All climbers stop short of the peak of Kangchenjunga, the world’s third highest mountain. Joe Brown and George Band, who in 1955 became the first to climb the 28,169-foot Himalayan peak, stopped short of the summit to honor a promise given to the Maharaja of Sikkim that the top would remain inviolate. Every subsequent expedition has followed this tradition.

At 7,247 feet, Mount Townsend, below, is the second-highest peak in Australia, 63 feet shorter than nearby Mount Kosciuszko. By tradition each person who climbs it carries a rock to leave at the top, so that eventually it might surpass its neighbor.

In 2006 workers discovered a piano near the summit of Britain’s highest mountain, 4,409-foot Ben Nevis in the Scottish Highlands. “Our guys couldn’t believe their eyes,” conservation trust director Nigel Hawkins told The Guardian. “At first they thought it was just the wooden casing but then they saw the whole cast iron frame complete with strings.” Scots woodcutter Kenny Campbell came forward to acknowledge that he’d carried it up the mountain 35 years ago to support a charity. “When I got there,” he said, “I played ‘Scotland the Brave.'”