Jumping from boulder to boulder and never falling, with a heavy pack, is easier than it sounds; you just can't fall when you get into the rhythm of the dance.
I thought climbing the Devil's Thumb would fix all that was wrong with my life. In the end, of course, it changed almost nothing. But I came to appreciate that mountains make poor receptacles for dreams.
"STRAUSS:Have you ever thought about putting those experiences into a book? RICHIE:I did decide to write about what i experienced in climbing to the top. And finally when I got there, I discovered what was at the top.You know what was there?
But then suddenly there was no place higher to go. I felt my cracked lips stretch into a painful grin. I was on top of the Devil's Thumb. Fittingly, the summit was a surreal, malevolent place, an improbably slender wedge of rock and rime no wider than a file cabinet. It did not encourage loitering. As I straddled the highest point, the south face fell away beneath my right boot for twenty-five hundred feet; beneath my left boot the north face dropped twice that distance.