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The Way to Conness 8

And where we've arrived after all that, is here. Inside of a bowl, surrounded on almost all sides by steep slopes and cliffs, and in the springtime filled with water. In fact, there is still water, and we have to jump from rock to rock. There are two ways up, it seems; the one with the glacier, but that's no good, and the other side.

While I climb around to investigate, a bearded man comes down the rocks. He explains he'd seen Bill and David near the summit of Conness. He suggests we wait here in the bowl, because towards the top, it's no fun climbing up to "The Notch".

Stella watched him move away, and said to me that she thinks he has no legs, he's walking on prosthetic limbs.

More at the bottom of the page.

Conness 7

Conness 9
Up there: that's "The Notch". Where the two projections reach skyward.

The man in the picture is David coming down - but we're getting ahead of ourselves.
Stella and I begin the climb up towards the Notch. It's rough going, and it gets worse towards the top. We get to within about 200 feet of the top; but then I hear Bill's voice, as the two Connesseurs appear in the Notch above. It is getting late, and it would take us half an hour to get up there, so we forefeit the adventure.

We receive confirmation that the man really did have no legs, and he'd climbed to the summit of Conness. David is 69 and did the same. If you haven't seen Bill's photos yet, now's the time! They are here.

Looking at Bill's pictures, I think Stella and I are lucky we decided to get up late and not come along, because we would have refused the climb to the summit. A two foot wide walkway with 200 foot drop off on one side and 800 ft on the other does not suit my acrophobic nature. Bill claims it's not really so bad when you are actually there, and I would have done fine. But, anyway, a man with no legs may climb to the summit, or a sixty-nine year old, but what would healthy young people like Stella and Frank have to prove?