Yonahwoodzy | 17 May, 2008 23:45 One of the balance climbs Alternative Medecine maybe, might have done Variations...
The Glasswoodzy | 03 May, 2008 12:46 the odyssey, rapping down preditor was scary, i can't believe that is climbable some 11's and some 10's irish jig
Sunsetwoodzy | 19 April, 2008 11:38
JR. LA, SM
TWallwoodzy | 15 March, 2008 23:43 I've been slacking on posting these, but I don't remember the new routes I climbed, my goal was to climb routes at twall that i've never climbed before.
Sandrockwoodzy | 13 February, 2008 22:32
Jamestown - The seepingnesswoodzy | 02 February, 2008 20:18 Escaped ATL today up to Jamestown. I didn't expect the cliff to be seeping as much as it was. I will now never visit it unless its about 3 days after a rain storm. Kinda like Laurel knob. Even Lost Wall isn't this seepy. Blah. There were still a few climbs that were dry, however every classic 9 or 10 had a water runnel on it. SM and I had a great time just tooling around on 3 climbs. Medusa Tree was the first victim of the day (which was a little wet in the 11 variation). Stared at Rift Raft for a while, decided it was wetish along with the rest of the Harvest Wall. Ran over to Cinnamon Girl, powered that out, then climbed Hairdressers on Fire a nice little sport lead next door to Cinnanmon Girl. Its really mixed, the guide gives good beta on the first piece of gear. And that tree, really is kinda in the way of a pretty crucial hold right next to the bolt. The moves on this 11 are fantastic, very nice face climb. I really wanted to do Rift Raft, that will be my immediate next tick at Jamestown, after hopefully one of the other 10's in that area is try as well. -Matt
Tennesee Wallwoodzy | 21 January, 2008 23:00 Man its been two months since I've been outside last. I knew it was a while, but I had no idea it was that long. Well between all the travel and coldness that is going on I'm not surprised. Anyway, today was a brisk 30 degrees at the car in the morning, but it was great at the cliff (only in the sun heh) probably 50's in the sun and certainly some low 40's; high 30's in the shade (including the rock). We got on Art (which I haven't done since I climbed it with LA a while ago) and it was a little watery up in the cruxy area of it, which made it VERY cold. I bruised my finger in a finger lock, mainly due to me not really knowing how long/hard I was yanking on it due to freezing-ness. Went and got on the ever classic goldenlocks, then since we had a 70m rope, we did Hidden Assets, the top of that is so much fun! As well as picking up some booty gear at the top, certainly from someone using a 60m rope for it. It was a great first day back out in the New Year! -- I totally forgot about Jetson, the coolest cat I have ever met. EVER. On command this cute little cat would climb tree's attack bugs and follow people around like a dog. Totally badass. I dunno what his real name was, but we decided his name was Codename Jetson for some reason. I wish I had a picture, but he was clearly the coolest animal I've crossed paths with in a while. Also witnessed a scary as hell fall from some chick that clearly had not lead very much on Razorworm. And damn that potato from Shufford's BBQ is just amazing. So good...
Tallulah Gorgewoodzy | 03 November, 2007 18:41 First visit to Tallulah this season. I love Tallulah. Punk Wave -- Always such an amazing route. I blew a foot on the beginning and slid down to the jaged rocks. Scraped up my shin & knee some, but no big thing. I got too cocky! I just decided to do a huge lock off on smears instead of looking for feet. Careless. Mescaline Daydream Primitive Paradox That 11 on gear next to Primitive Paradox
Laurel Knob - Water Groovin' All Daywoodzy | 03 November, 2007 01:33 Laurel Knob is such a spectacular set of granite!!! This weekend AM and I got on Canyon's of Laurel. Man yeah... We left ATL at around 8pm. These late starts I've been taking recently are really started to get to me. Thank goodness, however, that Laurel Knob is only 2.5 hours away from ATL at the right speed and in the right way. The wrong way will put you on US64 for waaay too long. That street is menacing at night :). Anyway, we got there around 11pm; roll out of the car onto the ground at Panthertown and sleep. I slept on a posh *two*, count it two, inflatable matresses. Why? Because I could and I was car camping, so whatever :). We got up bright and early at 6am. Ate some simple breakfast, failed to warm our hands and then started the long hike into Laurel. Damn it was cold, and the trail was surprisingly wet which of course made me worry about the face of Laurel. The last time I came to climb at LK all the water grooves were occupied by little water dropplets. Finally arriving at the descent trail that is going to hugely erode eventually, I have to pause and think about how annoying it is going to be to have to climb back up that mess. Anyway down I go. At the bottom, we find this HUGE roomly developer created trail that just make me feel sad and ugh it sucked. Why did some developer come and make this huge, car path basically, trail right at the face. Any why can't I park closer to the damn mountain if there is such EASY access. Bullshit. Whatever, I'm happy to be able to climb there I guess. No, actually I am SUPER happy to be able to climb there... We started up at the route we were about to do... shit it looked hard. It looked really hard. Oh oh, nevermind that was another route we were looking at. Damn Stegg, your a badass. Ok now that we've found the actual route we are going the climb, Canyons of Laurel, it looks much more manageable. AM and I deicide I will lead the first two pitches, he will take 3 & 4 pitches, and we will swap out the 5/6/7/(and the tried 7.5) pitches. I start running up the 40' solo to the first bolt, after having done a completely unnecessary 5.9 slab move off the deck. I clip Mr. Bolt and am suddenly aware of how awesome the friction is today. "I can climb anything made of granite today!", I remember thinking. Little did I know, I would have to. The rest of that pitch happens rather uneventfully. I mean what else can you expect but some run outs on 5.7 terrain on granite slab. Didn't get into the real water groovin' yet though. Man pitch 2, really made things interesting. The topo is kinda misleading for this guy. What you should do is follow Stegg's alternate route straight up the water groove. But I was being all stubborn and wanted to do it the FA way. So I set off. The topo says to follow one "crack" up a little, then shoot straight up, then traverse back to the water groove. Right... I ran up one crack... decided it was too far right, came back, did some sketchy 5.10 slab move over a lip onto unprotected face (the gear below was pretty damn good so I wasn't too worried, except for my ankles... I was far below) that led me into another crack. I followed this crack until I was about equal in height to the anchors. I then saw a chance to go directly to the left, directly to the anchors. The chance I saw was really this sketchy 15' traverse with no hand holds, but on oh 55/60 degree granite. So I commit to that shit. That was scary, but the friction was feeling amazing. After a really sketchy move at the end of the traverse back into the water groove, I clip into the anchors, look down at the straight up and get annoyed at how easy the straight up version would have been... and also noticed that I happened to clip NO bolts on this pitch. Even though the FA had put a few in (2 i think?) Heh, so ah, I managed to do it differently. So yeah whatever I did; I am now going to call the "Plank Variation" since that last section was like walking a plank. Heh. Its clever, shut-up. Pitch 3, I didn't realize this was going to be the best pitch on the damn route, but AM got to lead this spectacular pitch that was the most well protected hard climbing in NC I've ever done. There were literally 14 or 15 bolts on this thing, and some were clearly spaced to allow aidy'ish moves if you needed to. I would not have believed that slab climbing on 85/90
degree granite was possible, but in a water groove ANYTHING is
possible. Holy crap, Some of the smears and things I stepped on in this
spectacular water groove just blow my mind. I was thinking about it
afterwards, and I just can't explain how some of those moves worked.
Just 150' of amazing 11b water groovin! Damn it was awesome. It made it
even more spicy that I was trailing the rap rope and had the water
attached to my harness. The first few moves are intimidating,
overhanging stemming, not super hard... but talk about exposed, and it
was all of 11b, I guess. Man it was sweet. Just thinking about those
moves right now just doesn't make sense. You will know the meaning of
the double sloper gaston by the end of that pitch. But damn is it fun.
Since its so well protected, its just all fun too, there isn't really
any fear of falling, because if you do, in the business section you
just fall like 10 feet max. But damn, what a pitch. The next pitch is pretty badass as well. But you don't feel like some kind of super human... the granite here is more like 75/80 degrees and the water groove has more positive sides to smear counter pressure on. But still good and fun. The rest of the route is worth-while, but nothing really compares to those first 4 pitches. The rest of the pitches are just a bunch of 5.6 groovin, with a few interesting boulder problems interspersed. All in all, this was one of the best routes in NC that I've done. And certainly by favorite at Laurel to date.
Looking Glasswoodzy | 28 October, 2007 00:24 Another long Friday night. We left my apartment at 9:15, did some shopping at Trader Joe's. Finally left ATL at around 9.30/45. There was also some partaking of Chik-Fil-A. I got myself a Chocolate Milkshake, most of it was delicous. However after about 20 minutes, it spilled itself all over the seat. Yes it was my fault, there was a cell phone involved. Those pesky devices, that I use exclusively as my communication device. Whatever. So between the water from nalgenes and window scrapers, I got most of the shake out of the seat. But it still smelled of cow products, so it needed some Febreeze! QT came to the rescue with Gas, Towels and frebreeze. Excellent. Anyway we got to LG at around 1:30am. The moon was amazingly bright and I suggested that we get on the Nose for a night ascent. But unforunately, I felt pretty tired (as did JR and SM) so we instead just setup camp inside the cave and crashed. The next morning we got up at 9ish, and headed to the south face. Everything was wet except for some of the routes to the far left. I think we climbed Second Coming. I climbed this guy in 2 pitches. It was far better that way. I think I've climbed this route in 3 pitches before, but it was far better to do it in just two. One long one up to a reasonable belay, then straight to the new bolts instead of the Gemini tree. After that I wanted to show JR and SM what the Glass is famous for. The eyebrows. So we headed over to the Nose area and climbed the Nose. It was windy as hell. I had led this thing before, and JR wanted to cut his teeth again on lead after a while hiatus climbing. So this was perfect. It was a three man party so it was alread kinda slow... so JR just lead all the pitches. Sweet. I remember having linked the first two pitches, but I think I had a 70m rope when I did that. I think linking them would be very close... I should try it some time with a 60m. I didn't feel like epic'ing with JR leading. We finished the Nose, with the super frigid wind really cutting into us, with only about 30 minutes of sunlight left in the day. Those mountains cut the light out pretty early, so we finished the rap right as darkness was setting in. The hike out was pretty chill even in the dark. El Chapala was the next stop on our list. It was delicious. I had a texas fajita, and JR and I shared a couple pitchers of XX beer, to celebrate our excelent trip to LG and JR's and SM's first visit to the Glass. We grabbed some wood from the Bi-Lo on the way back into the park and went back to our excellent cave camping spot. I was feeling a little tipsy at this point, and with that kind of inhibition, running through the woods and just moving in the woods in general was a fun prospect. I found myself being very bold just jumping around on rocks and walking over boulders. Heh. I need to harness some of the balsyness for tomorrow. Anyway we build a fire, talk some talk and hang out with some excellent climbing partners! We slept in waay late today. I think it was about 10am when we woke up. We got to the Nose area and immediately hiked over to the Sun Wall. Since it was about 1pm at this time, I didn't want to commit to group to a long route, instead I went over to one of the routes I have always really wanted to do. Hyperbola. Hyperbola has two starts: 5.9 R and 5.11b. The 5.9R is indeed some 5.9 friction climbing... I'm not sure how R is it, but it certainly is serious because of the flake below. I lead the 9R attack on the beautiful crescent. There were certainly a few of the very committing moves, but nothing harder than what was done on Whitesides, or Laurel. So it wasn't completely unexpected. Plus, once you commit you gotta do it! I tried the 5.11 variation start afterward on TR. The move just after the first bolt is some business. You kinda mantle on a side-pull, and the clip the second bolt, then I traversed to the right some to another side pull pop'ed up and I was into the crack. I think that variation is just an run out, the pro in the really shallow crack is REALLY shallow, and small. The only good gear is in the 10' finger crack. The crack was awesome, and it made me sad that the 9R kinda skirts that part. We head out after that, it was a minimal climbing day, but it was GOOD climbing. Hyperbola is indeed a super classic route! Good 'ole Zaxby's on the way back. Another long Friday night. We left my apartment at 9:15, did some shopping at Trader Joe's. Finally left ATL at around 9.30/45. There was also some partaking of Chik-Fil-A. I got myself a Chocolate Milkshake, most of it was delicous. However after about 20 minutes, it spilled itself all over the seat. Yes it was my fault, there was a cell phone involved. Those pesky devices, that I use exclusively as my communication device. Whatever. So between the water from nalgenes and window scrapers, I got most of the shake out of the seat. But it still smelled of cow products, so it needed some Febreeze! QT came to the rescue with Gas, Towels and frebreeze. Excellent. Anyway we got to LG at around 1:30am. The moon was amazingly bright and I suggested that we get on the Nose for a night ascent. But unforunately, I felt pretty tired (as did JR and SM) so we instead just setup camp inside the cave and crashed. The next morning we got up at 9ish, and headed to the south face. Everything was wet except for some of the routes to the far left. I think we climbed Second Coming. I climbed this guy in 2 pitches. It was far better that way. I think I've climbed this route in 3 pitches before, but it was far better to do it in just two. One long one up to a reasonable belay, then straight to the new bolts instead of the Gemini tree. After that I wanted to show JR and SM what the Glass is famous for. The eyebrows. So we headed over to the Nose area and climbed the Nose. It was windy as hell. I had led this thing before, and JR wanted to cut his teeth again on lead after a while hiatus climbing. So this was perfect. It was a three man party so it was alread kinda slow... so JR just lead all the pitches. Sweet. I remember having linked the first two pitches, but I think I had a 70m rope when I did that. I think linking them would be very close... I should try it some time with a 60m. I didn't feel like epic'ing with JR leading. We finished the Nose, with the super frigid wind really cutting into us, with only about 30 minutes of sunlight left in the day. Those mountains cut the light out pretty early, so we finished the rap right as darkness was setting in. The hike out was
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