“IF I ATTEMPT THAT I THINK I COULD DIE,” said my friend, looking at what lay ahead of us. It didn’t feel like an exaggeration.
The safety of the valley floor was tantalisingly close, just a hundred or so metres below, but to get there we would have to negotiate a final ordeal which at that moment looked impossible: a narrow traverse whittled out of the face of a sheer limestone cliff, with an unambiguously lethal drop below.
The ‘path’ was protected by cables, and in normal circumstances would have been no problem for either of us. But several hours ago, near the start of a long and wickedly steep descent, my friend’s knee had started hurting. We pushed on; but after a succession of plunging scree slopes, wildly exposed balcony paths and difficult downscrambles things became agonising for him, and the going had become slow, fraught and unsteady as the pain ramped up.
We had made it down to a gentle stretch of woods and pasture, and even though I remembered this final cabled section from a previous visit, my memory had tamed it somehow, made it seem less severe. We had both started to relax, thinking the worst was over. But as soon as I turned a corner and looked at this traversing trail with fresh eyes, my spirits plummeted.
