Exposure

Look on the bright side, you think. It's only 10 steps to those trees and once you're there at those trees you have something to hang onto. Something solid. Something you trust.

But those 10 steps.

Oh those 10 steps or so can really get you thinking.

You think about your legs breaking and your guts floating into your throat just before you land.

Just 10 steps.

Five, really.

Five will get you to that rock and then you can take a breath and reach for those trees.

The trees from there are only three steps.

Ready?

Not really.

C'mon wuss, get it together.

You're on mile, 8, or maybe it's mile 10. It's been an uphill all day in a big way. Five thousand feet uphill. That's more than three Empire State Buildings.

But then you drop downhill for a ways and then hike across some of the coolest rock you've ever hiked on. It's smooth and yet it's not slippery. Just below the Glacier. Little waterfalls cascade all over the place and green moss grows in carpets.

This rock is solid. It feels good under your feet after a day of loose scree and rotten rock - typical Glacier crap.

You don't particularly like climbing in Glacier. Which is to say, you're not a peak bagger. You climb to see critters. While critters can hang in some pretty hairy places, particularly mountain goats and sheep, they're almost never all the way to the top.

You've been two-thirds of the way up plenty of slopes. But not many summits.

The only thing on most summits is bugs and rocks. Many don't even have bugs. As a photographer, it just doesn't interest you.

But on this day you've been up and down and around and sideways and now you have just one little ledge left in a day that was full of ledges that dropped straight off to nowhere.

Places your old friend Corwyn called "interesting."

This particularl spot is just 10 feet of hardpan scree you have to cross to get out of the Glacier bowl.

Hardpan because it's been wetted and packed and is now like cement, covered with marbles on a 50-degree slope that goes for about 10, 15 feet.

It wouldn't be so bad, but if you start to slide on this, you don't have much leeway for error - on your right, the Continental Divide drops off in fantastic fashion to lush gardens 2,000 feet below.

You know this because the waterfalls start here, but you can't hear them land.

At least people will remember how you died.

Just 10 steps.

Suck in a deep breath. Think of something else and you take that step.

Then another and another and another. Stop at the rock and then three more big steps and you latch onto that tree like a dear old friend and haul your shaking butt out of there.

That wasn't so bad, was it.

Naw.

If trees could speak, this one would be saying, "Let go of my neck. Let go of my neck."

No way, man.

No way.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.