Rich, however, had something different in mind: a route whose appeal resided in its audacity and elegance. His vision was to ascend into the world of pure stone and tease out a route along the loftiest cliffs and ledges that would enable him to shift into overdrive by gliding across the bare slickrock for weeks at a stretch, suspended in the bright between: thousands of feet off the river, thousands of feet below the rim, cutting through country with neither boatmen, rangers, or any other people—only light and rock, and the desert creatures who dwelled in that rarefied realm.
So...he had a death wish.
