My fingernails scratch sharp sandstone as I squeeze a small edge; it bites into the meat of my fingertips. The rubber on my feet sticks to the dark red skin of Eldorado Canyon much better now than in the heat of summer, but I’ve never trusted numb fingers.

I’m balanced on my right foot with a half-pad edge for my left hand. Friction and pressure —165 pounds of it — paste my big toe onto a tiny, textured, barely discernible ripple of rock. Nothing exists but my big toe, left hand and the nut I’m trying to place; until my rope is clipped to something solid I may as well not be secured to anything.

I notice the ground (the END!), unthinkably far below, but I feel nothing. I hear morbid thoughts enter, and then leave, my head. There’s no room for emotion, or anything else that distracts me from the methodical, mechanical act of saving my own life.

Is climbing worth dying for?

The late Todd Skinner, a Wyoming native and author of some of the hardest big-wall free routes in the world, was once asked this question. “Absolutely not,” he replied. Skinner paused, then added, “But climbing is worth risking dying for.”

Tragically, in October 2006, at 47 years old, Skinner, in an unprecedented rappelling accident in Yosemite, free-fell 500 feet to the ground when the worn-out belay loop of his harness snapped.

Nearly all climbers would agree with Skinner, that climbing is not worth dying for. The popular risk-taker eulogy, “He died doing what he loved,” makes me squirm; it sounds unfinished. For the next of kin it’s a comforting rationalization, but personally, I would rather die almost any other death.

Sadly, I don’t have the final say in the matter, so if I die climbing I want the eulogy completed thusly, “He died doing what he loved. It’s a damned shame he croaked in such a frivolous manner. Better luck next time.”

If climbing is precarious and futile, then why do we do it? It’s a good question, and one that’s been asked countless times. The question was posed in the London Times on July 27, 1865, following the most famous climbing accident in mountaineering history when, on the descent from the first ascent of the Matterhorn in Switzerland, four of the seven summiteers perished.

The editorial asked, “What is the use of scaling precipitous rocks? What is (the climber) doing there, and what right has he to throw away the gift of life ... in an emulation which he shares only with skylarks, apes, cats, and squirrels?”

One reason to climb is that it’s as close to meditation as the undisciplined can get. Climbing forces us to live in the moment like nothing else can. We condition ourselves to relax and breathe in the most hair-raising situations without the tedium of countless hours sitting, quieting our mind.

Climbers tend to have an overwhelming desire to live. Ironically, only by risking our lives are we able to feel as though we’re truly living.

Boulder native and renowned author David Roberts was a cutting-edge alpinist in his youth, most famous for his necky first ascents in Alaska in the 1960s and 1970s. In his brutally honest book “On the Ridge Between Life and Death,” Roberts admits, “For me, climbing was always about transcendence. In the spell that risk and fear, barely tamed by skill and nerve, cast over me, I found a blissful escape from the petty pace of normal life.”

When we cheat death now and again, we return from the edge of the abyss with the invaluable viewpoint that Roberts alludes to: that in everyday life almost everything is just a little thing. Perspective is priceless.

In Boulder, we’re insulated from the horrors of what much of the world experiences daily. When, for example, was the last time you tripped over a corpse on Pearl Street?

Climbing’s risk is trivial compared with daily life in countries like Sudan, Pakistan, Iraq and, recently, Mexico. But still there are times, like that cold day in Eldo, when slipping off means checking out. Perhaps the answer to why we climb lies in those moments when the flashing neon sign blinds us with our own mortality, and everything else in our lives seems to fall into place.

Contact Chris Weidner at cweidner8@gmail.com.