Always Go Over the Edge...

I came upon these old photos the other day. The were made in the Wichita Mountains of Oklahoma sometime in the early 1980s. Me and, my friend Jeffery and another guy who after all these years I only remember as "Bill's brother." took two trips up there one year for the  purpose of rappelling down the cliff sides.  

It was the old days of rappelling and you had to learn how to tie the Swiss seat harnesses, maintain and check your own ropes and all that. Since then I have rappelled one time and everything was like supervised and safe off a man made tower with a person on the ground to belay you. All the things I had learned on this trip came back and I was probably the only one there that had actually done it in the rough like these photos show. There was no belayer on the ground. It was down the rope you go. 

That's my old friend Jeffery. He lives out in L.A. these days and plays golf in nice places. Don't hear from him much anymore. 

I don't know what our chances of dying were as we played around on these heights. We would just basically climb up as high as we could, secure a rope and then rappel down and if things went pretty smooth we would climb back up and do it again. If we though it was too dangerous to try again we coiled the rope and climbed again till we found a place more to our liking.  

I can't find one particular photo but I remember it was of my climbing partners standing on the edge of a cliff and way across the valley in the background you could spot a speck of a man clinging to a sheer cliff. 

Bill's brother. Never saw this guy again after these trips. 

Camping was rough, pack in everything with hiking into the mountain areas only.  We woke in the mornings to wild buffalo grazing beside our tents. The threat of stampede was real. 

Lesson for today boys and girls? Always go over the edge. I may not physically go over the cliff edge anymore but you know what I mean. Way back when I learned to do it.