I felt sure that developing some degree of athleticism would make me feel powerful. But the girls in our church youth group were taught to crochet potholders while the boys were enrolled as scouts and sent on fifty-mile backpacking trips.

Like the rest of the climbers who abscond to the remote yet burgeoning village of El Chaltén, Argentina each austral summer, we had put our trust in the multi-directional arrows and EKG-like squiggles of NOAA’s meteogram forecast.