Secret Climbs In Lost Places
By Matt Gentling
I don’t know why we were tiptoeing. Mark was decked out in a pair of neon-bright ropes, and I was festooned with enough clanking hardware to wake every dog in Southern Appalachia. We darted off the pavement like furtive robot turkeys into a groomed patch of woods with opulent, sprawling vacation homes looming on each side.
We broke from the trees onto a stunning clifftop, and scrambled aimlessly down the steepening rock – completely lost. Just when the going got frighteningly precipitous, we located the rappel tree. Two rappels delivered us to a graveyard of construction trash: rotting plywood, two-by’s and four-by’s, all bristling with rusty nails. Through the perilous jetsam, we picked our way along to the base of our intended route, the name of which must unfortunately remain secret.
We gaped up at two massive dihedrals stacked one atop another, curving elegantly at the apices into shadowy roofs. Mark immediately put away pitch one, stopping at the base of the first dihedral at a hanging belay of two crusty, pitted one-quarter-inch rawldrive bolts that practically wept when we weighted them.
After nervously re-racking, I set off into the yawning corner of pitch two. About 10 feet up, the crack was too wide for our gear. I’d been warned about this part, but I couldn’t have felt less prepared now. I liebacked fervidly, my feet squeaking on the slippery stone. Mark receded to a distant speck below, but I was confident I would hit him full-on if I fell.
Strike! No need to pick up that spare.
My arms were rapidly swelling like wieners in the microwave. I whimpered pathetically. No place to rest, no way to retreat, hurry, hurry, hurry. I climbed fast but the pump was catching up. I raced toward a chockstone fifty feet above and draped in old nylon slings. Finally, desperate, I clutched a fistful of the healthiest looking tat, clipped it and hung like a whipped dog. Sniveling, I caught my breath, swallowed back the threatening vomit, and leaned back to inspect the second half of the pitch.
More of the same. Good lord.
After more creepy liebacking, the angle kicked back and holds appeared in the marble-like surface. There still wasn’t any pro, but at least it was easy climbing.
The next few pitches went easily – casual even. With most of the route behind us, we sat on a sun-warmed ledge, ate lunch, and gazed out over a verdant basin. Here, the headwaters of the mighty Chattooga River came together to begin their tumble past shiny buoyant tourists spilling out of rubber rafts, past the squealing of pigs, past fly fishermen hip deep in idyll…
Upward we laughed, joked and scrambled through devious, confusing but ultimately mellow ground to the foot of a greasy, malevolent slab. I laughed at the challenge –mainly because it was Mark’s lead.
Mark will remember the crux better than I will, because he climbed up and down it about twenty times, but to my recollection, he padded up about thirty sparsely protected feet, clipped a one-quarter inch rawl buttonhead that looked like it enjoyed the last century at the bottom of the ocean, and set off into a featureless void. Mark surely would remember every feature of this void, had there been any at all. I’ve always considered him somewhat of a specialist at scaling blank friction slabs, so when in a quavering voice he announced he was about ready to die, I began to feel concern. I think he might have found a place for a teensy brass nut, but that thing wouldn’t have even slowed his plummeting, trundling carcass.
Eventually, Mark’s face set and he seemed to accept his fate. To his surprise, he smoothly dispatched the beastly crux and soon found himself out of harm’s way, twitching and cowering at a belay station under a rhododendron tree that had somehow sprouted from a crack. The next pitched amounted to just a couple moves of aid past a couple old bashies, and one more pitch through fractured and vegetated granite left us on a sprawling, shady ledge within striking distance of the top.
The last pitch. About forty feet out, I got my first piece of pro at the end of fifteen feet of tenuous moves. I’ve since heard about a local boy – a competent climber – who slipped and tumbled into the fractured mess below, breaking his leg badly. I, however, lucked out, placed some more gear, pulled through an overlap, and found myself perched at the top of a massive cliff. I contrived a belay on some odd-looking bushes and sat back to enjoy the view and ruminate on what we’d just done. I felt so fortunate and accomplished until I remembered this route was first climbed solo.
Mark finished the climb and joined me at the belay to sort gear and coil ropes. I pointed out the strange shrubbery.
“Check it out. It looks all, I don’t know… shaped.”
“Landscaping,” he explained.
“Ohh…”
Craning my neck and carefully parting the manicured foliage, I gazed across an immaculate lawn to a luxurious manse. Surely if its residents had seen us, they’ve be convinced that pirates had finally come inland.
We strolled – incautiously this time – through the scant buffer of woods back to the road.
“It’s too bad,” said Mark.
“’bout what?”
“We’re reduced to sneaking in order to climb rock like that.”
“And all the garbage at the bottom.”
“Ugh. What a great climb, though.”
December 1st, 2006 at 6:47 am
Wow, Matt!!! Excellently written article. Very well done. I may have to have you write for me sometime. Puts my work to shame in the Black Mountain rag.
Van