Whereabouts Unknown

The First Part

Was it naivete?  Or was it a blossoming sense of adventure, craving experience to validate its strength and vitality?  The early years of my third decade were filled with thigh burning explorations.  Between drudgerous factory shifts I would plunge into the backcountry, sometimes disappearing for half a day or more, and reemerge crisscrossed with angry red scratches, covered in sweat, flecks of bark, dirt and pine needles and wearing a big, stupid grin across my face.

Those were days before cellphones and home internet.  I fed my appetite for adventure by reading guidebooks, talking to more experienced locals, and from perusing topo maps looking for interesting combinations of isolines.  Even in my early twenties I had an eye for terrain.  I’d been consuming maps since my teen years, and I had a knack for it.  I could just see how the land would look. 

Most of the time, I was simply looking for arches, waterfalls, and other cool places to photograph.  And initially when I started rock climbing, I looked for new cliffs.  One of my early finds has recently taken up residence in my psyche again for reasons unknown.  Twenty-seven years gone and I’ve started down a path of rediscovery that so far has been rewarding.

To understand where I am now, you need to understand where I was then.  Before marriage and kids, I spent all my free time exploring the Red River Gorge.  I hiked many miles and spent countless hours solo hiking and scrambling around the hollers and ridges.  I answered to no one, and I decided the steps of my own path.  I scribbled in my journal and showed my family—and anyone else who would look—the photos I took with my ten dollar point and shoot camera.  Otherwise, there was little to mark my passage through the world.

I found a small cliff with some fun and beautiful face climbs.  I called it “Twisted Pine” for an old, gnarled pine tree that was dead apparently from a lightning strike.  Standing on top of that cliff I could look north, across the drainage behind it and see a nice, shield-shaped face.  One of my favorite climbs at that point was Big Country at Long Wall.  That face seemed to be similar, and eventually I decided to hike across and check it out.  Now, the base of Twisted Pine was a solid thirty-five-minute hike from the road on an obscure trail to nowhere.  This cliff was another twenty minutes back in the day.  It’s two miles on foot from the mere semblance of civilization. 

I found myself sweaty and beat standing at the base of a beautiful, blank slab curving into the sky.  The only weakness was a slightly widening finger-width crack that began six plus feet off the ground and ended about eighteen feet up at two small saucer-sized plates bracing the upper terminus of the crack.  It was filled with dirt and moss, there was no way to know how deep it was and if it would take gear or not.

I wanted to know what that upper face was like.  It looked like the climbing was easy, and it was exposed as the base of the crack began on an upper tier above fifteen-to-twenty-foot cliffs.  I knew it would be a hard sell to get any of my climbing friends to make the expedition out for a dirty crack.  I wanted it badly.

Around the same time, I had pondered how I could rope solo routes.  I had more free time than climbing partners.  When my mom had fussed about me hiking alone all the time my response had been: “If I waited until I had someone to go with me, I’d never get to go.”  My thinking about climbing was the same.  I worked odd shifts that provided ample free time during bankers’ hours but little on the weekends when the few climbers I knew were available. 

I’d been top rope soloing since the beginning of my climbing tenure, and I understood the basics of self-belaying on lead.  I didn’t have any fancy devices, but I knew that it was possible to self-belay using two prussik cords.

Soon after my initial visit to the cliff I was calling “Twisted Pine North” I returned with a pack laden with borrowed trad gear, aiders, and some prussik cord.  And a wire brush.

The only good potential anchor (for an upward pull) was a horizontal crack about six and a half feet off the ground.  I’m 5’9” so I had to reach over my head to place a small cam.  I clipped an etrier into it and stepped up, so I was eye level with the crack.  I was then able to build a proper anchor.  Once I had my bottom anchor, I was ready to begin excavation.

I reached up and scrubbed the dirt and moss out of the crack as far as I could reach.  All that crud rained down on me and soon was mingling with the sweat on my arms and torso and face.  I had it in my hair, eyes, mouth, and nose.  Once I had a section of crack cleaned out, I reached as high as I could and placed another piece.  Then I stepped up and repeated the process.  It was also apparent that the crack wasn’t deep enough to accept full fingers or hands as it widened near the top. 

My efforts were rewarded when I was able to wrap my grungy fingers around the nice plate edges at the end of the crack.  I pulled myself up and stepped out of the aiders onto the lower angle and well-featured face above.  From that point, I made my way up easier terrain, placing the occasional piece of gear and climbing the ladder-like holds until I reached a nice, grassy dish with a cluster of giant bonsai-like pines.  I collapsed there and enjoyed the pristine view in the meager shade provided. 

Once I had recovered somewhat, I built a small anchor and then surveyed the terrain above.  It looked like there were two potential paths to the summit.  The first was a nice and featured slab above the dish with no opportunities for protection or I could take a hard right and traverse across an unprotected hanging slab to a crack in a dihedral that led to a small pedestal just below the top of the cliff. 

For my first foray into roped soloing, I felt both options were the next level challenge.  After my initial assay on the wall, I needed a bit of a respite and maybe snacks.  I opted to bail off a minimalist gear anchor and return with reinforcements.

The cleaning ascent of the first pitch was undocumented in my climbing journal.  The actual full first ascent to the top of the wall took place in August of 1997.  I convinced my fifteen-year-old cousin and regular climbing partner Dustin to make the hike out with me.  I don’t remember what atrocious lies I told him, but I’m sure we had a discussion at the base of the climb in the vein of “we’re here, so we might as well do it,” and I was thankfully his physical superior at that point so he wouldn’t have introduced fisticuffs into the equation with us so far from the road. 

I repeated the process of gaining the top of the crack on aid minus the brushing, and with the benefit of a live belayer I romped expediently to the grassy dish which had become my new favorite spot on the planet.  I reeled in my little cousin fish.  If memory serves, I believe he attempted to climb the crack on top rope but struggled somewhat, and eventually just jugged the line until he could get his feet on the rock.  Once he was at the belay, we scoped out the two options.  After a short discussion we decided to err on the side of prophylaction.  I launched into the unprotected slab traverse aiming for the crack in the dihedral.  I was able to get in good gear all properly extended to reduce friction.  With my young heart racing in my chest from excitement, exposure, and Augustal humidity I found myself on the summit pedestal in short order.  A quick boulder problem mantel put me in the dirt where I lashed myself to some big tree and sucked in all the slack rope.  Up came Dustin and we high fived each other in celebration of our first honest-to-god Red River Gorge first ascent and a multi-pitch to boot!

We rappelled the route and hiked out noticeably less hydrated but obscenely more stoked than when we walked in.  Through my big stupid bug eating grin I proclaimed I’d come back soon and work on freeing that crack.  Dustin remained silent on that topic.

I called the route Mosaic for the interesting sandstone formation of the uppermost slab which is similar to the tile-like formations on the Shield at Long Wall and other slabs spread around the area.  A few years later when another route showed up in the guidebook with that name at the Gallery in Sore Heel Hollow, I was bummed, though our route was never published or much talked about, and I only had two over-exposed photos of Dustin tiptoeing across the slab traverse from the summit. 

Notice the CMI oval carabiners and hand-sewn 1" slings

I’m sure I tried to recruit my other climbing friends and partners through the early years of my climbing.  I’m not much a salesman obviously.  Maybe that’s a good thing, especially in this case.  I’ve thought abut the route from time to time over the years.  On a hike in the area about ten years ago I discovered a massive windstorm in the area had seriously affected the off-trail hiking making the approach more difficult and less appealing than it was to begin with.  Also, I had adult and parental responsibilities, and the usual myriad demands on my time and attention.  And so, interest in returning faded from my mind. 

Until February of this year.

 

To Be Continued…