GroupWBench

We went up to Moore’s Wall for a day fo climbing yesterday. Somehow, we managed to not have an epic. I added an hour to the trip up by missing the exit for Winston – that was a bummer. Once we got in to the cliffs, it was really hard to orient ourselves.

We brought the new guidebook and have once again confirmed that Lambert and Shull really blew it with their "Selected Climbs in North Carolina". There are directions based on things like ‘the dead tree across the path’. I guess they never thought that any other trees would fall. There are no area maps to help orient climbers. I’m digging the old book out and forgetting theirs.

We found what I thought was Zoo View and climbed the first little pitch there to just get on the rock and orient ourselves. I managed to go around the hard way and turn a 5.5 scramble into a 5.6 with a 5.9 move or two. I confirmed where we were, though, and Ivy climbed up that pitch in far better time and style than I did – even considering she had to follow me around the hard way.

We then went to the infamous dead tree and started up what we thought would be another easy 5.6 climb. By the time I got to the belay, i knew we were on a harder climb – judging from the crappy guide book, this was a little 5.9. Oh well, we got up and back ok and had fun. We’ll know what we are getting on next time.

The picture on the top is a shot of the first climb. The one on the bottom is a snake, or more likely, a snakeskin we saw sticking out of the rock. Very neat.