Monthly Archives: September 2008

Rumbling Bald – Cereal Buttress

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Leading Fruit Loops

North Carolina is known for its lack of sport climbing and its abundance of friction climbing.  North Carolina is definitely not known for its crack climbing, yet somehow Rumbling Bald has been blessed with four amazing, moderate splitters all within a 100 feet of each other.

I am referring to Cereal Buttress at Rumbling bald in case you couldn’t pick that up from the basic, but descriptive, title.  Cereal Buttress is home to four absolutely superb moderate crack climbs.  Left to right it goes Fruit Loops (5.7), Granola (5.8), Whiskey for Breakfast (5.10c) and Frosted Flake (5.9). Get it… Cereal Buttress… types of cereal… those FAist are so funny. (sarcasm)

Of the climbs I think Fruit Loops is by far my favorite.  It is a finger to knuckle sized crack that just eats up .75 camalots.  The hands are great and your feet range from small ledges to smears to that awkward foot jam in the crack move.  Fruit Loops is fairly popular but the rock is extremely hard and has not been polished smooth from the traffic.  If you have ever been to Looking Glass and have tried to climb Bloody Crack you’ll know what a pain in the ass it is for the rock to be polished into oblivion.  For the newly minted 5.7 leader this is the perfect line to send.

Granola Rumbling Bald Cereal Buttress Just to the right of Fruit Loops is Granola.  Granola is a tricky climb.  The signature moves are tenuously balancing on tiny feet in order to slot your hands under a roof.  Once you get hands, you delicately traverse under the roof which turns into a massive flake that you have to pull around.  After dancing on tiny feet under the roof for a dozen moves, the sick lie back to come around the flake feels incredible.  Your feet are like magnets.  Its like in baseball after warming up with three bats and then hitting a home run because swinging the one bat is effortless.  It is a truly great line that screams trust your feet.

Whiskey for Breakfast is a route that is beyond my ability at the moment but instead of traversing around the roof like in Granola you pull the roof on a tiny finger tip crack.  I’ve seen it done and damn it looks tricky. Ben Pulling Roof Whiskey for Breakfast Rumbling Bald Cereal Buttress

I’ll leave Frosted Flake alone for the moment because it deserves better than a two sentence summary.

5.12c Offwidth in Red River Gorge – Hidden Dragon

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If you have ever wanted to see what 5.12c offwidth climbing was then here is a great video of a Kris “odub” Hampton playing on Hidden Dragon in Red River Gorge.  The line starts with an offwidth roof that you have to pull some sick moves to get up over.  I have no idea why anybody would want to climb offwidth but odub does it hear with some semblance of style and grace.

Maginot Line – Shortoff Mountain – North Carolina

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Shortoff Mountain

The climb really starts from the moment you step out of the car and onto the trail. It is a decent forty minute hike up to where the fun begins but it is actually not that bad because a forest fire ripped through the area a while back and everything is burned to hell which quite different than the typical North Carolina bushwhacking type hike.

Hike up the trail until you reach a small spring which trickles down a fairly steep gully. It is a bit of a scramble down the gully but its fun. When you reach the bottom of it, you’ll be dumped on to a little trail which you follow until it comes to an end at a 100′ cliff which requires a full 60m rope to rappel down. The rock can be a little sketch but there are plenty of solid trees to rap off.

Once you’re down to the bottom hang a lazy left and follow the wall for awhile until you see a large (now burnt) pine tree about two feet from the face with another tree growing out of the face about thirty feet up. I’ll be uploading pictures of the climb soon but once you think you are there look up and check for a chock stone and massive overhang. Maginot Line

Now that you’ve spent the last 90 minutes looking for climb, it is about time to actually have some fun. I won’t bore you with the play by play because it is not necessary. The line is pretty easy to follow. Just go up and stay in the crack until you get about 50′ below the gigantic overhang. The Maginot Line then hangs a right and traverses around on the face before finishing. Once again I’ll post a lot of pictures and you’ll know what I am talking about. Pitch 1 Belay

Advice about the Maginot Line on Shortoff Mountain:

1) There is a ton of loose toaster size rock that are just waiting to shift then fall and kill your second so be careful.

2) This is an awkward as all hell climb. A backpack is probably a mistake unless you have a haul line for the most cramped pitch which is either P2 or P3.

3) In Selected Climb in North Carolina the route description breaks the route into 4 pitches.  I recommend skipping the second belay station and linking P2 & P3.

4) There are a couple overhangs that you have to pull on P2 but they rock because the hands are awesome and exposure makes you feel like a stud. If you don’t like overhangs (I don’t at all) don’t worry about these at all.

5) There are hands everywhere but most of the time they are above your head and a little behind you. This climbs requires a lot of awkward climbing but for the most part you feel secure because of the solid hands. Pitch 4 Maginot Line

Grivel North America Blowing Up

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Today the world’s financials markets blew up.  I should know because I had a front row seat.  Tomorrow may be worse but we’ll take it a day at a time.

Coincidentally another major company blew up recently, or more specifically threw in the towel.  Grivel North America is no more. (link) They cited this reason:

Grivel North America ceased distributing Grivel products on September 1st, 2008. We did our best over the last few years to keep the company alive but the flagging US economy and the Euro’s strength against the dollar prevented us from doing so.

While my wallet is hurting from the financials markets blowing up, my heart is hurting because Grivel is no more.  I really do love my Grivel G12 crampons.

CU Belay Glasses Review

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CU Belay Glasses

I recently had the opportunity to test a pair of CU belay glasses made by a German company called Power’n Play.  The general idea behind the belay glasses is to be able to watch the climber without craning your neck for extended periods.  Power’n Play did this using prisms that bend the light and allow you to see ‘up’ without looking ‘up’.  It is actually quite ingenious to use prisms because the image is not flipped like it is when you use a mirror.

I’ll be honest, at first I thought the CU belay glasses were a little gimmicky but Power’n Play wanted me to give them a review so with an open mind I took them to Shortoff Mountain to give them a go.

My feelings on the glasses are mixed.  These glasses are not toys or cheaply made.  When I first put them on I laughed out loud because the optics were so clean and crisp.  It was kind of cool to be able to see the rock face without craning my neck.  I was also very impressed by the construction of the glasses which is absolutely bomber and they can without a doubt stand up to the rigors of climbing.  I’ll give it to the Germans, they certainly know how to engineer some spectacular stuff.

I belayed my partner on the first pitch which gave me a good opportunity to try the glasses in action.  The field of view is such that they aren’t particularly helpful until the climber is maybe 30 feet off the deck.  After that I popped on the glasses and relaxed while comfortably watching my partner thrash & dangle his way up the line.  Because the optics are so clear and there is no mirroring effect, once you get used to them you forget you’re wearing them at all.

CU Belay Glasses About halfway through the pitch the sun came around corner and created some pretty nasty glare on the shiny metal frames.  It was really kind of aggravating because the sun was shining on my right side and it wouldn’t have been in my eyes if I wasn’t wearing the glasses.  On the plus side the glasses didn’t magnify the sun’s rays and blind me, so I guess I had that going for me.

Besides the glare, the only other downside that I noticed while wearing the CU belay glasses was that I had trouble determining how much slack was in the rope.  Normally I look at the droop in the rope to know whether I need to give or take.  While wearing the glasses I couldn’t do that.  I often found myself with too little or too much rope out which was bad for me and my partner.

After testing the CU belay glasses I would give these a strong recommendation but only in certain situations.  If you are going to be working a hard route on top rope for hours while your belay slave is holding your hang dogging bones between thrashes & dangles, I would highly recommend these glasses for the comfort of the belayer.  If you are going trad climbing where you will be climbing up and down and need your belayer to manage the rope as much as possible, then I would leave the glasses at home.

Pros:

  • Bomber construction
  • Sharp optics
  • Really comfortable
  • Perfect for gym climbers

Cons:

  • Glare from the sun
  • Trouble judging rope slack

Power’n Play