Lake Jocassee - deep water soloing!

One of the most fun forms of climbing is deep water soloing, where you ascend a rock face directly out of a body of water, with no rope, no nothing. You climb as far as you wish, then POP! Sploosh!!

Until this past weekend, my favorite place to do this had been Summerville Lake in West Virginia, outside of the New River Gorge. Unfortunately soloing has been outlawed there. The last I heard, poaching climbing there was subject to a $1000 fine and a few days in jail. Serious bummer :(

So when my friend Bill told me about a 200' granite cliffline on the shores of Lake Jocassee, South Carolina, with a clean fall (aka deep water soloing) I was intrigued.

Access is by boat only (whee!!!! time to use Sunshine!) We took two kayaks and a canoe, four people, and one black dog. Her Highness got a new life preserver specifically for the occasion.














The camping spot was primo, right next to the cliffline up on a bluff with a perfect view of sunset over the lake.


















Soloing was fun - we did a little on Saturday, then more on Sunday. The rock quality was good. Much better than expected. Blocky incut granite, warmed by the sun, plenty of moderate climbing and traversing. Webster was the gutsy one of us, he climbed up about 30' and jumped, repeatedly :) I did a lot of climbing around, but downclimbed to about 10-15' to jump. (Some of you will recall that as a child, I couldn't muster the courage to go off the high dive in Kokomo except just once!) Hit the play button for a sample:



Note that the cliff bands are two colors, the water level is still pretty low due to the drought here in the South. That's about 25 feet. Yeah, wow.

What a fun weekend. It was a calculated risk by me, since I had final exams the four days following our trip. But everything turned out fine, I even rocked an A on PT (didn't expect that!!)

I would love to return to this place, and i'm sure at some point I will. I wish I had found it two summers ago. But for now, the weather is finally turning - it's getting too cold to spend a day swimming.

Besides, there are so many other places I need to explore before I leave Georgia. Like, for instance, Cumberland Island, which is on the southeast Georgia coast. And, on the way, Savannah......

Marietta is almost out of gas.

Finals this week yet again. Which means that I am procrastinating, reading the CNN news on the web. One of the stories featured something about a severe gas shortage in the southeast, and the city featured was........... Marietta, Georgia??

I had 1/4 of a tank, which according to my aunt and my late grandfather means it was past time to feed my truck. I also had to pick up a cartridge for my printer. So, off i went - to see what this was all about.

On my short drive (entire loop, less than seven miles) I saw eleven gas stations that were completely out of gas - including the QT across from my subdivision. I found one open Shell station and filled my tank, and I wonder if I would have been able to do that later this afternoon.

It is, of course, an interesting note that I have access to so many gas stations per square mile around here. But I'll get back to that.

No gas? No big prob for me, I have a bike to get to and from school and enough gas to get to and from work on Friday, if replenishment does not arrive. But it makes you think..... especially in the context of a potential looming depression / financial collapse of the US economy:

How is it, exactly, that we have become so very accustomed to convenience that when it is gone, we are lost? Is this what being an American is all about? In short, yes.

As for the question of whether we are dependent on foreign oil: I wonder how many people will not make it home this evening, or not be able to finish jobs that require trucks or other gas-eating transportation. I wonder if the easy availability of gas, will in fact be the nail in the coffin - why would we try to live without it, when it is so easily available?

So, I had to visit three places to pick up a printer cartridge. Microcenter was out of the model I needed, and Office Cheapo was anything but. I mean, why pay $80 for a replacement laser cartridge, when you can buy a new color printer for $28 at WalMart?

I think that pretty much embodies the problem as I see it. Me, living on student loans, driving an SUV and feeding it $4 per gallon gas, visiting three dealers of luxuries to buy an item on credit, that I want but strictly speaking don't need. Guilty as charged.

Walking through WalMart, I looked around me at all of the products on the shelves and I felt like an alien - and thought about how things were when I was a kid, how things were for my parents' generation growing up, and how things were for my grandparents. America = consumerism, and this consumerism is not counterbalanced with sufficient production, as evidenced by the state of the economy. I think Ayn Rand wrote a book about this............

Then I come home, and look around. All of my toys, all of my furniture, all of my "stuff" that I'm so not looking forward to packing up to move. How did I end up with this much? By and large, from student loans, and from the generosity of my family. And from easy availability, in a consumerist society that allows those who have not produced, to consume.

Sure as crap I need to get the hell out of school and to start producing something. Unfortunately, what I will produce is an intangible product - and a luxury, at that. In times of economic woe, the luxuries go first... If we do indeed enter into a depression, I think I am going to have a pretty hard time starting up a practice.

Good thing I have a secure job at REI to fall back on. Because sometimes I worry about the practical value of the two doctoral degrees I will soon possess.

Area 51 (the Georgia one)

Whew. I'm tired. Boards part 3 was yesterday morning, I slept most of yesterday afternoon (instead of going out to party, would you believe??). So this morning when I woke up I was feeling pretty OK. My poor Siren has not been out to play since the first day of summer, bc it is just too damned hot in Georgia to ride in the summer, unless you are on the trail at 7am, and I'm just not there. you know how i feel about mornings!

It is now mid-September in Georgia, and it's still upper 80s plus humidity. Ugh. Feel free to remind me of this next winter when I am freezing my arse off...

I got to the trailhead at about 1030. My friend Wale is trying to convince me to race with the Life U team at Dirty Spokes in a month, and i've been doing a lot of climbing lately but no biking, so i figured i'd better see if i can put in some miles, right? Well, I did, and I'll tell you, it hurt. I was in granny gear for about the last 2 miles of it. I seem to remember Doug and I predicting that the Area 51 trail would really hurt in the opposite direction? (to minimize erosion, the right-of-way direction changes daily on trails at Blanket's Creek) Oh. Yeah. Can we say, mild heat exhaustion? I nearly threw up, several times. When I got to the car, I flopped on my back and just stared at the sky. And when I tried to get up, i almost passed out. Again with, life in the south... I'm thinking i might be sore tomorrow. And I'm thinking I need to drink a lot of water for the rest of today. All in all.... what an awesome day!!!!!!!! It was good to be out again. I will look forward to hitting the trails again when the temps drop about ten degrees or so.

In other news, Moose is doing much better - still skinny, but i think she is putting on some weight, which bodes well. She still can't make it up the stairs, so I have been sleeping on the couch for a month. It's getting old. Thank goodness my chiropractor fixes the damage :)

Lab finals this week, then finals next week. I swear this program is just one exam after another. I'm so over it.

Well, one more part of Boards to go: the licensing exam. That will be in mid-November. To my surprise, I have not been assigned to take the test here in Georgia - instead, I have to fly to San Francisco to test at Life University West. Aunt C says she will fly up to SF to visit, since it's only an hour for her and she can fly first class out of Burbank :)

Funny, I swore i'd get some cleaning done this weekend. Oh well. Such is life. I guess I needed the downtime.