North Carolina Day 1

Looking Glass, just outside Brevard, far western North Carolina. It's been on my hit list since I moved here. 500 foot granite dome, with funky features called "eyebrows" (see pic). I was hoping to climb here or up in West Virginia with Michelle this week, but she's been yucky ill. So i rang my friend John Webster, who happened to be free, yay! Let's go play!

We hit two multipitch routes, called Sundial and The Nose. Sundial we did the first two pitches, The Nose we took to the top.

Sundial: my intro to North Carolina climbing, and the need for a "running belay." Can we say, no pro and groundfall from 30 feet? I was dumb enough to volunteer to take the first pitch. Got two pieces in, fine, then a manky-ass 0.5 cam that would have done nothing but leave a mark on my face on its way out. With my feet a few feet above that, I looked up for my next placement - uh, oh. Hm. It's 10' up, I have manky pro, and I don't remember how to climb slab / friction with no holds. And on slab, downclimbing is.... not fun. Bad combo!! Fortunately for me there was a free solo-er in the neighborhood (peals of laughter from Michelle) who came up to visit. He confirmed that my 0.5 was useless, the tricam below that was bomber but still would have meant groundfall, and proceeded to *SOLO UP* and place a piece for me up 10 ahead of me. Rock on. I like charity, I got no pride. With that piece, I cruised the rest of the pitch. Happy.

P2 was lovely, bc Webster led it :) Kudos to him for a great lead. At the top of P2, we looked at P3 - an absolutely scrumptious 5.8 crack that I have now written on my "to do" list. However, we were tired, and daylight was waning, so we called it a day.