There’s a trail that leads up one of those ridges to the sawtooth summit above. No ropes or cables to aid the ascent, just one’s judgment on which rock or root outcropping is solid enough to bear one’s weight.

Also, avoiding guard dogs on someone’s marijuana patch at the foot of the cliff is essential. They were eerily quiet, too. I only noticed them when I heard the ominous growling when I was close enough to see their raised hackles. Fortunately for me that one time, the owner was also there, and somehow quickly ascertained that I wasn’t there to make off with his plantings.

This was back in the early ’80s, and I had no idea that, a quarter century later, I would be hanai to someone who grew up in the neighborhood. The stories I would run into were far more interesting, and deadly, than my thankfully innocent encounter with those dogs that one time.