The sweeping view of the mountainside falling away below him revealed a slope empty of all trees, regular and canted just so, the red, volcanic surface smooth and precise.  The trail behind him, too, identical switchbacks carved in the cone, from the bottom up to the point had had paused, very near the top.  He stood a few moments, studying the way he had come, judging the distance to the white rim of the dormant volcano.  He started to shrug off his backpack, as if to rest a moment, and then he hitched it back up, high on his shoulders, and started on.

It was all right, he thought, when the slope was off of his left hand - over his left shoulder.  He felt all right, then.  He kept going until the path jagged again.  There was something about the switch to the right, he had begun to think. When he looked to the right, the steep sweep below him seemed unreal, a fall into nowhere that one could take with any false step.  He might take, for example.  He kept moving, but suddenly the cone started to turn, to rotate, it seemed to him, to spin.  He dropped to his knees, unable to move, hoping that his head would clear.  But the drop to his right seemed a cauldron in itself, sucking him down.  Trembling, he lay flat on the ground, feeing the sharp, red rocks on his legs and forearms.  He wanted to burrow his hands in the cone itself, hold on for life.  But it was so smooth - almost slippery.  

Just then he heard children on the path behind him.

"I'm first!"  They were racing to the top, he realized.

Slowly, he picked himself up, carefully avoiding the glance to the right.  He stood aside as two teenage boys and a girl ran by, free as the wind.  And then, with a sigh, he focused on their flying feet and resumed his climb to the top.