Where is the climax of "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"?

There may be some disagreement as to where the precise
climax of this haunting and mysterious poem lies, but to my mind the climax occurs in
Part IV of the poem when the Mariner is finally able to rid himself of the sign of guilt
that has hung around his neck since he shot the albatross and killed it towards the
beginning of the narrative.

What occasions this reversal in
his fortunes is his noticing of some water snakes. The Mariner clearly admires their
beauty, their sense of life and their happiness, and as a result he feels love for them
and blesses them:

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O happy, living things! no
tongue

Their beauty might
declare:

A spring of love gushed from my
heart,

And I blessed them
unaware:

Sure my kind saint took pity on
me,

And I blessed them
unaware.

Notice how this
action cancels out his act of destruction of Nature by killing the albatross. Having
blessed living things, the Mariner suddenly finds that he is able to pray again. As a
result, the albatross which symbolises his guilt and burden, falls away from his neck
and into the sea, where it sinks, never to return:

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The selfsame moment I could
pray;

And from my neck so
free

The Albatross fell off, and
sank

Like lead into the
sea.

This is the major
resolution of the conflict that begins when the Mariner kills the albatross, which is
why I think it marks the climax of the poem. The rest of the narrative charts the
falling action and resolution of the story.