Shifting my weight, I bring one hand away from the cold rock face and shake it wildly. The lactic acid in my forearm burns with a relentless pump. I press my hand back into the rock and repeat the motion with the other. As I switch between stances, equalizing a tenuous position, my eyes focus on the textured granite in front of me. I notice every swirl of black, grey, and tan mixed together with specks of white chalk. My hands, curled into half-closed fists, jam into the crack like two anchors against an ocean of gravity threatening to wash me off the wall. I glance down at my partner, a red dot leaning into the wind. “I’m going for it!” I yell at him. His words float up, buoying me against the tide of my own doubts. “I’m with you!” he responds. I return my gaze to the crack in front of me. My eyes follow its meandering path. Wide enough for my fists, it slowly tapers into a thin fissure higher up. I grit my teeth and reach for the next constriction. My feet dig into flakes as thin as cereal. I push higher, fighting for success, for safety, for the very air itself, karate-chopping my fingers into the crack with a speed born of desperation. 

Time is endless, enduring, until suddenly - it stops. My hands wrap around flat edges as big as dinner plates. I pull my body onto a grassy ledge, the first horizontal feature I’ve encountered since stepping into the vertical world. My mind, subdued with the silence of intense effort, warms back to life as sunshine floods my body and eases the stiffness in my joints. I look down, the glitter of Chasm Lake winking back amidst a sprawl of trees and talus. I look up into the canvas of a bluebird sky. There is no higher place than the summit of my first 14’er.