Twice, Cairn very nearly beat me. Before your final ascent lie two huge skill checks, each asking in a different way if you're really prepared to stick out the rest of the climb up this mountain.
The first is an enormous rock face with no obvious route to the top. The second is a vertical spike jutting up from the rock with some of the most technically-challenging climbing in Cairn's 15-hour runtime. Between them, these two tests were responsible for nearly half of my entire playtime, and each time I scrambled to the top with nothing left in the tank - no food or water, no pitons to protect against a deadly fall, not even any real light by which to find the next hold. Either time, if I'd slipped in those final few meters, I genuinely don't know if I'd have had the perseverance to finish the game.
