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......