I was 16 when I "summitted" Cathedral Peak....is that the current lingo? I'm now 53. WE used ropes to climb up the last 20ish feet. We didn't use any anchors or anything hammered into the rock. We free climbed up and down, with a rope tied to the other 3. There were 4 of us. It was absolutely the scariest and potentially deadliest thing I've ever done. I trusted my Uncle Bob 100%, and whatever he said to do... I did. I wouldn't do it now, nor would I suggest anyone else do it how we did it....but we did it.

When we all got down from the summit, ....maybe 50 feet below, a snow & hail storm came in, and we huddled together in 2's behind the best rock we could find. There were 3-4 of my female cousins who went up this mountain, but the guys went 1st to the summit, and then the storm hit, and the girls didn't have a chance to climb the summit.

They weren't happy!... but they and nobody else will understand the danger we went through....it was a shear cliff for about 20 feet, in order to get to the summit...of which we free climbed.

I have no magical words of wisdom here, but it you climb shear rock, you can die.....we're lucky we didn't. Bob Kujath