The Climb – Draft

The Climb

We should have prepared for this.

I looked around at my Bros, taking long, deep breaths, measuring just how close we were to collapsing. Our lips were tinged with blue. The sweat on our bodies was old and evaporating; we didn’t have it in us to produce new droplets. That trail was a much greater demand on us than we imagined it to be.

But of course, we thought we could handle it.

We’re New Yorkers, after all.

Finally resting in shade for the first time in two hours, our bickering reached its peak. Mike snapped at me as I recorded the end of our journey. Josh stood off by himself, trying to keep his cool. George ignored us all, opting instead to talk on the phone, presumably to his girlfriend back in New York. All of us just wanted some water at the very least. Thankfully, it seemed that whoever turned this path into a popular hiking trail thought to build a water fountain nearby for all travelers.

Too bad it was filled with the worst tasting water we’ve ever had.

The descent was treacherous. It was close to noon when we started down the mountain, with not a single cloud in sight. The view was certainly beautiful, with all the light we needed to see for miles. There was just that tiny little matter of the sun bearing down on us with its full intensity. Not to mention we were down to our last half bottle of water.

Let me correct that: we were down to my last bottle of water. No one else thought of bringing more than a cup or two of lemon flavored H2O from the gym section of our hotel resort. Fools.

Every step we took had to be calculated, exact. It was much different from climbing up, where all we had to do was step to the side to find a new spot to pull ourselves up; this time around we needed to step to the side, look around, and slowly lower our bodies to each rock below us or risk serious injury. Our parched throats and burning muscles only made the task more difficult, and our tempers shorter. We tried to push ahead, tried to break our limits, to get back to where we started for that cool, refreshing liquid of life. I have to admit, it was definitely a challenge to move as quickly as possible without sliding down the face of the mountain.

Then again, I was the only one who failed that challenge.

I just had to be the only one. Yeah.

Halfway down the trail, as we traversed a particularly slick patch of rock, I missed a step and slid. Funny thing was, only five seconds beforehand I was teasing Mike about being careful not to slide into the other hikers. The more experienced hikers. The ones who actually knew what they were doing. I didn’t want us to look like bigger fools in front of them than we already did. Too late for that.

We never climbed a mountain before. Fine, technically speaking we were hiking, not mountain climbing, but for a city dweller like me it may as well have been the same thing. I wasn’t used to the intense physical activity of walking up those hugely disproportionate stairs at the beginning of the trail. I actually thought the stairs were going to be the worst of the hike.

Wow was I wrong.

Mike, Josh, George and I acted like the normal tourists, stopping and taking pictures every few yards. We snapped shots of the rocks. The cacti. The desert rabbits. The rocks that looked like rabbits. The rabbits that looked like rocks. The rocks that we could fit inside of. Lots and lots of rocks. Being New Yorkers, we didn’t get to see so many…rocks and stuff. At least, not any like these.

And then we hit the big ones. The rocks that we actually had to climb.

See, hiking on Camelback Mountain has a mix of walking, hopping, and nearly seventy-degree rock climbing. We looked at that rock face and thought to ourselves, no way on earth can we do that.

Fine, I was the only one thinking it, but we all hesitated nonetheless.

But one by one, pushing each other one, we began to climb.

I open the door. The room is a little dark, but not so much that I can’t see. My vision is accustomed to the light because I stayed up most of the night, watching the sky change colors from deep purple to the dark blue of dawn. I wake up my friends, reminding them of the task we set for the day. We are going to climb Camelback Mountain.

After an hour of bustling about, putting on clothes and rubbing the sleep from our eyes, we set off to get a taxi. On the way out of the complexities of the hotel resort, I say to my friends, “Um, guys? Shouldn’t we stock up on water? It is Arizona, after all.”

They reply with shrugs, suggesting in light words that we will get what we need before going anywhere. Not trusting their behavior, but not wanting to hold them back, I fill up two bottles of my own and rushed to join them. Walking away from the water fountain, I have only one thought.

We really ought to prepare.

The Climb – Draft