Column: If you’re afraid, you’re alive

Dead ladybugs filled the cracks. They’d sought warmth on the sunbaked stone, only to freeze when night fell.

A friend and I had woken early to climb Looking Glass Rock, so named because winter glosses its northern face with ice until it shines, a mountainous mirror

.

A three-foot-high stack of roots against the base of the rock formed a cliffside trail. Trees grew out of the granite, out of the bark of their fallen brethren, out of the sandy shadows.

It was freezing cold, and I couldn’t feel my hands. We uncoiled the rope.

Two hundred feet up, there was almost nothing to grab onto. Instead of holds, downward-sloping “eyebrows” fold the rock, giving the granite the look of melting icing. The only way to hang onto them is from underneath, leaning back into space, simultaneously pushing and pulling to gain elevation.

The sun had yet to reach us. Feet and hands grew numb. My partner was clipped into an anchor, but he had gone far off route to get there, and I had no choice but to follow. Between us stretched a 15-foot traverse. If I messed up, I would become a human pendulum across twice that distance, skidding against the side of the mountain as I swung.

The move involved clinging to an eyebrow with one hand and stretching a leg across a smooth slab of rock to find footing on the other side. I couldn’t reach.

Calves flexed too long start shaking. It’s called getting “Elvis legs.” My feet started to slide. My fingers were too cold to tell whether I was gripping the rock or just my own trembling palm.

The farther I swung, the more likely the protective gear above me would break free of the crack it was crammed into. If that happened, I could crash into a ledge below me. The potential for serious injury would be high.

I would like to say that I never got scared, that I grit my teeth and set my jaw and moved doggedly forward. I would like to say that I didn’t rest my forehead against the stone at Looking Glass or want to give up. I would like to say that I didn’t start to cry.

But all that would be dishonest.

I was clinging to the side of a mountain, and my muscles were giving out. There was no way I couldn’t fall.

I moved my hand an inch and stood on tiptoe. I stretched farther than I thought possible, and the unimaginable happened. My foot came to rest on a lip of rock just wide enough to bear my weight.

A breath of relief shivered out of me. I made it to the anchor and up another 150 feet out of the shadow of the mountain and into the sun.

I had never been scared climbing before. Climbing in a gym is so safe. If I feel like I’m going to fall, I do. On real rock, fear and adrenaline leave no choice but to test the limit. Fear, like cold hands and dead ladybugs, is unpleasantly disconcerting. But it’s natural. It’s part of life, and accepting it is the only way to move beyond it to the next hold, the next ledge, the next mountain.