The bloody fight for Chunuk Bair was New Zealand's greatest achievement at Gallipoli, but it was never going to win the campaign.
New Zealand historian Ian McGibbon says the common belief that holding Chunuk Bair could have led to victory is "totally nonsense".
New Zealand troops captured the peak - the highest point held during the whole campaign - on August 8, 1915 and held it for about two days before it was lost to the Ottoman forces.
Only 70 of the 760 Kiwi soldiers returned unscathed after fighting to hold the Chunuk Bair summit, and 632 are now buried in a mass grave on the site.
Speaking to AAP at Chunuk Bair, Dr McGibbon said if the Kiwis had held on longer, it would only have become another stalemate.
"We didn't have enough artillery, basically, or enough men."
He says that's true of the entire Gallipoli campaign, which was never going to be successful: "I don't think it was ever going to work if the Turks defended their territory resolutely."
Chunuk Bair is also important to Turkish people, who head to the site to see where the Ottoman Empire "stopped the Christian attack", he said.
The site's been packed with Turkish tourists over the weekend, but some Kiwis have also visited the scenic peak to honour the New Zealanders who fought.
Former governor-general Anand Satyanand is on a Rotary-run cruise ship at Gallipoli peninsula and was at Chunuk Bair on Tuesday preparing for a speech about the site that he's giving to the 700 Australians and Kiwis on the tour group.
"I think it's a moment to reflect on how they so unfortunately lost their lives and how close they got to the goal. From where we're standing, we can see the Dardanelles and you can see why this was an important strategic step in the battles over this peninsula," he told AAP.
Earlier in the day, Aucklander Phil Lascelles visited his great-uncle's grave - one of only 10 graves at Chunuk Bair which are marked.
As far as he knows, he's the first of his family to visit Sergeant David Robert Breingan Lascelles' grave and as he stood in the hill-top cemetery, he thought about his grandfather who was never able to visit the site where his brother died.
"He named his eldest son after him, and his eldest son named his eldest son after him, so it's a family name. It's sad that they never got to come here and understand."
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