just hoping nothing started vibrating, praying to anyone or thing – keeping it vague – that my hair didn’t become static. I watched the skies with a biting anxiety. Clouds moving east – no, north. Where is this storm coming from? In a lull, the rain still pouring, Jack rushed back to the summit to belay me up. What was once a crack through the roof is now a gushing waterfall. Shivering, I had given up hope for trying to free the climb. I grasped for cams, cursing my way upward, but able to walk some of them to help aid up. “Fuck me!” I screamed, in my all too characteristic rage as one of the cams pops. I was once again below the roof, water streaming down my face - soon to be an unpleasant memory. The sun quickly came out when I arrived on the summit. The ropes got stuck on rappel, but before long we were at the base, more than ready to take a couple days off to drive north. Often in climbing lore one hears of the sensation of being benighted on a climb: left to wait out the dark hours with only the clothes on their back and the food in their stomach. However, it was only 5 o’clock in the afternoon; we were not benighted. Completely saturated, we had been be-dayed.
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CCAJ
Playing With Fire Erik Rieger (’12) Heraclitus once wrote that all things become fire; that fire is the process of change, the one truth, and what teaches those few who will listen. In nature, this truth is unmistakable. When fire takes hold of the earth it scorches everything in its path. Life is vanquished. The land goes dormant. Only a corpse remains of what once was. Even the wind seems to threaten. Silence. Emptiness. A barren vacuum of sights and sounds. Yet, in time, the scoured land will transform. The tarred soil will breathe life into new roots. In the wake of brutality and ruin, a fragile landscape will blossom. Pikes Peak has become my fire. From the great plains below, Pikes Peak stands deceptively tall, rising over 8000 feet from the valley floor. Its