Trip #2 Update #1

Update for first the two weeks of my second trip to Chattanooga!

Forgot to mention in my last update that I happened to run into Jimmy, Nalle and crew at a Waffle House at 3 am, which was an experience haha.

I arrived down at the good ol’ Walmart down in Chattanooga on Wednesday night! On my first day of climbing (Thursday) I drove over to Little Rock City (LRC) to get back in the swing of climbing in the south. I didn’t send anything new but did some reruns on some of my faves. I ran into some friends and messed around a bit on a few harder things until my skin hurt too much due to climbing almost all plastic for the month previously.

On Friday I did something no one would ever believe. I went sport climbing! Yeah I know, I must have taken a hit to the head. A guy I knew from my first trip texted me and asked if I wanted to sport climb and, although a little hesitant at first, eventually said yes. The next day I drove to the top of Lookout mountain and met up with him. We walked down one of the sides and took a bit of a sketchy hike along a cliff side until we got to crag. He started off on some route to warm up and made it look fairly easy. We then switched off and I headed up the route, under the impression that this was somewhere in the 5.8 range (In retrospect, I don’t know why I thought it was 5.8, that was the grade in my head when I pulled on for some reason). After pulling a pretty difficult roof onto some small crimps, it dawned on me that maybe this was not 5.8. I yelled down my inquiry and he responded with “5.8? What you talking about, this is 12a hahaha”. Fun route, but a lot harder than I thought it was going to be!

Our next route was a climb called “Karma” 5.13a, also his current project. I belayed him up and he cruised it up to the last hardish move and then barely lost his balance and whiped down. After a bit of a break, he went back up again and sent! Shortly after his friend Billy arrived, who climbs some pretty hard stuff (14a ish). I then went up and tried Karma. With a few takes I made it up most of the climb (which was a roof) and then pulled onto the headwall. I did the first bolt or 2 of the headwall and then decided it was time to lower off. I then watched Billy work on his proj, an unrepeated route right next to Karma.

Karma 

Saturday was a rainy day so I spent it climbing at the Tennessee Bouldering Authority (TBA). I met a couple dudes there who were pretty psyched on hitting up some of the same areas as me so I exchanged numbers with them for future sessions. Slept at the Crash Pad that night for a shower and to cook some food.

A day or two later I went over to LRC with these dudes to try some new stuff and get on whatever looked cool. We hopped around a bit, first trying Heroin (the climb, not the hard drug lol) then Instinct and Biggie Shorty. As we were leaving the back 9 area, we went under this cool roof none of us had tried before. One guy flashed it, then the other guy and I both did it second go. We agreed it felt about v5ish. Upon looking later, I found it it’s a climb called “Ugly Roof” and goes at v8. Not sure what happened there but I’ll take a 2nd go v8 I suppose.

As we moved towards the front I ran into Jon Plesser! A friend of mine from up in Boston who I knew was coming down to Chattanooga. I hung out with him for the end of the day while he tired Celestial Mechanics.

The next day I met up with Jon and his dad (Ronen) again at LRC. We walked in and warmed up and then headed back the the Mario boulder so Ronen and I could try and complete some projects. I had just tried “Red House Extension” (v8) for the first time the day before with no beta and had no idea what I was doing, but this time I had beta that I was pretty sure would work. Ronen was going to try and do the super classic “Mario”. After a bit of work and finicking around, we both sent our climbs back to back! Good start to the day. We then walked to the way back and tried some of the same stuff I tried before (Heroin, Instinct etc.)

Pulling hard on Red House Extension!

On the way out we stopped in the Sternum area so I could try and do “Grimace”. I pulled on twice and it felt awful that day so I turned around to the boulder right next to it to try “Face in the crowd” for the first time. Jon gave me some beta and I pulled on for my first go. I did the first bit of crimps and then went for the pinch to the right and missed most of it but managed to stick it with just my thumb and pinky finger! I had so much adrenaline that after I bumped my hand into the correct position I then launched for the wrong hold and fell off :(, blowing my near flash. After several more tries and getting my psych up again, I sent the boulder anyway.

Afterwards I drove over to Jon’s Airbnb and met his friend Tara, who has a sprained ankle from falling of Grimace, and others. I ended up eating dinner there and spending the night which was great! The next day we all went to the Aquarium in Chattanooga, which is super super cool if you haven’t been there. The river side part of it is awesome.

The next day we went back to LRC and tired a few new climbs. I don’t quite remember all of them but I worked “Bosley Traverse” a bit and discovered the topout was the most manky, sketchy, mossy thing ever. It wouldn’t be so bad it looks like almost no one tops this thing, there was moss and lichen everywhere.

Friday was our first Rocktown day. Jon had his sights set on “The Orb” and “Golden Harvest”, two super classic boulders, Golden Harvest being one of the most beautiful boulders I’ve ever seen (and also one of the most complicated and hardest). I climbed around a bit and worked them with him, although not being able to right heel definitely makes things harder on the orb. Very quickly Jon found a short guy beta for Golden Harvest and was getting close to the top in a short time! He called it quits after a bit though and we moved on. I did Golden Shower a few times because it’s the best climb ever.  

Friday night we went and ate at this pretty bomb mexican place! Afterwards we went to Target to pick up some stuff and discovered they had pink T-shirts that all said “Squad Goals”, all in youth sizes. Naturally we had to buy them. Four more people came into the fray of our Airbnb later on and we all pilled up on the pullout sofas to cram some sleep in.

Saturday was a rainy day so some of us went and climbed at the TBA to get the fingers moving. Had a pretty fun session pulling on plastic and making up some boulders on the moon board! Afterwards we went back to the house to make some dinner and chill out. If I remember correctly, it was this night we went out and looked for spot lights at Lowes and Home Depot but could only find those finicky hand held ones.

Sunday we went to Rocktown! Arguably my favorite climbing area in the south or really anywhere so I was pretty psyched. We started off in the Orb area so I got to re due all the classic easy stuff there while others got to try them for the first time. Jon got the Orb in just a few goes and Patrick worked the it a bit while I attempted to try the moves but with the lack of right heels (Hamstring injury) it was pretty tough. Tara made up a different exit for the orb, bypassing the tougher second half. I then went off to try a cool, toe hooky boulder called “Brown Eye Left”. After a bit of work I got frustrated after falling repeatedly on the same move so I went and did some easy highballs near by. I also did one of my favorite v2s ever “Paint can”. These turned out to be super rad and got my psych up again!

We then headed all the way back to the Hueco Simulator area to try “Nose Candy” and “Sherman Photo Roof”. Patrick and I both got Nose Candy in a few goes and then switched over to Sherman. Sherman Photo roof ended up being really really hard (found out later we had the wrong beta) so we just flailed around a bit and then decided to take some pics of the squad with our Squad Goals T-shirts. Shortly after we said goodbye to part of the crew

Squad GOALS

After this nonsense, it was time for Jon to try and send the 26 ½ start super classic Golden Harvest. The sun was starting to set so we headed over and got out the lights. On Jon’s first go he made the climb look like a joke until the last left hand throw where he barely missed the crimp. After several more attempts, he put it all together and sent! Freaking awesome. I did a run up Golden Showers afterwards just so I could do it at night. Twas a good day at Rocktown.

Golden Shower at night

Monday we went back to LRC to clean up some boulders we had been trying earlier. I didn’t manage to send anything new but Patrick did Grimace, Jon almost finished his LRC v7 circuit with sends of Celestial Mechanics and Heroin, and Tara redid Face in the Crowd with a messed up foot! After a bit we said goodbye to those remaining who had come on Friday and now we were back to four of us. As night fell we went to the front area to try “I think I can”, a heinously crimpy vert problem. Jon and I went up to try first and could barely pull off the ground. Tara then went up and made the crimps look like jugs, basically campusing the first move after a few goes. After a few more goes she made it most of the way up the climb but launched for the wrong crimp and popped off. After a bit more she decided her foot hurt too much and we left to go get some pizza.

Tuesday we weighed what area we wanted to go to because we knew it was going to rain at some point. We decided to go to Cumberland to get on a couple of the classics there. Jon decided it would be a wise idea to just plug it into the GPS and we ended up driving to the same location I had gone on a hike months before. I knew as we arrived that this was the wrong place and when I pulled up my car next to Tara’s, we had the same conclusion. Turns out we were about 45 minutes from where we actually wanted to be. Once again we were faced with whether or not it was worth driving all the way to Cumberland. I made the suggestion to check out this lookout that I knew was nearby and we decided to go there before heading to the boulders to make this detour not a complete waste of time. On the way to the lookout we passed a fire tower and I immediately knew we had to go check it out. After a bit of looking around we discovered that it was open for anyone to go up into, so we climbed up and checked it out!

Fire Tower!

Eventually we made it to Cumberland and we made our way quickly down to “7/11”, a fun crimpy roof climb with a v7 stand. It took me a while to figure out a beta that worked for me and I ended up campusing most of the climb in the end. Our next problem was a v5/6 called “Riverside”. Jon put it together in probably 5-10 goes and then I hopped on to check it out. First go I made it up the last move and promptly chickened out on the throw to the lip. I went up again and did the same thing. After a few tries I actually started going for the move and got closer and closer with each go. About 10 tries in or so it started to rain, just drizzling at first and then picked up a bit. I think a combination of the rain and that I was 6 days on was making this pretty hard and I was growing increasingly frustrated. Multiple times I grabbed the lip and slid off. After many attempts I finally stuck the lip and was ecstatic! I sat atop the boulder for a sec, a bit dazed and relieved to be finished with it. We were all pretty hungry so we found this classic southern buffet place and ate as much as we could.

Action shot!

Finally sent!

Wednesday I had to say goodbye and go back to life at Walmart. I drove with Jon, Tara and Ronen to Nashville where Jon’s flight back to Boston was leaving from. We went and got some southern barbecue and checked out a pretty sweet antique guitar store, where they only had one left handed guitar. After the guitars, it was time to really say goodbye and we all headed to the airport and went our separate ways, Tara and Ronen going back to North Carolina. Back to car sleeping for me!

Thursday was Rocktown for me! I ran into Alex from Metrorock and he got me on some super classic stuff I had never tried before. I then went and threw myself at some little cave climb I didn’t know the name of (Later found out its a v6 called skin graph) and wrecked me skin a bit on the sharp crimps.

Friday I needed a day to let me skin recover before what looked like a really good weekend for climbing. I went to Cloudland state park and took a really nice 5 mile hike along a ridge with fantastic views. It was about 75 degrees and the sun was shining, it was very relaxing. I sat atop one of the ridges for awhile and just thought about stuff for a couple hours, nice reset.

Saturday was great! Back to Rocktown and onto some classics I had never tried before. I climbed the amazing beautiful highball “Makin Waves”, an overhung jug haul about 25 feet tall. Then I did “Standard Deviation” on the comet boulder, a great v5 with some of the most perfect iron oxide rails you’ve ever seen. Afterwards I did “Helicopter” (v6) in a few goes. I stupidly tried to campus the first move my first few tries and then tried it with the smear foot and immediately sent it. I then worked “Too many cooks in the kitchen”, a really unique overhung v9, and could do all the moves except the crux. I finished off the day with a lengthy talk about the good old days of climbing with some legendary old dudes I met.

Sunday I think my head was off a little bit and I didn’t climb as well as I had the day previously. I ended up throwing myself at “Lab Rats” for about 2 or 3 hours and I thought it was just going to be a warm up. I eventually sent it with some try hard but I was pretty gassed by then and couldn’t pull hard moves on climbs after that.

Monday (Today) I woke up to the sound of rain on my car at the Walmart near Rocktown and decided it should probably be a gym day. Had a fun session at the TBA!

Well that’s where I am now! This is by far my longest update yet and it took me multiple days to write this all up. I hope it was a nice read!

Last Update for trip #1

Hello!

Due to laziness I never wrote up about my last couple weeks in Chattanooga from my first trip so here goes! For anyone who actually cares to read all of this.

Upon returning to Chattanooga after Christmas I headed to Rocktown to experiment to see how bad my hamstring injury was. Turned out to hurt doing any heel hooks or toeing in too hard so I avoided any climbs where I needed to do that. Had fun times climbing around and having a mini photo shoot while pretending to climb Golden Harvest.

On New Year's eve I wasn’t sure what I was going to do until about 5 PM when I asked a friend what he was up to and he invited me to a party full of climbers. It turned out to be pretty nuts with 150+ people in this one guys house with lots of wax bombs and fireworks! After a few hours Jimmy Webb brought in Nalle Hukkataival and we all got to grill Nalle about Burden of Dreams.

I needed to take a day off due to fingers hurtin’ but I wasn’t sure what to do. I sat around for a little while and got super bored, so I decided to drive around and see what I could see. Naturally after driving around for a bit I found a trail head and thought it would be a nice idea to take a short hike. If you’ve read any of my other updates then you know I can never successfully take a short hike. This was an area I had been to before so I figured I knew my way around well enough. I strapped on my pack and headed out into the woods!

Snow started to fall and it was chilly but that didn’t really bother me. It started off okay with just some casual hills and I stumbled upon some cool historical museum thing that had heating! I circled around and back the other way and ended up coming to a fork in the trail that I had been to before. The last time I went right and it brought me straight back to the parking lot so I wanted to take a left this time for a new adventure. This trail brought me farther down the mountain to this super touristy area called Ruby Falls. Although I was directly below the parking lot, there was no direct trail up so I either had to backtrack all the way to the fork (pretty far) or go up the road. I didn’t know how far up the road it was and I didn’t want to get hit by a car so I backtracked. It took freakin forever to get to the parking lot! On my way down the road, I discovered that the place I parked was only a minute or 2 of a walk on the road above Ruby Falls :(.

I spent a couple days bouldering in Horse Pens 40 in Alabama. The first day it was about 65 degrees and wet, so that made climbing heinous slopers quite hard. I managed to do a few moderates with quite a bit of difficulty. The next day was a bit colder so I hopped on some of the problems I had tried before and sent Bumboy (v3)! Never have I been prouder to climb a v3 lol.  World's hardest v3, especially when it’s 65 degrees.

My skin was pretty bad after Horse Pens so I drove back to Chattanooga and took a day to just work out and then a day to completely rest. The weather turned out to be quite cold this next weekend (20-25 high) with some strong winds and it gave me second thoughts at first, but I drove down to the Walmart near Horse Pens anyway. The night ended up being about 10 degrees and I had to wear 4 hoods and 2 pair of pants in my 0 degree sleeping bag to not totally freeze. When I woke up, my car was covered in frost, including the center console above the front 2 seats. Psych was low so I bought some popcorn chicken at Walmart to psych myself up!.

     Frosty!       

Here I am, happy that I survived the cold night.

How to get psyched!

I then drove over to Horse Pens and put on all my layers, grabbed some hand warmers and set out for the boulders! Once I got into the warms ups I ran into all the locals who like to climb when the cold scares off the weaklings. After I got moving around I actually really enjoyed it! There were a few climbs that felt impossible a few days before and now they felt like jug hauls. Got all the moves on Five-0 (v9) without too much trouble but couldn’t manage to link all the moves together. The boulder starts low off to the right on a sloper and a crimp > traverses along a sloping lip with a lower crimp rail > left heel hook > fancy hand switch around moves on awful slopers and one crimp > big full-extension move out to a crimp to the right > slap hands up into a compression on bad slopers/edges > a few really really hard compression moves > get feet up really high and do big move to jug to top out. Did a few other moderates too.

I went back to Chattanooga and climbed some more at the TBA, did some core workouts, and some other stuff to make me feel like I was in shape. I spent my last couple days at LRC, trying some climbs that I couldn’t get before and some knew stuff too. I did “The Wave” and a few others of less note. I tried Grimace (v8) for the first time and got all the moves first try (including the bit sketchy top out), except for one. I fell on that one move several times and eventually got frustrated and moved on to some other boulders. I went to the way way back part of LRC and flashed some really cool crimpy traverse v5 I don’t remember the name of. I was bleeding sufficiently out of my tips by the end of this day so it seemed like a good time to head home to catch up with family and friends!

That wraps up my first trip to Chattanooga! I’m writing this about a month after it all happened while I’m on my second trip so I may have forgotten some of the details. I’ll try and write some more updates for my current trip! Thanks for reading yo.

Bonus material!

Selfie by "The Flow" Horse Pens.

Panorama at Horse Pens

Videos!

Here's a couple videos of some cool boulders at Rocktown! Not sure what they are named or what the grades are but they were loads of fun.

First one is a bit crimpy. Better quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXM0UP12vvM




Second one is a bit more powerful. Better quality: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAf5-UplneI

Update #2

MERRY CHRISTMAS/CHRISTMAS EVE! (And Hanukkah, Kwanzaa etc.) 

Update #2 for my grand adventure, this one a bit more detailed than the last. If you actually read all of this, I’ll love you forever. 

A couple things from last week I forgot. I’ve met some really interesting people thus far, one of which was this homeless guy I talked to for about 45 minutes the other day (I’m not the homeless guy here haha). He had some pretty interesting stuff to say and it was great to listen to his stories. I also met this other dude who had all these cool facial tattoos and he told me about all the Ironman triathlons that he’s done and how he’s currently planning his second bike across the country.

Today I drove over 600 miles up to D.C. to visit my dad for a couple days for Christmas. I’ll probably be on my way back to Chatt by Monday to continue climbing and whatnot.

Starting from where I left off on the previous update, last Sunday was a rainy one down in Tennessee so I spent it at the gym bouldering around and hangboarding/campus boarding. While there I achieved the amazing. After a few hours of climbing/training, I remembered this challenge that a friend of mine gave me a couple months ago. The goal was to do more than 3 pull ups on the worst slopers on the Beastmaker 2000 (a type of wooden hangboard for those who don’t know). I hadn’t tried it in a while but last time I gave it a shot, I couldn’t even do a full pull up and down. This time I went at it with a more thoughtful approach and after a few tries I did 4 pull ups!!! I got excited though, and lost my focus and dropped off. I’ll have to try again and see how many I can actually do.

On Sunday night I was hanging around at a hostel and was planning on going to bed early but a girl I met talked me into going to a concert for a band that I had never even heard of. Turned out to be pretty rad! Not quite sure what genre the bands were but somewhere around hard rock/metal.

Monday I took a hike that may have been more adventurous than I had planned on. After picking out a seeming well traveled trail on a website I found, I drove over to the trail-head to do a cool 10- mile loop. Immediately upon entering the trail, it was pretty clear that this was not a well traveled route, and needed some serious maintenance. It was kind of amazing actually, maybe I’m spoiled by the well established trails of the northeast, but this thing looked like 5 people had ever been on it and there were downed trees crisscrossing the trail all over the place. It was okay at first, but after a few miles, the trail thinned out and I somehow ended up in the middle of a plateau with the trail nowhere in sight. It was sub freezing temps and I hadn’t seen anyone else so far, so I was a little nervous about being in the middle of the woods with no idea of where to go. I ended up bushwhacking down hill to a river to see if the trail was there, it was not. I then went back up the hill (which took a good amount of time) to where I had started, and then went up the other direction. Naturally after going up for like 2 minutes, I met up with the trail again.

Further down, the trail intersected with a logging road with no clear indication of whether to go left or right. I chose left first and walked for a long while but it never met back up with the trail, so I went back to where I had came from, and went the other way. Once again it met up with the trail after 2-3 minutes of walking, lol. I continued the rest of the beautiful 10 miles and made it successfully back to my car without further incident (Although I did find some nice gloves on the ground and actually saw one other human being!)

On Tuesday I checked out Little Rock City (Stone Fort) for the first time. This place is legendary. You park your car, pay for a pass ($9) and then walk 2 seconds to reach hundreds of boulder problems all right next to each other. I didn’t have anyone to go with that day or a guide book, so I just hopped around and climbed with people I met. The quality of the rock is so, so good and all of the boulders I tried, from super lowballs with heinous mantel top outs (like “The Fish Market” v4) to super tall highballs, were super fun climbs.

Wednesday I had planned to go back to LRC but I had a lazy morning so I went over to Mountainbrook Boulders. I discovered this super cool lowball that took me awhile to figure out beta on, but eventually worked with the fanciest footwork I’ve ever made up on my own. This is all done with the body horizontally. Starts with a right heel hook and both hands on big crimps, do a big left hand throw to positive crimp, move heel up 6 inches or so, match hands then cross right over left to mediocre pinch, toe hook left foot below right heel then take heel out and bring it up to waist level (changing to a toe), toe in super super hard and take the left toe hook out (hardest part of the whole climb), bump hands along a beautiful iron oxide crimp rail, bring super high right foot and do the biggest lock off ever to a fat jug, top out is a joke. Someone walking by said it was v7 but I don’t know the name of the climb.

I also tried a super classic there called Osiris (v10). I think I need to grow like 6 inches before I can do the boulder. All of the moves felt almost possible, but I kept falling short of the holds by an inch or 2.

After climbing at Mountainbrook, I went over to the TBA do a gym session. At first I just felt tired since I had already climbed about 5 hours but nothing was out of the ordinary. Then as I was trying a heel hook intensive climb, I felt a pull in my hamstring and I popped off the wall. Anyway I think I tweaked my hamstring a bit. Not sure how bad it is but I’m avoiding right heels for now.

Thursday I didn’t climb outside due to fear of how bad my hamstring was, so I just walked around a bit downtown and found a park to read a book in (it was a super nice day, 60-65 degrees Fahrenheit). I got antsy though and went to the TBA again to campus some boulders a bit and hangboard. I went back to the Hostel that night to hang out and play some card games with some friends I ran into at the TBA.

On Friday I went back to LRC. I was climbing pretty crappy due to (I think) being a few hard days on, having actually 0 skin on my tips, my fear of my hamstring, and just general mindset. The climbing was still world class stuff, I was just getting frustrated over being rejected off several climbs I know I could do. I redeemed myself a bit though by doing “Shotgun”, a super classic balancey boulder with slopey pockets and bad feet. The top out is a little sketchy too, with just a really slopey lip and high feet with a landing that’s a rock sticking out.

That night I went out to get Thai food with some fellow pebble wrestlers and played some more cards.

Anyway, I am now in Washington D.C. for a couple days, till next time all of ya’ll in the world of facebook!

Wow I can’t believe I just wrote this all down in less than an hour. Pretty sure this is more than I collectively wrote in my time in high school. If you actually read this far, you are a true dude.
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Here’s a picture at the crib (Walmart) where my neck looks weirdly long.

Mannequin Challenge!

Here's an awesome Mannequin Challenge I did with some friends at Rocktown!

https://vimeo.com/196036451

Update #1

Now that I've been down in Chattanooga for about 10 days, I figured I'd post a little update for anyone who cares.
So far I've been sleeping in my car at neighborhood Walmarts and campsites and climbing lots of rocks (+plastic)!

First area I visited was the Mountainbrook boulders, a small but super cool area right outside of Chatt. Had a great time just climbing around and trying out whatever looked fun.

On Monday this week, I accidentally hiked ~12-13 miles after a few wrong turns on what was supposed to be a casual day hike. Turned out to be a great trail though! For sure worth the lack of planning and forethought.

Over the last few days I camped out at Rocktown in Georgia with some epic dudes I met at the TBA (Tennessee Bouldering Authority). I got to ascend loads of excellent boulder problems on fantastic sand stone. While I didn't send anything that hard, I got to hop on some of the classics, my fave probably being Golden Shower (v5).

If you're a gym rat and find yourself in the area, definitely check out the TBA. One of the sickest gyms I've ever been to.

Side note: For all those college kids who just got on winter break, you could come visit me! I'll show you where the sick lines are and maybe even let you spend a night in the whip.

Here's a dorky video I took on my first night, clearly I was a little new to this.

Day 1

So I decided to load up my car and drive to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Got no solid plans or any idea of when I'll be back, just going to climb some rocks and see what happens!