My First Time Climbing Trad
I’ve been drawn to the rock for quite some time now.
As young as eight years old I can distinctly remember my father locking my brother and I into a figure-8 repel device and lowering us onto the sandpaper-esque cliffs of Whiteside Mountain. Imagine being a young boy waking up to the proposal of dangling from a cliff face with nothing more than a rope magically held taunt by your father who is encouraging you to lean back and take in the view, trusting your very life with a series of threads that were only about as thick as your index finger in total - and now imagine having the most euphoric, adventure-inducing euphoric rush of your young life in that very moment.
That’s the moment I knew I was built for exploration - real exploration.
I was gifted with the opportunity to climb with some of the top representatives of what the Cashiers, North Carolina climbing community had to offer. After two years of pestering, and a small series of life changing moves involving a stint in Boone and one in Knoxville, I finally had my schedule match with the group’s, and up the wall we went.
Laurel Knob sits atop the Lonesome Valley community, a massive force of nature gazing down upon its denizens. We started early in the morning as the sun rose upon the far side of the wall, strafing down a trail where wet branches hung low trying to grab at your pack as you walked by. The enclosed path opened almost instantaneously to the grandeur of Laurel Knob, and we didn’t hesitate in attacking the path upwards which lied before us. I watched the veterans get to work, carefully and diligently placing camming devices into small cracks and wrapping webbing around small protrusions on the rock face, the whole time studying the technique in both placing gear and the form in shuffling up into the heavens.
When it came my time to follow suite, I was every bit excited and left with no fear as I trusted in my partners’ experiences on the rock. I took it slow, imagining what it was like to journey outward and upward into these spaces with the risk of an injury-inducing fall lurking at every finger and toe placement just as the leader of the ascent might have experienced. Staying calm was key, but camaraderie was the binding lock. It can be easy, I’ve noticed, to get stuck in one’s head at times, and without the proper experiences and determination, people do freeze up at those heights. With this fact in mind, or more interestingly with it being out of mind, we all bantered and played off each other during moments of rest atop the wall.
All in all, the reward of sitting atop a seemingly inaccessible cliff face with one or two other explorers crazy enough to risk injury in the name of adventure is indescribable (and the views certainly don’t hurt as well).
This is the start of something beautiful.
Adventure On!
-JGM