I took 4 of my kids up an embankment in the woods last year. We were out on a nature walk, looking for cool rocks, fiddleheads and whatever caught our eye. It s

I took 4 of my kids up an embankment in the woods last year. We were out on a nature walk, looking for cool rocks, fiddleheads and whatever caught our eye. It started out mild enough. Looking at topo maps it was about 100 vertical feet per 200 horizontal feet at first. But it gradually got steeper and by about half way up I had to climb behind the younger ones with my hand on their back to keep them from slipping down. at the top we could see that it ended in a sheer cliff about 15 feet tall. I knew that at the top of the cliff was a beautiful wild flower meadow because I had been up there via another route earlier in the year. We thought we saw a crack in the cliff that would allow us to shimmy up and make the top so even though it was getting very steep (about 50-60 degree slope) we pushed on. The crack was too narrow though and when we turned around to go back down I saw how crazy we were to have gone that far. I had the two oldest grab my shoulders, sat the 5 year old behind me straddling my waist and put the youngest between my legs and slid down on my butt. the slide down was exhilarating and we vowed to return when everyone was a little older and more capable. I was genuinely scared for a brief moment when we turned around at the top but I couldn't let my children know that and we all learned something about our physical limits that day. I think often about what to let my kids experience and what to protect them from. I would rather let them explore their boundaries and get hurt when they are young and I'm around to take care of them than for them to grow up afraid of everything or even worse, not afraid of anything. edit: found a map of the area[0] [0] http://imgur.com/NvNXv2g http://imgur.com/NvNXv2g