Mike Bryant is afraid of heights.

But you’d never know it watching the EY tax partner decked out in helmet and ropes, rapelling down the 360-foot façade of downtown L.A.’s famed Westin Bonaventure Hotel last month.

Bryant was participating in a Boy Scouts of America fundraiser called, appropriately enough, Over the Edge. He and several of his EY colleagues raised nearly $7,000 for the Boy Scouts.

For Bryant, 56, it was his third time down the side of the landmark hotel and he was relatively at ease, pausing to enjoy the view.

Quite a change from the first time he participated three years ago.

“That first time, I was scared to death,” he said. “I knew that on the other side of that ledge was nothing but air.”

But as president of the local Boy Scouts Council, Bryant he knew he had to go ahead.

“I couldn’t as president of the council back out and then expect other people to do it,” he said.

This time, Bryant put to use some of the lessons he learned from his past descents. First and foremost, “I learned not to look down, but to keep looking out toward the horizon,” he said.

But Bryant now says it was his last descent.

“I think three times is quite enough, and so does my wife,” he said.

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David Siemer of Siemer Ventures isn’t one to casually go off the grid. But a week spent in the Nevada desert for Burning Man, far away from any cell signals, gave him a chance to make connections of the nondigital variety.

The annual art and community exhibition takes place in a dry lakebed in Nevada and attracts a hodgepodge of people: artists mingling with undergrads chatting with businessmen. Although this Burning Man festival, which ended early last month, was Siemer’s first, there was a familiarity about the people he met ambling across the sun-scorched earth.

“The camp we were in had a ton of tech people; I could almost rationalize the trip as not taking days off,” Siemer said, “but you don’t talk about work when you’re out there.”

Instead, Siemer, 39, spent the few days he was there checking out the art installations, drinking lots of water, and reflecting on the nature of self and the ephemera within our social constructs and values.

“Too often I find myself being my business title,” said Siemer, who heads the venture capital firm based in Santa Monica. “It’s not like that at Burning Man. You’ll talk to a stranger about family, hobbies, what they do for fun. Once you see that person outside of Burning Man, you’re super bonded.”