Viewing the world and faith in Christ from the mountaintop

Father John Nepil has accomplished something that few others—priests or otherwise—have accomplished: he has summited all 54 of Colorado’s mountain peaks higher than 14,000 feet—twice. In the summer of 2022, he set out to traverse the nearly 500-mile Colorado Trail with three companions, an adventure that yielded a tremendously enjoyable and insightful memoir of great theological depth.

Father Nepil is the author of To Heights and Unto Depths: Letters from the Colorado Trail (Ignatius Press, 2025). A priest of the Archdiocese of Denver, Father Nepil currently serves as vice rector and professor of theology at St. John Vianney Theological Seminary in the Mile-High City, and is a member of the priestly association of the Companions of Christ. His book is a chronicle of a physical and spiritual journey, a memoir, as well as a theological reflection on life, Christianity, and the glory of God’s creation.

It is fitting that the book comes out just a few months before the canonization of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, another well-known Catholic outdoorsman and mountaineer, whose motto was “Verso l’alto” (to the top), which is both a description he wrote on a photo of what would turn out to be his final mountain ascent, and an image for our constant striving to reach heaven.

Father Nepil recently spoke with Catholic World Report about his new book, mountaineering, evangelization, and how contemplating God’s creation can bring us closer to Him.

Catholic World Report: How did this book come about?

Father John Nepil: This book is the fruit of twenty years of backpacking, climbing, skiing, and other outdoor adventures in the community of friends. The second half of which is as a priest, taking people as a spiritual father into the mountains.

The book itself—the blend of narrative and theology—really came together in the last few years, but its original inspiration was shortly after my conversion through reading The Path to Rome by Hilaire Belloc and Letters From Lake Como by Romano Guardini. It was the desire to combine these two in one form that brought this to be.

CWR: The book brings to mind some prominent, fairly recent saints who have a passion for God’s creation, especially Saint John Paul II and soon-to-be Saint Pier Giorgio Frassati. Do you have a particular devotion to them?

Father Nepil: Not only do I have a particular devotion to them, but St. John Paul II and soon to be St. Pier Giorgio Frassati are the saints of my life and the models for what it means to grow in sanctity in the presence of God’s grandeur in creation.

And especially with John Paul II, the way that he shepherded and brought young people into the mountains—that was a huge influence for me.

CWR: You’ve recently made headlines for your achievement: you’ve recently summited all of Colorado’s “fourteeners” (mountain peaks at an elevation of at least 14,000 feet above sea level) twice, the second time as a priest, and you celebrated Mass on top of all of them. The photos from these nearly three-mile-high Masses are striking. Was this a mere personal goal or did it have an evangelistic element to it?

Father Nepil: One of the greatest joys of my life, if not the greatest joy, is saying Mass on the highest peaks of Colorado, which we completed in 2023. It started as a personal endeavor—just a personal love and desire. I found myself just doing the fourteeners, so it was never really the list that drove it, until later on. And then, once I was a priest, it was an evangelical desire to bring people to the heights in order to communicate to them the summit of faith—which is the Eucharist—in a really unique and powerful way.

It’s been an extraordinary and evangelistic adventure, to say the least.

CWR: What sorts of fruits can come from contemplating the beauty of God’s creation?

Father Nepil: The deepest fruits are communion with Jesus. When we talk about Jesus as the “Logos” of creation, what we mean is that he is not just the “Word” that the Father speaks, but He is the intelligibility or reasonableness of reality. And so the more that we can perceive with reverence and humility, acknowledging our own creatureliness, the more we can see the Incarnation of God as the interpretive key to reality. And that, I think, is the most important and greatest thing in contemplation.

CWR: What will readers who know nothing about mountaineering get out of the book?

Father Nepil: I asked Archbishop Charles Chaput to write the foreword precisely because he, in his own words, “doesn’t even like the mountains.” He’s not outdoorsy in the least, he does not care at all, and I thought he could write a perfect foreword to why this is still worth reading.

So, certainly, we don’t expect people to have any knowledge [of climbing] whatsoever, but hopefully the terms and explanations are clarified in the writing itself and people will be drawn into that.

CWR: Do you have any particular future plans for mountaineering? Any plans to scale K2 or Mount Kilimanjaro, Denali or anything like that?

Father Nepil: I have no particular plans. I’ll keep climbing for the rest of my life. K2 is totally out of the question; Kilimanjaro has been on the table for a while, as has Denali, so we’ll see what comes. But the lists, the drive, and the desires have to be checked by the specific will of God for one’s life and the prudential decision to know what is the right risk and what is the right commitment in light of the greater goals and purposes of one’s vocation—especially as a priest.

CWR: What do you hope readers will take away from this book?

Father Nepil: The main takeaway from the book is the acknowledgment that we have a worldview and that as Christians, that worldview has to be centered on the Incarnation.

If this book provides anything, it’s a gift to those who maybe have never thought of Christianity as a worldview. Maybe it’s something they’re not practicing, or they are practicing; it doesn’t particularly matter but in the sense that it allows them to enter more deeply into the mystery of Christ precisely as the worldview—which is that synthesis of values and ideas that make up the way we approach the totality of the real. That would be the hope of the book.

CWR: Is there anything else you would like to add?

Father Nepil: I hope this book finds its way into the hands of a lot of people who love the outdoors but are far from God because I think it can re-present the Catholic faith in a way that’s really compelling and unique.