What It Takes to Climb the World’s Most Forbidding Cliffs

Chasm View was flush against the wall, seemingly hanging in midair at the edge of the abyss. Below the great face was a small glacier, and beyond that was Chasm Lake, cobalt blue, nearly two thousand feet down. The view was slightly overwhelming. Vertigo nips at the photoreceptors, or maybe it’s the neurotransmitters. Caldwell and I called back and forth—the acoustics were uncanny—and he sounded strangely carefree for someone clinging to a cliff by his fingernails.