Many Thrills, One Vacation

GRIPPING A SLIVER OF GRANITE, I PULLED MYSELF UP TO the right of a chin of rock jutting out from Boulder Canyon 30 feet off the ground. I plastered myself to the rock face, unclipped the carabiner, swung my left foot around the chin and planted it. On what, frankly, I have no idea, but I put weight on it, and it held.

I bear-hugged the rock as I swung my body over. Next thing I knew my chin was pressed against the rock chin as I plotted my next move. The fact that in a couple of hours of climbing I was already comfortable enough to do that was a testament to my teachers, Mo Beck, one of National Geographic’s 2019 Adventurers of the Year, and her climbing partner, Justin Berger.

I looked up. I had maybe 30 more feet to go on this pitch called Lightning Strike in an area known as Cascade Crag, just outside Boulder, Colorado. An hour earlier I would have seen nothing but flat rock and said, “No way can I climb that.”

But having already completed three pitches and watching Beck and Berger do the same, I saw a path. Each “step”