Kids, don't try this at home

Ant Candy and I developed quite a taste for wandering off the approved track. In fact, we started to view obstacles as challenges. It started innocently enough. "Hey, let's go up there and pose for a photo!"



But as our confidence grew, we became progressively more serious about it.



"Hey, I'm going to climb that tree!"

Stern warnings placed by well meaning Park officials failed to deter us. Kids, just remember that you shouldn't try any of this for yourselves. We're adults. We're also crazy. You don't want to be like us, honestly. We weren't even really having fun.

Okay, maybe a bit of fun.

There is a real sense of achievement when you find yourself standing on a rock that was really hard to get to.

And is even harder to get back from.

Sometimes you just have to pause and bask in the moment, and the thrill of seeing how fast the water beside you is rushing by.

The really big moment came for us at Lower Yosemite Falls. We'd been building up to this all day, with little rocks in little rivers. But when we saw this ...

We knew we were destined to climb it.

Here we are, waving back at the camera, having picked our way up over multitudes of boulders. We'd abandoned our shoes long before this point to improve our grip on rocks polished smooth by centuries of crashing falls.

At this point the ant/niece team separated for a while. Ant Candy was discouraged by a chest high rock that loomed in our path. I was determined not to stop. So I wedged myself into a crack in the rock and up I went.

Candy's adventurous spirit wasn't daunted for long. When she saw a young couple passing their small child up the same rock she decided that no five year old was going where she wouldn't and on she pressed, almost to the very top.

That blurry smudge at the very top of the rocks is me, waving my hat. I was blurry because I was standing in a waterfall, absolutely drenched in freezing water. Ninety percent of my attention was focused on clinging precariously to the slick, glassy surface of a perfectly smooth rock by sending sticky thoughts through the soles of my feet. Nine percent was marvelling at the incredible view stretched out before me. Hundreds of tourists looked up at the falls of which I was now a very wet part. The remaining one percent of my attention was devoted to ignoring the knowledge that I could very easily fall and die. The turbulent waterfall air buffeted my head and shoulders and tried to tug the hat from my hand. I was at the top of the world, and it was a long, long way down.

I only saw one other person touch that rock in the few hours that we were there. He slid down to meet me just as I reached the top and we shook hands. "Congratulations," he said. "You made it."