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saxfiend
Nov 13, 2005, 5:16 PM
Post #1 of 5
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Registered: Dec 31, 2004
Posts: 1208
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I have never seen a trip report on rc.com on Tallulah Gorge, so here goes. It may not be an exotic locale like some TRs I’ve read, but it’s a great destination and I had fun. Since I was a little boy, Tallulah Gorge has held a special fascination for me. My parents started taking me on camping trips to the Smokies as far back as I can remember; every time we made the drive from Atlanta through north Georgia, we would always make it a point to pull off U.S. 441 at the Tallulah Falls overlook so we could peer out over the gorge so deep you couldn’t see the bottom. We looked at the old faded pictures of the railroad that ran there and the great waterfalls that flowed before a hydroelectric dam made them vanish. Later, I was amazed by stories of Karl Wallenda’s tightwire walk across the gorge in 1970. The little tourist store had an exhibit of pictures from Wallenda’s feat, and I would feel a shiver as I tried to imagine what it must have been like up there with nothing between you and a fall of several hundred feet to the bottom of the gorge. It wasn’t until I started rock climbing that I found out people actually climb the high walls of Tallulah Gorge. Now, instead of Wallenda pictures, I was looking with fascination at photos in climbing guidebooks of people on routes with names like Mescaline Daydream and Primitive Paradox, with the roaring river far below in the background. I knew someday I had to try climbing this place that had such allure for me as a boy. Well, someday finally came. I’ve only been climbing a year, but I felt like I was ready. Still, Tallulah is not a casual climbing destination with lots of moderate climbs or even an easy approach. So I hooked up with Scott Perkins, a hard climber and guide from Atlanta, and scheduled my adventure – this would be my first multi-pitch experience. Compared to the places in Tennessee and Alabama where I’ve done most of my climbing, Tallulah Gorge is quick and easy to get to. Leaving Atlanta around 7:30 Friday morning, we pulled into the state park’s Interpretive Center around 9, got our climbing permits and were ready to rap into the gorge by about 9:30. (There’s a hiking trail into the gorge, but Scott, a veteran of Tallulah climbing, took us to a rap station that saved a lot of descent time.) http://saxfiend.home.mindspring.com/images/Scott.JPG My helpful and patient guide Scott Perkins, at the Primitive Paradox belay station. The weather was fabulous. I’d been concerned about forecasts of rain the night before, as the rangers won’t issue climbing permits if the rock is wet. But there was no rain, and we arrived on a completely clear morning with the temperature in the low 40s and set to go no higher than the mid-60s. This would be perfect; Tallulah Gorge is supposed to be unbearable when it’s hot outside. As we walked from the Interpretive Center to the rap station, we passed the rusted steel tower that had been used as the anchor on the north side for Karl Wallenda’s tightwire. The tower lay on its side; Scott said it was knocked down intentionally as people had been climbing on it. Still, it was kind of cool to find a relic from that exploit of more than 30 years ago. Clipped in with my daisy, I watched Scott disappear over the edge and checked the double ropes for slack, which would mean it was my turn. The rope stayed taut for a long time. When I finally threaded the ropes for my rappel, I felt a faint queasiness. I’m accustomed to rapping off single-pitch climbs of 70-80 feet, but this was going to be more than twice that. But when I stepped over the edge and started down, the familiar sensation of rapping took over and I settled in. I joined Scott, sorting out his rack, at the trail far below. http://saxfiend.home.mindspring.com/images/Tallulah_rap.JPG You wouldn't know from this smile that I had just gone through an off-route briar patch. We had talked beforehand about who was going to do what, and I was slated to lead the last two pitches of Digital Delight (5.8). Scott would lead the first pitch, a kind of off-width chimney I didn’t think I was ready for. (I have some confusion about the pitches on this route; the Dixie Cragger’s Atlas shows Digital Delight as a four-pitch climb, but we did it in three pitches. I need to get some clarification from Scott on this.) “Have you ever climbed on quartzite?” Scott asked me. Nope; everything I’ve climbed up to now has been nice southern sandstone, hard but nicely textured. Scott warned me that the Tallulah quartzite was often smoother and less featured than what I was used to. As I followed him on the first pitch, I could see what he was talking about. The difference was subtle, but definitely not as much friction as sandstone. Climbing to the belay station without much difficulty, I racked up and started up the second pitch. Leading at Tallulah Gorge – what a trip! http://saxfiend.home.mindspring.com/images/Digital1.JPG I lead what was supposed to be the final pitch of Digital Delight. Things went smoothly until I reached a placement for my third or fourth piece. I found a good place for a brown tricam, but didn’t have a particularly secure stance to free up my hands. I got the tricam placed, still on the biner with the other tricams, and clipped to the racking biner in case I peeled before I could get a sling clipped to the tricam. I kept having to switch handholds as my arms tired, but I was determined I wasn’t going to weight the rope! Finally, I got my sling clipped and extended, now all I had to do was get the biner with the other tricams unclipped and back on my rack. Still struggling with my stance and with two biners clipped to the same tricam, I made my first bonehead move of the day. “Rock!” I yelled, as a red tricam came free and fell from its biner. I watched as it landed in some brush about six feet to the right of Scott. I was mortified – I’ve never dropped anything while climbing before now. Shit! Well, at least it shouldn’t be too hard to find in that brush, I thought. I headed up and completed the pitch without further incident and belayed Scott up to the ledge. Scott critiqued my belay anchor – “It’s fine, but you should have used the rope to tie yourself off so you wouldn’t be jerked into the anchor if I fell.” He also gave me the bad news that the red tricam was nowhere to be found. Since we were using Scott’s rack, it was starting to look like I wasn’t going to have doubles in red tricams on my own rack much longer. Oh well, it could have been worse – I could have found myself buying him a new Camalot. The last pitch of Digital Delight traverses left from the belay ledge about 20 feet, then up to the top. While pro had been fairly easy to place on the previous pitch, I was having problems finding placements here. I moved halfway out the traverse and looked for a good slot. Cam – too shallow; nuts – too flaring; tricam – too small. I finally got something in and continued across, then up and out of sight (and hearing) of my partner. (Note to anyone planning a trip to Tallulah: the river has been tamed somewhat by the hydroelectric dam, but it’s still plenty noisy. You can’t count on hearing your partner from halfway up a pitch, much less from the belay station. So work out your rope signals ahead of time.) Scott had mentioned staying right of a roof, but which one? I reached a rest ledge covered with chunks of loose stone and looked up at a knife-edged blade of rock projecting out from the wall above me. There were roofs on either side. I had no idea how to proceed; there were no friendly chalk marks to delineate the route. I looked down to where the rope disappeared on its way back to Scott; I’d have better luck communicating with someone on the other side of the gorge at this point. I was totally on my own now. I started up to the right of the sharp arête, got in a nut and moved a few feet more to what seemed to be a dead end – a roof above me and blank faces to either side. Nowhere to go. I downclimbed back to the loose-rock ledge and thought some more. Finally, I started back up, this time to the left of the arête, but with ferocious rope drag due to the nut still in place on the other side. I got in a good cam and clipped, then downclimbed again with difficulty, got back up to the nut on the other side and cleaned it, then back down again. Maybe now I was finally on track. Or maybe not. Climbing past my cam placement, I came to a briar patch only Brer Rabbit could love. I knew at this point I had to be off route, but didn’t feel like I had much choice but to go on. So I pulled out my knife and gingerly hacked away enough of the briars to keep climbing without tearing myself to shreds, then started toward what I could see was the topout (or a topout). I got to the rim with no further problems. As I began belaying Scott from my anchor, I wondered what he must be thinking as he followed my bushwhack variation on Digital Delight. “I was pretty far off route, wasn’t I?” I said as Scott’s face appeared. He laughed. “Oh, you didn’t even do the pitch. Don’t you remember me saying to go right of the roof?” Before we rapped, he showed me end of the route from the real topout – how could I have missed that? “Don’t worry,” Scott said, “it’s probably not any harder than what you just did, but there’s some nice moves on the real pitch.” Much humbled by my bungled lead, I rapped down again for the next climb. My mood was lightened considerably, however, by the reappearance of the missing red tricam. From maybe a hundred feet up, it had come within about a foot of landing in one of its owner’s shoes. What a relief! Our next destination was Mescaline Daydream (5.8), a terrific three-star, two-pitch climb. “I think it’s the best route here under 5.10,” Scott said. We briefly discussed my leading this one (“do you want mileage or more lead experience?”). But after the briar patch climb I’d just completed, I decided I was happy to follow Scott, learning by example and getting in a lot more climbing. After all, who knows when I’ll get up here again? I’ve often wondered how people come up with the names for routes they put up. Some make perfect sense: Guzzler, a crack route at Lost Wall, has so many nice placements that it, well, guzzles pro. But Mescaline Daydream? Surely the FA wasn’t done while tripping. Scott laughed when I told him my thoughts. “Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure a lot of those guys were in altered states of one kind or another back then.” I watched as Scott moved effortlessly up the corner to a big roof, then work across to the left on an undercling crack and up over the roof. The crack looked tiny and I wondered if I had the finger strength to pull on it, but when I got there, I found the nice wide spots in the thin crack that I needed. I breezed through, cleaning pro as I went, and joined Scott at the belay, where I admired his anchor of two big hexes and a pink tricam, all solidly placed. I looked out over the gorge, taking in the fall colors that tourists would be driving up here to see in the next week or two, and hearing the rush of the river far below. This is what I came here for – great climbing in a beautiful setting! I could hear faint shouts from far across the gorge of what sounded like kids, and gave an answering whoop. I tried to pick out the overlook I had visited so many times growing up, but couldn’t find it. As Scott started up the second pitch, I leaned out to the right to watch his progress, but soon he was once again out of sight. The rope kept me in touch with what he was doing, as it went from a slow crawl to a quick spurt of upward movement, signaling a clip. Soon, I felt the rope go way slack, then make three jumps upward. Time to go off belay and climb. The last 20 or 30 feet of Mescaline Daydream goes up a beautiful layback corner. The holds are great, there’s good smearing on the walls and nice stances for placing (or in my case, cleaning) pro. I moved easily up the corner and to the bolted belay station. It wasn’t until I was near the top that I started to feel the drag of the second rope I was trailing (another new experience). What a satisfying climb! http://saxfiend.home.mindspring.com/images/Mescaline2.JPG Cleaning a cam on Mescaline Daydream. “Now, where we’re going down is a route called Flying Frog,” Scott told me as he set up the two-rope rappel. “Since the rope will be there anyway, you should try it on toprope. It’s a great route.” Flying Frog (5.10b/c) is another three-star route, a long sustained face climb over much of its length (the last 20 feet or so is a dihedral similar to Daydream). I was game to at least take a shot at it, so after a Gatorade break, I clipped into the middle of the rope (so Scott wouldn’t need to pass the knot) and started up. Going from hand cracks and horizontals to tiny crimpers and pinch holds took some mental adjustment. I had to really watch my footwork and body position, and ended up taking a fall at what Scott said was the crux (and another later in the climb). But the tiny holds had great texture, and with a lot of effort, I completed the route. I can’t imagine how you would lead Flying Frog, but it definitely deserves its three-star rating. One of the routes on my ticklist was Punk Wave (5.10a), yet another three-star route with three pitches. But at this point, I felt my energy fading. It was after 3 and we’d been climbing steadily for close to five hours. So we decided to end the day on Primitive Paradox (5.9), a two-star, two-pitch route. Since it was on my ticklist too, that worked out fine. Paradox follows a right-facing corner to a ledge, then traverses left to the belay station. It then continues up another corner, this one sort of overhung. The moves were noticeably harder than the 5.8 climbs I’d been up earlier, plus there was the fatigue factor, so I was breathing heavily by the time I reached the flat, dirty and relatively featureless topout of the second pitch and muscled my way up. I felt a little better to hear Scott had difficulty with the final moves too. “It was desperate,” he said. “I was brushing off dirt and grabbing bird feathers, trying to find a hold.” Though it was only 4:30 and full sun up on top, the light was starting to fade in the gorge. I took a last look at the view, got out my camera for a picture that couldn’t hope to capture the scene, then got set for the final rap of the day. http://saxfiend.home.mindspring.com/images/Paradox1.JPG A last look at the gorge from the top of Primitive Paradox. We packed our gear and started the hike out. The trail to the rim is a trail in sort of the same sense that the Big Dipper constellation is supposed to be a bear: you’ve got to use your imagination. The faint path went through underbrush and under fallen tree trunks, then through a section that was essentially a 5.5 free solo. Finally, the trail became more noticeable and we were back at the parking lot. As we loaded the car, a man whose voice reminded me of Floyd the Barber on the Andy Griffith Show came up and asked us how the rappelling was. I allowed myself an inward smile and told him we’d had a great time. He said he and his son had been watching us earlier from the overlook on the other side of the gorge. I wondered if they were the source of the youthful voice I heard earlier, but didn’t bother to ask. The man said he had taken some pictures, so I happily gave him my email address to send them. Worn out but highly satisfied, I settled back for the ride home to Atlanta. I was already looking forward to my next trip to Tallulah Gorge -- to get Digital Delight right, to follow someone on Punk Wave and maybe even to lead Mescaline Daydream. But for now, I was thoroughly happy – I had challenged myself with multi-pitch climbing that was above my usual level, and thanks to my very experienced partner, didn’t get in over my head.
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reno
Nov 13, 2005, 5:36 PM
Post #2 of 5
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Registered: Oct 30, 2001
Posts: 18283
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Nice TR... I climbed at TG once, and did the same two routes (Mescaline Daydream and Digital Delight) as you did. Took my first lead fall there, too... onto a 0.5 WC Friend. Good stuff.
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adoubleyou
Nov 14, 2005, 9:38 AM
Post #3 of 5
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Registered: Aug 9, 2004
Posts: 89
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I really enjoyed your trip report, wish I could have been there as well. What an awesome place. I've never seen it in person, but looked at pictures many times. It is definitely on my list, so plan me in next time you go :-) It sounds like you did some great climbing there, what a way to start with multi pitch!! Congrats on your leads. Now you make wanna learn that as well .... How come the ACC never went there? It's so close to ATL. Anyway, see ya, my friend
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bnot
Nov 14, 2005, 2:12 PM
Post #4 of 5
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Registered: Aug 25, 2005
Posts: 3
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thanks for the excellent report. That's quite the way to start building your multi-pitch trad foundation. I look forward to getting out with you soon! ~ B
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saxfiend
Nov 15, 2005, 11:52 AM
Post #5 of 5
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Registered: Dec 31, 2004
Posts: 1208
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In reply to: Nice TR... I climbed at TG once, and did the same two routes (Mescaline Daydream and Digital Delight) as you did. Took my first lead fall there, too... onto a 0.5 WC Friend. Good stuff. When you did Digital Delight, did you do three or four pitches? I've since learned from Scott that we started on P2:
In reply to: The 1st "pitch" of Digital Delight is a bit of a mystery. Apparently P1 starts from the lower trail, the one we walked along when we went over to Primitive Paradox, but is hard to figure out exactly where it is and it would only be about 20 to 25 feet of scrambling. From that, it sounds like we didn't miss much. :) JL
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