The Edge of Nowhere: Climbing at Stone Mountain, NC
May 26-28, 2001
An image borrowed from Flatliner's Stone Mtn pages showing some of the popular routes on the mountain.
For well over a year now, I've been hearing stories about the rock climbing at Stone Mountain, NC. So this year Amy and I joined Bill Januszewski and Beth Perriello in the seven-plus hour drive down on the long Memorial Day weekend. Battling rain storms and intense fog, we finally broke into clean sunlight and found, after an extensive search, the lovely Site 3 at the poorly-labeled Stone Mountain Campground. Bill and Beth had been to Stone Mountain before, Bill extensively, so we let them call all the shots. This was to be our first experience with slab climbing and I was a bit uneasy about not having any sort of holds to grab, especially while on the sharp end of the rope.
 Bill headed up U-Slot (5.7) |
A short hike brought us to the base of the rock. It is a bit surreal how rock sloped at perhaps 50-60 degrees merges directly into more-or-less horizontal forest. To get to the start of Arch, you must first attain the Tree Ledge. For those of us who won't lead anything too challenging (read, above 5.8), there are two options. The first is to take the aptly named Entrance Crack (5.4), a run-outy, off-width crack. We opted for the second, easier, U-Slots (a two-pitch 5.3ish climb with one 5.7 move). Bill and Beth lead the way quickly and cleared the base without hesitation. Now it was my turn! Slab climbing here we come...
Ten feet off the deck it began to hit me; there really isn't anything to grab here. I really have to trust my footwork and think like a lizard here! The first bolts were achieved with little fanfare after perhaps fifty feet of easy slab climbing. Amy joined me and I started up the second, longer crux pitch. The first fifty feet or so goes up 45-degree slab with no protection at all. Fortunately, the surface is very nice, rough granite dimpled with small ripples and veins; the only difficulty is psychological. Thoughts of long runouts dancing through my head, I finally sank a cam in a shallow, vertical crack and, with considerable relief, headed up to the four foot high overhang. Another cam was placed to protect the traverse across a wet patch to the crux.
The climb gets its name from the rounded slot in the roof through which you make the single 5.7 move. Again it was a matter of commitment and an easy high-step put me on more stable ground. Oy, this is not good for my nerves! Soon everyone had gained the ledge and we prepared to assault the Arch propper.
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| The aptly named Great Arch with Bill hard at work (photo by ACR). Click to enlarge. | Amy clinging to the rest tree half-way up the first pitch of Arch. Click to enlarge. |
From up close, the true proportions of the arch are more apparent. Down here at the bottom, the corner is probably a dozen feet thick and both faces are entirely featureless, white granite. A uniform 1-2" crack runs up the junction of the two past two pairs of belay bolts. These climbs were designed to be done with fifty meter ropes and the bolts were placed accordingly. It's three loooong pitches to the summit. I started up. The move is a pretty easy one--left toes in the crack, right foot smearing on the steep face or whatever thin features you can find, grab sharp edge of the crack with at least one hand and shuffle. Hurts your back after a while, wreaks havoc on one's Achilles tendons and it gets to be moderately boring. The crack soaks up cams like crazy and, in my usual style, I ran out of the good gear sewing up the bottom part and was forced later to use scanty, non-ideal pro. Half way up, a tree provides a rest stance and a chance to sling something, but I was quite glad to reach the narrow seat at the pair of bolts. Amy scurried up in good time joining me on the precarious ledge.
The second pitch starts out going around a small abeyment in the wall, past a tree and across a wet patch which wasn't too much trouble. Above that corner, out of site of the belay ledge, the going was much like the first pitch with a slightly smaller crack and significantly more water. This made the going quite exciting, despite the fact that the slope of the main face was relaxing a few degrees. Again, I sank all the pro I could, but still faced longer-than-I-liked unprotected stretches. "It's only a 5.5 and you're not going to fall," I kept saying to myself. But the exposure used a different argument in talking with my brain stem and I was psychologically crispy by the time I reached the second belay stance at a much-beleagured tree (whos roots had been occupying the crack for the last twenty feet or so). Again, Amy came up quickly and we shuffled the rope around.
 Amy relaxes at the top of Arch Pitch #2. Click to enlarge. |
Bill and Beth had long since cleared the last pitch so I jumped on. Unlike the last two pitches, this one was almost relaxing. While the crack largely disappeared, the slope was fairly gentle now and there were considerably more features on the face. I found myself going longer stretches without protection and using the face more and more. (Little did I know what excellent practice this would be for the pitches to come...) The corner wall shrank down to human-sized and soon I was walking up the mountain with what amounted to a handrail on the left. Just as Amy called out that I had only a few meters of rope left, I caught sight of our companions sitting, off belay, in a small copse, and the final pair of bolts. Amy cleared the gear with no trouble and we topped out.
 Racked, roped and ready to ROCK! This moonscape greeted us up near the summit (photo by ACR). Click to enlarge. |
The summit of Stone Mountain is far from flat. Continuing the tradition started below, the slope gradually lessens until you reach the treeline, the effect being that it constantly looks like you're about twenty feet from the edge of the world. All over the undulating stone surface are these shallow round holes of all sizes. A raised bump in the middle of each one makes the whole area look like the cratered surface of the moon. Water erosion marks make shallow cuts down into the void. We coiled the ropes and trooped up the the actual summit feeling much like conquering heroes returning from some desert campain. The hikers we met up there seemed quite impressed and we spent a while snapping pictures for each other and sharing tall tales.
Since rappelling back to the base takes a lot of work and since we were pretty tired already, we took a left and hiked down the main hiker trail back to the cars. The day was sunny and the trail was crowded with casually-clad hikers huffing and puffing up toward the summit. We jingled and clanked our way back to ground level feeling quite studly and smug. Back at the car, we doffed gear and spent the rest of the day exploring the mountain in a less vertical manner with a lovely trip through southern softwoods out to a tall waterfall and back. Finally, at 6 pm, we were the last car out of the parking lot. Back to camp and a huge quantity of chili and corn bread and some remarkably sound sleeping.
Sunday morning looked like a carbon-copy of the day before. Nursing sore legs and feet, we got a somewhat later start and hiked in once again. This time, Bill urged us to try No Alternative (5.5*) which promised to be a bit different from Arch the day before. Instead of going up U-Slots again, I opted to try Entrance Crack (5.4) to reach the Tree Ledge. A couple short, rounded cracks lead up to this big, whopping crack on a fairly smooth face. Tim and Catherine, another pair of climbers who had actually gotten there before us, graciously offered us the first climb while they went over some of the basics again. I eagerly jumped on and started up.
Everything went well enough until about fifty feet up when I got to the big crack. To say that this was off-width is to say that it gets dark at night. Since I had no eight-inch pro and there were no other features, I was looking at a hundred feet or so of unprotected crack climb. There were some foot holds on the edges of the crack and I proceeded upward for maybe thirty feet. But after the runout became too terrifying, I squeezed my left arm and shoulder in there next to my left thigh and hip and proceeded to squeegee my way up the extremely unpleasant crack one inch at a time. My technique may have been execrable, but any falls would only wedge me into the crack instead of leaving me smeared all over the treetops below. Little did I know but my current, frazzled psychological state would be by far the dominant one of the day... The only possible relief came roughly half way up I came upon an old, hangerless bolt about three-feet off the crack to the right that I looped a small nut over and slung grateful for the psychological protection if nothing else. And this was only a 5.4! What a load of crap! Uggg.
When that whole ordeal was over and Amy had also come up, everyone was breathing considerably easier. Bill lead the way up No Alternative imediately to our right. The first pitch resembles a slightly scaled-down, mirror image of the Great Arch visible over to the left. Since the first pitch requires a full 50 meters of rope, when our turn came, I set up the first belay from a small tree across twenty feet of small ledge at the base of the left-facing corner. Tim was in the midst of hauling Catherine up Entrance Crack and fending off the large rat snake he was sharing the belay ledge with and the weather was getting a chilly and ominous.
But the first pitch of No Alternative was refreshing and got circulation back into chilled fingers. The technique was similar to that on Arch, but a bit more varied as the crack bifurcated and wound its way under a number of trees and brambles. Just as I was running out of both pro and rope, I got to the relatively large ledge at the top of the crack and set up the belay. Amy came up with little trouble.
Now the real fun began. Looking upward I could see a vast expanse of blank wall sloped at an alarming angle up into the grey sky. A single bolt showed itself perhaps sixty feet up and, from where Bill was standing, feet out of site around the curved rock horizon, I presumed there to be another of the standard two-bolt belay stations. Spotting a tiny foot ledge, I gamely stepped up onto the slab to face my destiny.
It's not that the climbing was all that difficult--the rock was plenty grippy and the slope wasn't really that steep. It was just the stunning lack of features on the face and the realization that there was nothing to hold on to and nothing save the tearing friction of granite versus skin to stop me should my feet slip. Yeah, I was tied to a rope, but I was looking at a hundred-plus-foot slide before that came into use. The tiny foot ledge I'd used right off the belay seemed expansive and luxurious now.
But somehow I managed to stay focused and keep moving. Momentum became a tangible thing and every time I hesitated, the next move became much, much harder. One section of rock would appear somehow better than another and this would become a momentary foothold. The temptation to just lizard myself down onto the rock and cry became very powerful indeed. Part way up, I encountered a small undercling which might accept gear. I wasted a few precious moments plugging a nut in and, extremely doubtful of its holding power, trusted to momentum and kept going. Finally the single, solitary, half-way bolt hove into view and I clipped it like a drowning man. But getting moving once again was a titanic challenge. Finally, I screwed up courage and headed out again. Two more meager cracks were plugged with cams which might or might not hold and, heart beating like a caged jackhammer, I grabbed the belay rings some ungodly distance above my last good pro... SAFE!
 Looking down the fearsome second pitch of No Alternative. Your belay is down by that tree and there's one bolt about halfway down. Trust me, it's a lot scarier in person... Click to enlarge. |
While belaying Amy up, I had plenty of time to contemplate my circumstances. Clipped into my anchor, I leaned back and regarded the tilted rock desert surrounding me. I was at least a hundred feet in any direction from the nearest tangible feature. Standing that way normal to the rock, everything was at a very odd angle and I shivered from the exposure. The clouds were getting seriously dark and ominous now and the wind--which I'd been steadfastly ignoring on the way up--had started to blow a bit harder. Below me, Amy was making sounds like she was having a similarly hard time of it psychologically. Sweating and swearing, at great length, she crawled up beside me and clipped into the anchor. The worst was over or so I dearly hoped.
Looking up, I could see nothing but a rocky horizon and the tops of some trees. Over to the right a few feet were a set of small ripples marking the surface. The slope hadn't changed here and was probably a steady 45 degrees or so (though it looked much, much steeper!) Figuring nothing could possibly be worse than the pitch just finished, I headed off up into the unknown moving at, Amy reports, an unprecedented speed. Indeed, the slope did soon become more friendly and I flew through increasingly easier terrain. Perhaps 80' up I came upon another of these small, horizontal underclings and, figuring I'd worked up some pretty serious run-out, slotted a cam. Fortunately, it wasn't more than another 30' or so to the final set of bolts on a slope no worse than 30 degrees. Bill and Beth were, again, visible, shivering in the trees unroped and ready to go.
 Bill and Beth wait for us to clear the top of No Alternative. This was a very welcome sight. Click to enlarge. |
When Amy finally started the last pitch, she came up like a demon moving as close to a dead run as you can on a 40-degree slope in climbing shoes. Arms aching from the effort, I hauled rope through the belay device. She shot past the bolts I was attached to and continued up to the woods and more-or-less level ground. Before long, I was being given a hip-belay up the final bit and kissed the ground most fervently. Wow what a climb! Now that it was all over, everyone's mood improved markedly. Talk about learning to trust your footwork...
The promissed rain never really materialized. Again, we trudged up toward the summit, changed to sandals, and descended on the hiker trail back to the parking lot. After changing from our webbing, clanking metal and coiled rope couture into more conventional shorts and t-shirts, we spent the remainder of the afternoon hiking around the area enjoying the luxuries of a horizontal life style.
By late afternoon, everyone was famished so we retired back to the campsite and pasta with a really amazing marinera sauce concocted by Bill and Beth. Showers, a desultory campfire and then, finally, bed.Monday started much the way Friday ended; with rain and driving. The trip back was largely uneventful except for a stop at Luray Caverns in Virginia. While we've been in lots of caves before, this was our first experience with commercial caves. While a bit surreal, I came away very impressed at the ornateness of the Caverns.
An excellant weekend with some spectacular climbing. A good time was had by all and the weather couldn't have been better. Best of all, I now have an appreciation for the cahones required to lead slab. Yeee-ha!
