In the rounding of one short bend, I was thrust out of the world of the casual day-hiker, and into that of the rugged, free-solo mountain climber. The northern face of the mountain was surfaced with far less forgiving textures and inclines than that of the eastern climes. While the trail which I had carved my way up certainly did possess its fair share of boulders and stone, centuries of the influence of Life had wiggled its way into the spaces in between, leaving soil and shrubs, and sticks and leaves – thus making for a far more natural terrain to hike. But as I wound my way up, following…

Thin shards of sedimentary rock blanketed the floor of the ledge, which I did of course reach (as you might have surmised, based on my continuing blog posts). This horizontal gash in the cliff was deep enough that I could comfortably sit with my backpack on, now guarded from the wind which continued to blast up the face of the immense stone in short fits. The gap was tall enough that I could sit upright, with a few inches between the top of my head and the overhanging, crumbling stone above. And it was likely wide enough that I might be able to curl up and lay down for a…

And so it was that I again found myself smeared against a smooth, nearly featureless wall of stone, praying to what god there might be to restrain his whipping winds, and to help me get off of this blasted rock alive. It would seem that I may be woefully bad at assessing a rock face’s climbability since, yet again, I was desperately clamping my index fingers and thumbs down onto nothing more than ill-defined undulations in the stone, with my clunky work boots mashed sideways against the barren cliff face. Minuscule notches in the rock prevented my boots from slipping, and myself from tumbling down, down. In my defense, what…