This was a truly scary part of my trek- a 1600 meter descent down a steep, rain swept mountain face with several cliffs that needed to be traversed, some equipped with shaky, rotting primitive ladders placed by those who use this route. Earlier that day we had ascended 1000 meters but had to make the whole trip up and down as there was no drinkable water at the top (cholera is a major problem and even many locals will not drink unboiled stream water). At one point, while traversing a sheer 15 meter cliff, I lost my footing and was literally clinging to some scraggly roots hanging down over the rocks until one of my sure-footed porters (he went barefoot the entire way) saved my life by grabbing hold of my backpack. During our wait in the village, we received the sad news that an old man making this trek days after us had slipped off a cliff and died. My porters all greatly feared this mountain, and one nearly refused to proceed because we did not have a chicken to sacrifice before ascending. After experiencing this mountain, the two porters that we picked up along the way decided to use their entire pay to take the missionary plane back to town and then backtrack home. I gave them some extra money to cover this.