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When Killip at last reached the top and turned east , his first glance into the drainage told him that something was wrong : The Gorge Lakes should have appeared as a string of pearls far below , but there were no lakes . Stretching across two thirds of central Arizona and marking the southern edge of the Colorado Plateau , the thousand-foot-high [ 305-meter-high ] Mogollon Rim seems like the sort of gargantuan geography best appreciated via satellite photos . The Arctic had granted us a reprieve , of sorts . " She was the first Westerner to map large regions of Iran , using her gender to trick officials : " The great and almost only comfort about being a woman , " she mused , " is that one can always pretend to be more stupid than one is and no one is surprised . The first three climbers left the shelf one at a time , each belayed by those above , until they were stretched out down the narrow ridge like beads on a string . It becomes cold , and I retreat to my sleeping bag and pull it around me . Lying in a puddle under a picnic table , wet from head to toe in a sopping sleeping bag , with thunder crackling about and sheets of rain pummeling my thin plastic poncho , I was beginning to question the whole fastpacking concept .