Firstly Let's meet TJgosurf. I met him in passing at Pilot Mountain when I was climbing with Jeff and Nancy there. A few weeks later, when I was back from the red, I shot him a PM and we decided to meet up and do some climbing. He went through an effort and drove all the way up to my girlfriend's place in Chapel Hill since I couldn't work out a lift down to greensborogh.
He has a cool hair, it's kind of big but neat. One the first day we just nipped to the gym and screwed around for a couple of hours, including use [en masse] of fig. 4's on juggy roofs. More surprising is that it actually worked. After that we headed home for some movies and, of course, haggis:
Making Haggis at TJgosurf's house.
The next day was what I was looking foreward to - hitting the legendary land of slab Stone Mountain. After looking throught the guide on the way to the crag we decided the route to be clymbzed would be dixie crystals, a 5.9 with the generous protect (not joking - it is comparatively generous) of at least 2 bolts a pitch. Falling before clipping the first bolt was even more worying the usual, since the route actually started about 60 feet up a steep gully, so a fall would result in both the climber going for quite the tumble.
Anyways, TJ geared up for the lead and quickly set off in the rapid yet delicately cautious pace that is slab climbing.
TJgosurf on a 5.9 Stone Mountain padfest.
Now, personally, I thought the line of least resistance went up leftwards, then rightwards to the bolt. But the guidebook said bomb on straight up, so not wanting to go offroute TJ bombed straight up. Please note at this point that we were not on dixie chrystals, but rather some other route that did call for going left the right, to avoid a stopper move no more then 5 feet from the first bolt, about 45 feet off the deck. But, of course, we thought we were on dixie, so TJ hit the stopper move. With upward movement impossible, and the move was impossible (for us mere mortals, at least) he faced the terrfying prospect of DOWNCLIMBING 45 feet of friction slab!
He moved slowly at first, with a small hint of elvis in his leg but with confidnence in his movements. As he got lower (comparatively, still 30 feet off the deck) he turned around in his mild panic and started to descend facing away from the slope, under the conditions posibly not the best move, but at that point it was all about keeping cool, and not faffing. He finaly made it down to around 15 feet up, where he started to slide.
Seeing it coming I braced a foot in some roots and as he landed I shoved him hard into the slope, hoping to stop him from tumbling down the gully for the 15 feet of slack that was out. Luckily it worked and with nothing but a slight chuckle, a raised heartrate, and a bruised confidence we met up with his pal Steven (a skilled skier who was wearing a 500 dollar spyder jacker he had scored for free) and headed off to climb the classic 5.4 of the area...
The next day I met up with Limeydave again for some more Pilot Mountain fun. We even top-rope-hang-dogged an eliminant variation microroute .12a, we're THAT COOL. it was fun.
The next weekend I met up once again with RSmillburn (ScoTt), his wife Christina, and his friend MJwestla (Matt) for some more climbing. The aim was to hit rumbling bald on saturday, then camp somewhere, then climb at stone mountain on sunday. I went over on friday night and crashed out on their spare bed and we rocked the alpine start the next day for the long approach (in the car) to the crag.
The first route we jumped on was called Comatose, a arching layback crack that flaired to tummy height laybacks (know what I mean?) then had some funky moves over an overlap at half height, finishing with a runout to the anchors.
While Matt geared up for the lead we noticed these little geckos scurrying about everywhere, which I thought was pretty much the awesome.
Matt lead the route without too much problem, moving with solid confidence of one who is enjoying being near his limit on the sharp end and the heightened awareness that comes with it.
Whilst I was seconding the pitch, a young lady joined him at the belay. She told her climber not to climb until I was at the anchors, as she feared that we would shock load the anchor with a factor 4 should we both fall. Whilst I wasn't sure how true that was, it's all about comfort levels so we played ball and chilled at the anchor while she brought up her second, then we "rapped" down. Everytime someone says "let's rap" I think of hip hop or something, as opposed to abseiling, though "abbing off" sounds like a lycra workout.
The next route we did somehow took ages to happen, queues, banter and whatnot, but we climbed a thin crack up solid rock, to a short span of rotten and loose rock and ended up at the base of a deep thin chimney. It was all easy, but highly enjoyable. After P1 you actually climb into the chimney and stand on the bottom of it. It's about 3 or 4 feet wide (it varies) and 30 feet deep. Looking up it looked impossibly wild, but Matt cruised up it, saying you could see edges and cracks from above, and it wasn't blank like it seemed. Luckily, he was telling the truth, because to be perfectly honest I've not really climbed that many chimneys, and that was some seriously awkward stuff (much like the spelling of awkward - ever noticed that?).
Anyways, we rapped down, using the belay anchors (which had rap rings) for the rap stations.
I went first, and when I got to the bottom of the chimney I started threading the spare rope - to save time and all that (it was getting dark) but I didn't notice that I had threaded the rope through the sling I had clipped to the bolt with. I didn't notice until it was dark and we already had headtorches on, and Matt was on the ground. I decided to use some trickery so when I pulled the rope it would pull my sling, too. The only problem was that it would put a knot in the rope, risking getting caught in one of the few cracks on the route when we pulled it.
And, of course, it got stuck. By this time Scott and Christina had already went back to the car, and the rope was Scott's, so we weren't leaving it.
Now I wasn't sure if I had screwed up and we thought that the rope was either stuck, or tied to the sling which was possibly now girth-hitched over the bolts.
We decided to do our best to un-stick in if it was just caught on an edge or whatever by setting up a 3 to 1 pully with a grigri and a jumar. We cranked HARD on that thing (double bodyweight + pushing off rocks) and it didn't budge, so we decided it was probably stuck on the bolts, and I decided to jug the line. Not being a fool I most certainly did so tied in on the 2nd rp and placing gear as if on lead, and I'm glad I did. 15 feet from the belay the sling was hanging hanging in front of my nose, wedge right in the middle of the loose ground, as the rope had wedged behind pretty much the loosest block of them all. Now I was in the great situation of being halfway up a route on a line stuck behind a loose block unable to get any good pro in since all the rock around me was loose... in my approach shoes which, at the time, looked like this:
Wide eyed and a little shakey kneed I slotted 5 or 6 pieces (hoping that they would kinda hold the blocks in place) clipped to them, and trying my best not to weight them - there was a conviniently placed non-ledge- unstuck the rope and threw down a loop of slack, calling for Matt to tie my climbing shoes to it. After a shakey and balancy change of footwear I rocked up the rest of the pitch and, not getting any slings stuck this time, absieled back off.
By that time Scott was back at the crag, making sure we weren't dead or anything, and we had a nice fun million hour (it seemed) walk back to the car in the dark. I'm just glad it was winter, otherwise those bushes would have been brutal.
That night we camped out at some place somewhere and stuff, then in the morning we drove to Stone Mountain, for some slabtastic tradisfaction. Well, it was a long drive, and throw in the fact that, while traveling east (or whatever) we stopped by at a gas station and got back on the freeway heading westbound for about 40 minutes...
When we got to stone mountain Matt and I geared up and climbed No Alternitive, a great line ruined slightly by a loose and dead tree you have to negotiate at half height. We were using Matt's rack which contained a few master cams. Now I'm not saying these are great or not, or telling you whether or not to buy them, but my rack back home consists of HB quadcams and flexicams, which I am going to tell you not to buy. So I guess the master cams have a really small head width, which I never got the craze about, but when I jumped on to lead this route I forgot to bring any nuts except my 1-6 HB brassies, which left a lot to be desired as far as placements go. Those little heads on the cams really did let me sneak 'em in when I didn't think they would work, so I guess I see why the narrowness matters.
We ran out of time (what happened to all the time that weekend? super slow in the car and super fast on the rock) and didn't do pitches 2 or 3 so, which contained all of the actual slab climbing so I still really haven't gotten the full stone mountain experiance.
rc.commers I met:
TJgosurf - actual name TJ. Sound lad, let me crash on an inflatible matress on his floor and drove for a fair while to pick me up so we could go climbing. Had a cat who liked sleeping on me, but didn't like it when I rolled over, his reaction to which would be to lightly mual me. His room mate (name evades me) was super cool, as well.
Rsmillburn - Actual name Scott. Sound guy, likes a lot of old skool punk, which I thought was pretty neat. He and his wife Christina have the quietest and best behaved baby in the entire universe, for certain. Too bad he shootzed me in t3h Fayse!!!!!!11one1
1 comment:
Nice shoes.
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