Hiking back to the car on Thursday, we ran into a TV news crew on the trail. Evidently, a hiker had fallen while exploring the cliffs off the West Bluff Trail - the same trail we were climbing next to - just a few hours earlier. I got home and read an internet news brief, then saw the hiker had been identified on Saturday as a middle-age McFarland woman.

Wisconsin State Journal article Baraboo News Republic article

I don't know exactly where the woman fell. The report says she was at the bottom of a 100-foot cliff (The Lost Wall?). Her accident is a tragic wake-up call to everyone who scrambles around the cliff-tops at the lake. I have been doing so for years, but that's perhaps why I'm in MORE danger than someone there for their first time: as we repeatedly walk away from a given risk unscathed, the risk seems less and less dangerous. But all it takes is a loose rock, a slick step, or just a momentary loss of balance, and we can find ourselves seriously injured, or worse.