EDITOR'S LETTER

was sitting at the base of the Praying Monk when I first learned about bashies, hang dogs and the Prusik knot. My friend Scott was running through a glossary of terms that I'd need to understand. Fluently. Not so much for the Monk - that pitch is pretty easy - but for down the road, when I'd try to hit some higher levels. I listened to the master, but he might as well have been speaking Tuyuca. “Belay on!” “Belay off!” Those were the most important lessons on that cold November morning.

It wasn't my first time at a rock wall. As an impetuous kid, I'd done some free soloing at Devil's Lake, a climbing mecca in the Glacier Valley of Wisconsin. It was nothing like what Alex Honnold does, or Babsi Zangerl, but it was dangerous, and there were times when a loose rock or a miscalculation might have led to a helicopter ride to the local Catholic hospital, where my mother worked. I never told her about any of my ill-advised adventures. Until now. Sorry, Mum. If it makes you feel any better, when you encouraged me to “go climb a tree,” that was free soloing, too.

Years later, when I strapped into that harness and started up the east face of the Monk, I became “a climber.” And I liked it. A lot. Although the route never got above a 5.6 or 5.7the equivalent of a participation ribbon at a Kiwanis Club kickball tournament I felt an incredible rush standing on top. Like running Lava Falls or seeing a humpback whale from a sea kayak. And the more climbing I did, the higher I got. There's an adrenaline rush that's hard to come by when you take the elevator. Although nobody ever asked me why why do you do it? - George Mallory got that question all the time. “Because it's there,” he finally said, before he went off to climb Mount Everest in 1924. Photographer Chris Noble says it's about evolution. “Let's face it, we're primates,” he writes in his book Why We Climb. “Our evolutionary predecessors spent millennia scrambling up trees and over rough terrain. Climbing is literally in our DNA. For proof, one has only to observe young kids testing themselves on jungle gyms, rocks, trees and other high places.” Climbing is certainly in John Burcham's DNA. “Every time I clip in, it's the start of an unknown adventure,” he said when I asked him why. “And every climb is completely unique.” Brittany Lichty sees it as an escape. “Being on the wall creates a space of freedom and calmness,” she says. “In those moments, it's only me, the wall, my next move and remembering to breathe.” For Bill Hatcher, who's been climbing and shooting adventure sports for 25 years, “the thrill is in the challenge of getting to the top.” If you listen, they're all saying the same thing, but it's not the first time we've heard it. In one of our first-ever adventure stories, Virginia Garner wrote about her husband's longtime obsession with climbing Agathla, a volcanic rock formation on the Navajo Nation whose name means “piles of wool.” In 1949, he got his chance, along with two of his mates.

“From below, their progress seemed agonizingly ingly slow,” Ms. Garner wrote in our August 1950 issue. “When one climber tired, another took the lead. For nine long difficult hours they fought their way up the face of the cliff. Sometimes the great basalt blocks moved under them and a few broke loose and went plunging down the precipice. The climb became a test of courage, strength, endurance and skill. It became a personal battle with the mountain.” It was a fight they'd eventually win. “At 6:30 p.m.,” Mr. Garner said, “all three of us stood on the summit ... old 'Piles of Wool' was ours!” And that's why he did it. Why he was so obsessed. Like George Mallory - and impetuous ous kids everywhere - Ray Garner went after Agathla because it was there. Because no one else had ever done it before.

Many of you are adventurers, too. And many of you are not. Whichever route you choose, we wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. Please pass the mashed potatoes.