With the heat of summer baring down on the land, the closest cool option was to set off and explore the northside of Moore’s Wall. Alexis had never been to Moore’s, which put her in company with the majority of climbers around NC. There is some type of mystique that turns people off, but it is just good trad climbing fun.
I guess its good a lot of other people down go to Moore’s because its not really a place to be taken lightly. You have to know how to climb, place gear, manage rope, inspect weird situations and get down from the top of the climb. It’s not a cragging crag destination. It’s more of adventure crag.
Tim came along so Alexis wouldn’t have to worry about catching me if I came whipping off the wall. We started on classic “Head-Jam” which has a required move for its name sake. It took me sometime, but I manage to figure out a way to get by without it. I then brought up both Tim and Alexis with the double ropes as we enjoyed the hazy view from the one-pitch belay cove. It was a fun outing.
Next, we walked down the wall to the “Nutsweat” area. Tim had the honor of going up through some really exposed moves. It followed a brilliant green dihedral before cutting left out large overhangs. I was able to retrieve some booty on this route, a nicely shape red camalot was pried out from the crux moves. The exposure of this route hits you immediately as you leave that neon green dihedral.
We then moved further down the north end to the “Boogie Till You Puke” area. I went and successfully obtain the onsite of “Vascular Disaster”, but it was a battle to manage the pump while placing gear. The pump started immediately with a unprotected boulder problem to a sloping ledge. The moves weren’t especially hard but with an heavy ass trad rack weighing me down my arms began to pulsate. Once established 20ft up the sloping ledges, I was able to get gear into protect myself. Then the wall kicked back slightly to the overhang. The movements were fun but my memory lingers on trying to figure out which horizontal would I be able to get gear in next, or what if I missed the last good placement, or what if there is no more gear. On and on I plugged away shaking when I could trying not to pass up any gear opportunities, because I knew at Moore’s those placements can disappear quickly. Finally with the blood pooling in my veins, and 60% of my rack still on my harness I found the anchors.
Tim cleaned and setup a top-rope for us to work out the moves on “Boogie til you Puke”. The route gets pretty overhanging as I flew into a tree while working out my moves. Tim found some really different beta that let him float through sections. All while this was going on, Alexis found a very smelly tree branch that she was continually huffing. We checked every so often and saw her huddling near a cave sniffing this stick (It was sassafrass and think of her as Gollum).
We attempted to go the Hanging Rock Lake to swim, but it was closed. But for future reference you need to buy tokens to swim.
The day was closed out by stopping at Sheetz and ordering way to much food than we needed. (I shouldn’t have gone back for that milkshake.)
