by Jamie McCormick

Created on: June 04, 2009

Once upon a time, when I was a little bit younger and much more foolish, I had a face-to-face encounter with what could easily have been my tragically early death, and lived to tell about it. The following story pits a child against nature (nature won, by the way...)

When I was in elementary school, my aunt and uncle moved from North Georgia to Phoenix, Arizona, the polar opposites of each other separated by nearly an entire continent. I was sad that they would no longer be close for summer trips and family get-togethers, but I was excited by the prospect of having an entirely new territory to explore. When they first settled into their new surroundings, they invited our entire family out for a week, during which time we all decided to climb Camelback Mountain as a group. Needless to say, my occasionally overprotective mother made absolutely certain that my adventurous sister and I stayed on the path, thwarting our repeated attempts to explore the more ominous parts of the mountain. So when I returned solo to my aunt's house for week during the following summer, I was ecstatic to be free of her constraining influence and immediately decided upon a fool-hearty path of free climbing and bouldering. Along the first mile or so of the path, my aunt was able to keep up with me enough to keep me within eyesight, but as soon as I turned a corner that blocked me from her view, I turned toward the highest rock face I could find and prepared myself. I double knotted my tennis shoes, rolled my pants, tightened the straps on my backpack, and straightened my Atlanta Braves baseball cap. I was ready to show that mountain who was boss.

As short as my ten-year-old self was, I was able to find fairly easily the necessary cracks and footholds to get myself up the rock face. Very carefully, I scaled to a plateau about 25 feet high and turned around to shoot some pictures of the cityscape through the low points of the mountain, at which point I realized how high I had actually gotten. Far from being daunted or forced to rethink my game plan, I was instead encouraged by my progress and further resolved to make it to the second plateau at the top of the cliff, which lay another 15 feet above me. I took a drink from my water bottle, re-checked my shoelaces, and turned back to face the cliff.

Gradually, I made my way to the top (surprisingly, in retrospect). I checked my footholds and grabbed the rounded rock on the edge of the plateau, then prepared to pull myself over

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