What is it like to lead climbs on Mount Rainier or hike for one hundred miles in the Grand Canyon? How about watching Mount St. Helens go off just before getting in a 2,500–foot gully avalanche? Learn what life is like along the Pacific Crest and Arizona trails. Experience the serendipity of catching a wild horse with Indians in Havasu Canyon, of a chance meeting with climbing guides who take you up the most famous rock climb in Canada for practice, and enjoy the spectacle of a biker gang taking over a bar in West Yellowstone. Close calls galore including rappels gone bad, massive rockfalls, crevasse problems, and a flood in Paria Canyon. Go through the Grand Canyon in a wooden dory like John Wesley Powell did, meet an Alcatraz escapee in Athens, meet a good witch who grants you a favor, life on an aircraft carrier. What's it like to work in Yellowstone as a surveyor, to meet your guardian angel? What makes your life flash before your eyes or cause you to shiver uncontrollably because of fear? What are the three stages of shock? Bear stories galore as well, and hopefully, the short stories provide you with both humor and insight. It's all in there and more including much to say about the sport of mountaineering – why, what, who, where, and how – a synopsis and list of his favorite climbs and places visited over the years.