Is It Lonely At The Top?

Almost twenty years ago, while living in Longview Washington, Tananarive, Nicki and I were training to climb Kilimanjaro. The fitness requirements are fairly simple: if you can climb 3000 feet in three hours, you are fit enough. (Whether you can deal with the cumulativeE ALTITUDE is another question, however). Anyway, Dog Mountain in the Columbia Gorge in Washington is exactly 3000 feet, so we would drive down on Saturday mornings and climb. Due to a variety of circumstances, we changed that climbing trip to a photo safari, which worked as well for the project I was planning (GREAT SKY WOMAN), but did leave me feeling a bit incomplete.

Two years ago I found myself back in the Portland area, and decided to climb DM again, just to see how it felt. You drive about an hour East along the Columbia river to find a parking lot turn-out, and this morning it was crammed with cars. Lots and lots of people there for the ascent along a twisting narrow switch-back trail. Lots of smiles and confidence.

As you climb, there are many people on the trail. But because everyone is moving either a little slower or a little more rapidly than you, by the time you get about 1/4 of the way up the trail…it thins out quite a bit. People will sometimes pass you up. And you sometimes pass by others who are increasingly huffing and struggling against the steady grade. But…most of the time, you are alone.

I’d always climbed with my family before, and really wasn’t used to doing this as a solitary experience. I hadn’t really noticed how quiet it…