Black Dome’s Asheville Outdoors Guide

This year’s Mountain Sports Festival Climbing comp, The Raven’s Rockfest, will be sposored by the Dome and will be held downtown at the Montford Community Rec center…

Click the link for more info:

The freezing temperatures lately have been building up ice on some of the local ice climbing spots. Our lead climber, Matt Gentling, was out just the other day.

Here’s a great resource for ice conditions in the area.

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.”

What’s up with FiveTen’s new line of approach shoes? Are they strictly approach shoes? Low hikers? Free-riders?

All of the above, says one of our lead climbers, Ross Prince.

(more…)

By Matt Gentling

Here in Western North Carolina, we’re blessed with an incredible variety of excellent cragging. We’re surrounded by more fine routes than one can shake a stick at. I know –I’ve tried. My arms wore out, the stick broke, and I’m quite sure I missed a route or two, because it felt like nothing had changed.

We also have a lot of rainy days. So, how do you reconcile such as vast plethora of stunning climbs with such a lamentable paucity of sunny days? You must be selective. You must aim for just the right crag, the crag that will separate a day of climbing from just another swampy hike. Therefore, strike like a sniper! One shot, one kill!

Here are some tips to help you squeeze tens – if not hundreds – of glorious feet of dry stone out of your soggy summer season.

1-3: Location, location, location.

This is the important one. Duh. By location, I don’t just mean a spot on the map. Which way does the route face? Is it exposed to wind? What type of rock is the crag composed of?

Some suggestions: Hawksbill Mountain is always a first choice. You can go about anywhere on Hawksbill and have equal luck. It’s composed of well fractured rock, which drains faster and more completely than solid granite domes. Also, it has less soil and vegetation on top, so there will be less drainage anyway – soil collects rainwater like a sponge and democratically disperses it all over the underlying rock in a time-release manner. Like my grandpa, Hawksbill tends to be windy, which dries the rock very nicely. Lastly, the crag tends to be overhanging and sheltered, with positive edges you can reef on in desperation, even when wet.

Rumbling Bald is another possibility, as it features heavily fractured rock and catches its share of sunshine. But rein in that optimism! The bald is exfoliating granitic rock – it’s peeling layers like an onion, and each layer becomes its own little aquifer, anointing the lowest 80-or-so feet of rock with a rippling sheen of fresh rainwater. If you go here post-monsoon, aim for the sunny, thin face climbs, or pick out a couple of dry boulders. If nothing else, the area becomes a sauna after the rain, and you can sweat yourself down to the next weight class in wrestling.

If you must go to Looking Glass, you have two options: the Nose area or the North Side. Forget about the South Face, as it will seep for days after a storm. The Nose tends to run about midway up the first pitch, and again about midway up the second. Better yet, climb nearby Sundial Crack or Peregrine, as they dry faster. If all this sounds way too easy and you’re the type of person who tightens lug nuts with your fingers, go to the North Side. The first pitch of Invisible Airwaves (direct start, 5.11+/5.12-) and Waste Not, Want Not (5.18c/d+) stay dry in all but the most pounding drenching cataracts, and you can run a toprope on both with just one rope. Or…

4: Learn to climb wet rock; it’s more fun than it seems. First, pick an easy rock. Then learn Fats Domino’s “The Twist” to remove slime from footholds – to get the idea, watch someone grind out a cigarette butt with their foot. And don’t forget to sew it up on lead. You’ll feel like a hardperson! Or a mountaineer! Or an idiot. Regardless, it’s a good time, and it’s less crazy than going paddling. And finally…

5: Got to store. Buy beer. Go to Black Dome. Tell elaborate lies to make your sopping hike sound like an epic mountain conquest. We’ll more than sympathize – we’ll empathize. As long as you share your beer.