Looking Glass Again
We took another trip to Looking Glass, this time, to camp and hang out with Matt, his wife Jodie, and John. It was just the breaking into the fall in North Carolina so which mean it was prime time to camp again. We left Saturday in the morning and coordinated to meet Matt at the North Side.
We arrived a couple hours late, after being stuck behind a BMW convoy on a dirt road (pretty odd) and making the mandatory stop to feed the trout at the hatchery. We hiked to the base of the north-side, and located Matt and Jodie at the first pitch of Safari Jive. Matt was just ready to run up and setup a rope. The pitch was seeping really bad, but Matt pushed on anyways. After Matt cleanly sent the pitch, I top roped it and setup a camera rigging shot for John. The shots turned out pretty good. It was good experience to work on jumaring up the ropes, lowering to get into position, and managing rope so it would stay out the shot. Hopefully, this will mean less butt shots in the future.
Next in the search for something dry, we did the 1st pitch of Invisible Airways (non-direct). I led the pitch this time and fixed the rope so I could use it to take pictures. Rope work makes you sweat, if you need a good work out ascend and descend ropes a couple times. John got all the glory pictures again, but the shots were nice and nice run out. He missed a couple of sections where he could have stopped to place gear.
We bailed a bit later went to setup camp alongside the Davidson River. After a little hike, we found a nice secluded section along the river to setup tents and prep a fire for later. After a quick trip to the Oskar Blues brewery, we made dinner alongside the campfire, and drifted off to sleep.
In the morning, Matt and Jodie headed back to Greenville while we set off of the south-side of Looking Glass in search of dry rock. We arrived right when a guide group was leaving, so some of the nice easy pitches were open, Good Intentions, Left Up, and Bloody Crack. Good Intentions setup was a cluster, I had to find some old tat in a mossy wet slab and leave a quick-link. The other two were okay. Blood Crack almost was a cluster fuck cause of poor beta and description, but I got to get in a jagger bush on slab.
One thing I learned being in North Carolina is that anchor situations can be pretty fucked up so be prepared. For being a beginner area and a guided location, there was only fixed anchor for 4-6 routes which spanned about 150 feet. This anchor served 2 routes in a natural way, all the others were forced weird traverses.
Anyways, we then took the long ride home, I don’t remember if we ate. Sad. (Alexis note: We had mexican on the way back at El Paso)
