Thin-air hallucinations sparkled in my peripheral vision. The ringing in my ears I put down to trolls murmuring their seductive but sometimes treacherous counsel. Wind cracked through the sky in shears, utter joy to ravens, and carried the sound of water tumbling in the valley below. Other times, only silence.

The view is the thing. One of my favorite pastimes is hiking out of the view…literally walking out of the view on the postcards. That predisposes me to hiking where visual stimulation is maxed out, where form and color blend into a gestalt called view. It is prospect as opposed to refuge, expansive and not intimate.

In order to get all that big picture stuff, you have to put yourself in the middle of it. By analogy, if you want to take pictures of birds, go to a wildlife refuge. If you want to see grizzly bears, go to Alaska. If you want a cool view, you have to hike to place where you can find that special vista.

There are a couple of ways to do that. For example, you can go climb a mountain. From the top, you’re able to sit—if the weather holds— and ponder the perfect peaks which surround you. Peak pondering is satisfying and noble, and some folks bag peaks exclusively for the satisfaction of looking at other mountains.

I find, however, that my view is restricted on the way up. I try to be safe by watching where I am going. My vision gets concentrated on a patch of dirt and rock under my feet and directly in front of me. If I lift my eyes to take in the view, I am likely to trip and fall, otherwise misstep into a void, or who knows what? In that uncertainty, of course, lies part of the thrill. But only from the top do you get the unparalleled view and time to enjoy it.

There is an alternative. Ridge walking is like being on the summit; you get practically the same view and the benefit of covering more territory with less effort. Furthermore, ridges often connect summits, so if you walk along the ridge long enough enjoying the view longer, you may enjoy the added perk of achieving the summit anyway.

Not all ridges are created equal. Some are steep and the most direct and obvious route to a summit. They can start out mellow and then narrow to technical scrambling or become impossible to negotiate altogether. This is not a ridge walk; it is a scramble or climb. Moreover, I like to see the whole ridge where I am going to walk. Many times I’ve assumed I’d be able to negotiate what I couldn’t see and had to turn back. But that too, that judgment call, is part of the thrill.

Knife-edge ridges, for example, are spooky because of exposure. You won’t die of exposure unless you fall off and into it, but it is unsettling enough to be cause of an undesirable effect. Exposure is the stuff you try not to think about; don’t look down, put it out of your mind. Exposure is almost healthy if you are the kind of person who believes if it doesn’t kill you, it makes you stronger. Regardless, knife-edges are not places to become one with the view.

To avoid becoming one with the rocks at the bottom of the view, knife-edge or not, it is prudent to stop and stand before eyeballing 360° or getting dizzy watching ravens. It is all too easy to succumb to a view-trance and forget the exact placement of your feet. Perhaps I am singularly clumsy, but walking in scree always seems to knock my boots around. Standing while rubbernecking, helps avoid stumbling…and all the rest.

Furthermore, high ridges also sometimes host rotten rock. Rotten rock is what ridges do as they erode and shed rock on a forever downward path. Eons of water and weather, freezing and thawing, literally rots the rock. Cracked and brittle, scrambling rotten rock requires focus. It is to be trusted neither with critical handholds nor footfalls. If you are below, look up. If you are above, holler “ROCK.”

It stands to reason: The higher the ridge, the cooler the view, but for me there are limits. For example, I will never see the view from the ridge between North and South Maroon Peaks. There is a ridge between, I think, Little Bear and Blanca Peaks down in the Sangre de Cristos that will assuredly never see my waffle stompers.

I can avoid the hairball stuff; instead I like ridge walks where the going is relatively gentle, ups and downs maybe, but revealing a generally low gradient topography. I like broad alpine walking where wildflowers astound at their tenacity in apparently bare rock. I like to lie on my back in the sun with no fear of rolling off a cliff if I fall asleep, succumb to the ravens or listen too long to the trolls. Actually, I hadn’t planned to talk about trolls just in case anyone gets the wrong idea.