Jaime and I are working up a steep ridge to get closer to a bull tahr Jaime found a few minutes earlier.

I look up the ridge and plot a route up what looks to be a reasonable line. “We can make that.” I say.

“Right behind you” Jaime replies.

Halfway up we stop on a flat section that’s flanked by a rock outcrop. The path was steep, but grassy and doable. A fall wouldn’t be good, but it wouldn’t be catastrophic.

We look into the rocks where we last saw the tahr. A small bull walks along a ridge between us and the bull we were looking for. I look to the top of our route again. Near the top is a section of grass dividing two cliffy outcrops. It looks passable.

“I’m going to put on my crampons” Jaime tells me.

I think about it. I’ve never used crampons before. And part of me doesn’t want to use them now. “Prove your prowess by going up this hill in your Crispis” that part of me says. And then another part of me remembers how steep it was getting to this point and how much further we have to go. My fear of heights gets the better of my ego and I reply to Jaime, “That’s a good idea.”

Thoughts move at the speed of light and this entire inner dialog is over as quickly as it starts.

We strap in and head up. I lead the way. Spikes dig into earth as we move.

The last push is up the grass that splits the cliffs. It’s a 60 to 70 foot section dotted with patches of snow. I keep plodding upward until I get a little over half way to the top.

I stop.

I look back at where we’ve come from. I look down. I realize what would happen if I fell. My heart rate surges even though I’m not moving. Adrenaline gets the better of me. I can’t think. A fall would send me tumbling hundreds of feet. If I didn’t die, I would wish I had. I feel terror—sheer terror, and I am paralyzed.

I turn and look up. I don’t see a route. I move horizontally a few feet to my left. Jaime is a few feet below me.

“I don’t see a route” I tell him. “I don’t know where to go.”

I am stuck.

No fucking way I’m going down. But I can’t figure out how to go up either. My risk tolerance is abnormally low now—a side effect of the fear. I move back toward the right looking for a way into the rocks. Maybe there’s a route through the cliff.

Jaime moves left, and then upward. The spikes of his crampons dig into the grass lined cliff. His boots are covered in snow, but they hold tight to the angle. He cuts back to the right as he passes above and around me. He shows me a route, and I move toward it knowing I can’t stay here, even though that’s all I want to do.

We get to the top. I’m safe. The terror subsides and my heart rate slows. We’re now parallel with the bull, but can’t see it around the rocks. Time to keep going.

The path onward is not terrifyingly steep, or rocky. A fall is not serious. But my risk tolerance is permanently changed by the terror on the cliff. I’d spend the rest of the hunt navigating a caution that’s alien to me. Putting my hands down where normally I wouldn’t. Crawling where I’d normally jump.

A day or so later I’m telling Chase the story. I tell him I’ve only felt terror like that one other time. It was during an open water swim when I realized how far out I was and that I might not make it back. The chemical response in my body overwhelmed me in the water in the same way it did on the cliff.

Chase smiles and says, “That makes you feel alive.”

A younger version of me might have agreed with him.

But all I could think was that living makes me feel alive. And all that terror did was remind me how much I want to keep staying alive.