There was a large hole in the middle of the rock face in which most of my lower body was wedged at an awkward half-horizontal position some 30 feet above the ground. My white-knuckled hands, numbed long ago by the grip of cold stone, struggled against gravity’s tug while my brain hammered out increasingly nightmarish visions of what would happen if I fell.

In my imagination, wrecked internal organs blossomed into deep bruises across my deathly pale skin; limbs released themselves and escaped at wild angles; horrifying wounds, as deep as ravines, spewed blood across the dewy morning grass in a vicious mockery of celebratory shaken champagne. The rope attached to the harness around my waist snaked guiltily away from me. It had meant to grant me safety, but I was too far from my last point of protection. If I fell from my current position, I would certainly hit the rocky ground below.

“Why is this happening to me?” I wailed down to two friends who were standing safely at the base of the very rocks I found so threatening. They looked up with a mixture of pity and boredom in their eyes. For me, caught in purgatory, time had lost all meaning. For them, 45 minutes long minutes had passed watching my nervous breakdown, and their interest was beginning to wane.

“Come on, mate, you can do it,” said one of them helpfully.

I was in the middle of a section of the route that required me to move horizontally across the rock face. I looked back the way I had come. To abandon the climb, I would have to make four or five long, strong moves before I would be close enough to my last point of protection to be able to fall safely. I flexed my arms briefly, asking their opinion. My aching muscles replied that success in that direction was unlikely.

Ahead, the route was bare. A long horizontal crack led the way to safety, but it was too shallow to jam my hands in and it would be easy for my fingers to to slip from its gently sloping rim. Footholds were entirely absent — I would have to smear the toes of my climbing shoes against the flat rock in a desperate hope for friction. Four or five technical moves would take me to solid handholds, but before I could start, I would have to lean backwards out of the hole, my head parallel to my waist, exposing me terribly to the empty space below and sending the blood rushing to my brain.

Tentatively, I maneuvered myself into position. After inhaling deeply through my nose, I leapt from the safety of the hole before my conscious mind had a chance to realize what was happening. My hands bounded after each other in a series of tenuous grips, following my body’s momentum like a train-hopper chasing a speeding carriage. My tired muscles screamed at me to stop.

You’re half-way there, said a voice in my head, maybe you can rest. I paused for a moment and looked down. Nope, if you stop, you’ll fall, another voice immediately replied, so I hurried on until, at last, solid handholds sprang out of the rock in front of me. As I held on, finally secure, my breath spasmed into gasps of relief. I’d made it.

“Holy fucking shit,” I shouted to my friends. They looked at each other and rolled their eyes.