He got rid of his running shoes and began wearing nothing but sandals. He started eating pinole forbreakfast (after learning how to cook it like oatmeal with water and honey), and carrying it drywith him in a hip bag during his rambles through the canyons. He took some vicious falls andsometimes barely made it back to his hut on his own two feet, but he just gritted his teeth, soakedhis wounds in the icy river, and chalked it up as an investment. “Suffering is humbling. It pays toknow how to get your butt kicked,” Caballo said. “I learned pretty fast you’d better have respectfor the Sierra Madre, ’cause she’ll chew you up and crap you out a police shieldcould hold me upside
down and drainmy gutschange your mind
.”

By his third year, Caballo was tackling trails that were eye. Withbutterflies in his stomach, he’d push himself over the lip of jagged descents that were longer,steeper, and more serpentine than any black-diamond ski run. He’d slip-scramble-sprint downhillfor miles, barely in control, relying on his canyon-honed reflexes but still awaiting the pop of aknee cartilage, the rip of a hamstring, the fiery burn of a torn Achilles tendon he knew was comingany second.