Atop a mountain this past summer, backcountry camping for three nights an eight hour hike from civilization, I spent an hour each day keeping up my writing by scribbling narratives of our daily advenutres into my smartphone. This is one of my entries.
day one
The logic of the warning signs which were hung at either end of that certain section of trail suggesting the use of safety gear was irrefutable. That fact was doubly logical as I clung for dear life to the side of a cliff wall with nothing but the tension of my fingers and a tenuous trust of the laws of physics on my side.
We had been hiking for literal hours, always aware that somewhere up ahead we were due flute an encounter with a technical section of trail that would bring us face to face with a climb requiring hand over hand up a series of angled steel bars pounded into the cliff face. A steel cable ran parallel to the mountain ladder, it self bolted at intervals into the same rock and intended for that aforementioned safety gear.
Seasoned hikers would have carried helmets and harnesses and used a double-caribeener system tethering them to the cable as they climbed. Carefully they would scale the fifty of rungs always tied to a line to catch them if they fell.
We free climbed.
And to boot we were carrying weighty backpacks stuffed with all the gear and food we would need to camp for three days on the mountain. So I, fifty pounds heavier on my feet and being perpetually tugged backwards clung to the bars and took them as best I could, one ring at a time. One false move, one misplaced step, and I could have, would have, fallen not just to the starting point of our climb but a further hundred meters of the lower edge and onto the jagged rocks below. If you suspect I am exaggerating for effect, let me be clear that if anything I am failing to convey the deadly seriousness of this particular section of nature hike.
My fear of heights kicked into overdrive and with sweaty hands and shaking legs and a heartbeat that would rival my run training sprints, I clambered to the top and all but kissed the ground.
For what it’s worth, we’re taking a different route down to complete the loop and I’m pretty sure there are no mountain ladders.
