People who know me well would be surprised to realize that I say a prayer to every mountain that I climb. What can I say? The highlands make me superstitious. It's not even that I think the mountains are listening – it is more of a reminder to me to remain humble before such immense and ancient things.

With the time ticking down before the back roads start getting snowed in, I decided to tackle Leatherman Peak, second tallest mountain in Idaho. I opted for the west ridge route, a bigger challenge but a shorter drive than the more commonly used north ridge route. The roads in the Lost River Range are notoriously bad, and I prefer to cut the risk of getting stranded in the backcountry with a disabled vehicle.

As my truck bumped its way up Sawmill Gulch Road, I wondered what I was getting myself into as the rugged pyramid of Leatherman loomed on the horizon. The trailhead offered an unusual treat – it was high enough to be in the the Douglas-fir forest rather than the sagebrush steppe – pine duff is a far better bed than a morass of jagged rocks.

I took off at 4AM the next morning, reaching Leatherman Pass before sunrise. I waited for the sun so I could see the route to the summit. The morning was cold and very windy. Small patches of snow had accumulated in every spot sheltered from the wind.

From Leatherman Pass, the west ridge rises 1800 feet to the summit. The first few hundred vertical feet are on easy, stable scree, but after that, the route is a challenging labyrinth of crumbling rock towers and steep gullies.

High on the west ridge, I found a Class 4 chimney leading upward – Class 4 meaning, in so many words, that you might not need a rope, but falling is a very bad idea. I made quick work of the chimney until I reached the top of it. There were no convenient hand or footholds, aside from a ledge well above my head on the right-hand side of the chimney. I didn't entirely like it – using the ledge would mean disengaging both of my legs from the chimney for a few seconds, breaking the basic three-point rule of climbing.

Still, I reached up with my right hand. The ledge was free of dirt and snow, so I went ahead and put my weight on it, getting ready to hoist myself upward. Without warning, a piece of the ledge the size of a microwave oven, whose jointing had left it precariously unbalanced, toppled forward. I shifted my grip to an intact portion of the ledge, and as the broken piece fell, it swiped my shoulder. I could plainly hear the swish of fabric as it grazed my gore-tex jacket. I looked down in time to see it strike the bottom of the chimney, then somersault down the mountain, dislodging a cataract of stones that tumbled after it. The rock bounced over a precipice, and after several seconds, the sound of its final impact came echoing back from nearby cliffs.

"Goddamn, Leatherman, you just tried to kill me!"  I exclaim, laughing at the whole incident.  If that rock had been a fraction of an inch closer to me, it would have smashed into my shoulder, and I would have been falling with it. Had I survived the fall to the chimney's bottom, I would likely have gone into shock, and in the cold morning air, I could have succumbed to hypothermia. I was thankful that I said my usual prayer to the mountain down at the pass.

The rest of the climb was uneventful in comparison. The forest fire smoke that has been hanging over the northwest for the past month had dispersed, so at the summit, I could see all eight of Leatherman Peak's 12,000 foot brethren. I felt exuberant: feral, free, lucky to be alive. For the descent, I decided to come down the north ridge, a route that would add several miles to my hike back to the trailhead, but I had time to spare. I put in my earbuds and sang out loud to some old Shriekback tunes as I skidded down the snowy scree field on the ridge's flank:

Priests and cannibals, prehistoric animals,

Everybody happy as the dead come home!

As a solo climber, I understand the risks that I take. I also remember my final hours at my father's bedside in that cold, sterile intensive care ward, the machines that had been keeping him alive laying idle, every particular of his ebbing life force displayed on the monitor over his head. I would trade away my remaining years of life to escape a death like that. The mountains are where I truly live. They are where I want to die.