Selected Climbs in North Carolina
by Yon Lambert and Harrison Shull
In their introduction to Selected Climbs in North Carolina, Yon Lambert and Harrison Shull call North Carolina “the best backwater climbing area in America,” making it sound like a well-kept secret. I suspect that’s not really true. Probably most U.S. climbers who’ve ventured beyond their local crag have at least heard of the Tarheel state, and likely formed an opinion of it based on stories of the climbing there. Maybe you think of NC as one of the last bastions of pure climbing ethics; or maybe you consider it the home turf of elitists who establish insanely dangerous and runout routes for no good reason.
Whatever your point of view, Selected Climbs is the book to have if you want to know how and why Carolina climbing is what it is. More than a guidebook to the state’s climbing areas, Lambert and Shull’s book has a wealth of documentation of the rich history of climbing in North Carolina.
A new revision of Selected Climbs is being published this month by Mountaineers Books. Apart from some new photos and minor route updates, the most important addition in this new edition is a chapter that constitutes the first published guide to fabled Laurel Knob, a 1,200-foot granite dome that was just opened to legal climbing for the first time in 2005.
Since Thomas Kelley’s Climber’s Guide to North Carolina went out of print several years ago, the Lambert/Shull guide has been the only commercially available guidebook for climbing in the state. Fortunately, it’s an excellent resource, and though it’s not comprehensive (as the “selected” in the title implies), it covers a wide cross-section of NC’s best areas and routes.
Selected Climbs also benefits from the fact that Harrison Shull is a professional photographer. Interspersed throughout the book are great photos of climbers on classics like The Nose (Looking Glass), Zoo View (Moore’s Wall) and Bombay Groove (Stone Mountain).
Routes and Topos
Without well-written and detailed route descriptions, a guidebook is useless; thankfully, Selected Climbs delivers the goods. Each of the selected routes includes first ascent information, location in relation to neighboring routes, pitch descriptions and lengths, and (in most cases) descent options. The route descriptions give you what you need to know without telling you every move to make or specifics on pro, which is nice if you’re planning an onsight.
Along with the descriptions, detailed topos cover all the routes listed in the guide, with the bonus of including routes that aren’t described in the book. This is helpful not only for orienting yourself, but also for getting on some of the nice lines that didn’t make the “select” cut. Inevitably, you find yourself wondering why one route got selected and another didn’t, but that comes down to personal taste and/or space requirements.
While the topos are useful, some are better than others. The best diagrams are ones that have been given a whole page, such as the Nose area at Looking Glass, or better yet, divided into two pages, such as the central wall at Stone Mountain. This helps tremendously with readability.
By contrast, a few of the topos are not as well thought out. An example is the Flakeview area at Rumbling Bald, which suffers from its compression into a half-page diagram. It’s a crowded mess with 18 routes crammed together to the point where it’s not easy to tell what’s what.
Selected Climbs gives great coverage to all the major climbing destinations in the state, with chapters on 11 separate areas (Linville Gorge is divided into sections on Table Rock, North Carolina Wall, Shortoff and Hawksbill). Smaller, less significant areas like Woody Wall are not listed. The most notable omission is Pilot Mountain, a beginner-friendly state park not far from Moore’s Wall. Perhaps a future edition will include this crag.
History
The long and colorful history of NC climbing goes back to sporadic first ascents in the 1940s. However, it wasn’t until the late 50s/early 60s that climbing took off in an organized way, and the Lambert/Shull guide documents those pre-sticky-rubber days in its chapters on each area. The early days of climbing at areas like Stone Mountain make for great reading; consider this excerpt on what’s now considered one of the easiest lines there:
“[George] DeWolfe remembers feeling completely inadequate gazing up at what is today called The Great Arch and trying to imagine liebacking the entire thing [about 400’]. Dismissing the route (known at the time as “The Dihedral Crack”) as beyond their scope, they retreated. A determined DeWolfe, however, returned in August with Randy Constantine and started up the corner in oppressive heat and humidity. Dehydrated and out of water, they stalled about 150 feet from the top and retreated. They returned with the cooler temperatures of fall to discover that Fess Green and Bill Chatfield had snagged the first ascent a few months earlier.”
As with Stone Mountain, each chapter of Selected Climbs starts with a nice summary of the history of the area. Early climbing efforts and first ascent credits get detailed treatment. You can almost visualize early climbers like Bob Mitchell and Steve Longenecker, wearing swami belts and carrying goldline ropes, gazing up into the unknown stretches of rock at places like the Mummy Buttress in Linville Gorge. It’s good reading on the drive to the crag or around the campfire.
Style, ethics and egos go hand-in-hand with first ascents, and these are documented in Selected Climbs as well. Pioneers of Carolina climbing like Jeep Gaskin, Bob Rotert and Doc Bayne established their FAs ground up, using what the rock gave them and drilling bolts only when absolutely necessary. Flouting of this heritage is not taken lightly by locals, as noted in the chapter on Whiteside Mountain. Pressure from Cashiers climbers forced Mark Lassiter to remove a number of bolts from his “Traditions” FA, and north face routes that were rap-bolted in the early 90s by Shannon Stegg caused controversy that continues to the present. Lambert and Shull are careful not to take sides in these brouhahas, but you come away with a picture of a state whose climbing traditions demand respect, whether you’re a visitor or a local.
Laurel Knob
The single best reason to pick up a copy of the new edition of Selected Climbs is the inclusion of Laurel Knob. As noted earlier, this once-secret Cashiers dome has never before been documented in any climbing guide. If you want to climb at Laurel Knob – indeed, if you even want to be able to find your way to it – this new edition is essential.
As with other chapters, the history of Laurel Knob makes for great reading. Because it was on private property until the recent purchase by the Carolina Climbers Coalition, climbing there was illegal. Of course, that didn’t stop people like Peter Young and Rich Gottlieb from establishing routes at Laurel Knob, often at personal risk from gun-toting landowners.
The Lambert/Shull guide describes one particularly hair-raising feature of early Laurel Knob climbing: homemade bolts made with hardware store carriage bolts, washers and wire hangers:
“Then they would thread steel baling wire around the offset washers several times, wind the wire together and tie it off, and then clip in to it as a homemade “hanger.” A bit leery of the safety of this idea, they drove [John] Whisnant’s Volkswagen up to the summit of Whitesides to test their contraption. They placed one of these anchors into one of the large boulders up there and then, after connecting some slack rope to the VW, they rolled the car down the road till it slammed tight on their “bolt.” It held. Figuring that if it would hold the car’s weight, it would hold them, off they went.”
Because of its remoteness, Laurel Knob isn’t an easy place to get to, so the approach description and accompanying trail map included in this chapter are a real plus. The book also outlines special considerations that apply at Laurel Knob, such as the need for two ropes and the perils of hard-to-find rap stations.
It’s a real shame that this otherwise excellent chapter doesn’t include a single photo of climbing at Laurel Knob. Another minor annoyance is the left-to-right layout of the topos and corresponding route descriptions. Since the only way to approach the cliff is from the right end, this is a little disorienting.
Summary
Selected Climbs in North Carolina is an excellent resource for anyone planning to climb in North Carolina. The routes selected for inclusion are well-chosen, and the areas and routes that aren’t included won’t hamper your climbing experience. The detailed climbing histories are well-written and entertaining.
Selected Climbs in North Carolina, $24.95, published by The Mountaineers Books. Available through the publisher, online book sellers and many climbing gear shops.
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