Never-athletic fortyish women should not believe they can scramble up the side of a mountain after three able-bodied teenagers. Wearing a skirt.

Yet there I was, in the Bavarian Alps, on a top secret mission, clinging to an old wire fence and pulling myself up a vertical ascent over tree roots and rocks, trusting that said fence could bear my extra pounds and not uproot itself and send me tumbling. In a skirt.

When we realized that my daughter's GPS was leading us straight up the mountain, I nearly took a pass. We still had to bike back to the hostel, after all. And, was that a cross there, marking the place someone else had lost her footing?

But I didn't. Which is how I ended up on the fence. In a skirt. Partway up we noticed a young man climbing behind us. I'm pretty sure he saw more of my middle aged booty than he ever bargained for. Plus, the poor guy was only trailing us because he thought we were in search of the perfect photo. When he found us all gathered around a box of google eyes, paper clips, and other oddities, our well-earned geocache, he got very confused. Right now, there are probably stories circulating somewhere in Asia about four women doing occult rituals that involved google eyes on top of the German Alps.

Sometimes, little-engine-that-could optimism fails me, and sheer tenacity is all there is to cling to. Like an old fence in Bavaria behind a castle everyone knows. But few know it from high above. The sunset view, there, by the way, is stunning.