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One year a friend came to visit me in late June for the specific purpose of climbing mountains. Late-season snow made all but a few mountains inaccessible, so we settled on one of the easiest, Mount Sherman. Normally, a hiker can follow a gentle trail that winds right to the obvious summit. As we started from the trail head, however, we realized that a summer snowstorm had changed everything. Occasionally the clouds would part enough to give us a view of what we thought might be the summit, but then the sky would close tight around us in a total whiteout.

False summits—and most mountains have them—present a trial for the climber. For three hours you glance every few seconds at the top. Your eyes are pulled by a force like gravitation; you cannot resist looking at the massive peak that is luring you up its side. Then, just when you reach the top, you realize it is not the top at all. Perspective from below has fooled you. You see the real summit a half-mile ahead. Or is that too a false summit?

In the climb up Mount Sherman, we began in snow and clouds and ended in snow and clouds, and saw little in between. When a true whiteout settles in, you lose all orientation with the horizon and cannot tell if you are ascending, descending, or walking upside down. You strike out blind—which, mountains as craggy as the Rockies, may well prove fatal.

My partner and I discussed turning back and decided against it. We sat and waited for the clouds to clear a little, picked a spot and marked a compass bearing, then struck out again. When the clouds closed in, we sat in the wet snow and waited for another break.

Aware of avalanche danger, we deliberately chose a longer route that circled the gentler slopes of the mountain. In the cloud cover, we would hear the ominous crackling sounds of avalanches breaking loose from the other peaks around us. The heavy air made each one sound as if it was bearing right down on us, though intellectually we knew differently—we thought. Sitting in snow in the middle of a cloud, with a sound like sonic booms ricocheting all around makes one question maps, compasses, sense organs, and reason itself.

We had judged correctly, though, and no avalanches hit nearby. Clouds parted long enough to give us a glimpse of a ledge leading directly to the true summit, and with care we managed to make it. The sign-in cylinder at the top, buried in snow, indicated that we were the first hikers that season to ascend Mount Sherman. Then came the fun part. Clouds broke up, we could choose our slopes, and what took four hours to ascend took less than an hour to descend—on our backs sliding like tobogganers down slopes slick with new snow.

That climb, as I reflected on it later, recapitulated what I have learned about the pilgrimage of faith. It involves miscalculations, thrills and hardship, long periods of waiting, and long periods of simply trudging. Faith means striking out, with no clear end in sight and perhaps even no clear move of the next step. It means following, trusting, holding out a hand to an invisible Guide. Faith is reason gone courageous. No matter how thoroughly I prepare, make precautions, and try to eliminate risk, I never succeed. Always there are times of whiteout, when I can see nothing and avalanches roar down around me.

When I reach the summit, though, nothing in the world compares to that feeling of accomplishment and exaltation. Yet Mount Sherman is, after all, only one 14,000-foot mountain in Colorado. I have 52 to go.

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