins, like there were drywall screws driven into them. My body was sending little signals to my brain that said, "Hey! Stop using that part, it's gonna break!"

But I had to use the parts if I ever wanted to see home again. That's the cruel irony for people like us who - for whatever reason - consider this sort of thing fun.

Later than evening, at a Mexican restaurant in Palmer, smelling like we'd just, well, spent two days in the wilderness, it became clear why we put ourselves in such situations.

There, enjoying chips and Pacificos, with the peak now a place we could point to and say, "We've been up there," we felt like steely-eyed missile men.

"Isn't it interesting what a short memory the body has for pain?" Dave said.

Neil Zawicki is a reporter for the Alaska Star. Reach him at nzawicki@alaskastar.com