King of Kings, Lower Hawksbill Photo Cred: Joe Virtanen
Late Spring the mugginess of the south was in full effect. The air sat like a full soggy sponge around charlotte and the surround areas. The only way to get a brief reprieve from the heat was to run away a couple weekends in a row to the highlands of the Linville gorge.
The 1st weekend, Alexis and I tagged along with a Finnish Joe V, to the lower Hawksbill area. I was fresh over knee injury and Joe was fresh off a hangover. We waltzed from the Hawksbill parking lot to the saddle and were thinking the heat was going to just as bad up here in the mountains. However, as soon as we drop down into the west side of the ridge we were blessed with a cool-breeze and shade. We met Alex and Blake there as well.
Low on motivation, we picked something and set off on a route that would end up being a real gem in the gorge. “King of Kings” would be referred to by Joe as the poor man’s dreamcatcher. It’s a smooth and technical lie backing rail with a couple required dynamic lunges. The lower crux has a bolt protecting the throw, and the upper crux is protected with godly perfect gray TCU placement.
After getting fired up on this route, we moved up the cliff line to climb “Encore” and “Phantom of Opera”. Both had a weird 5.8 chimney move to a ledge, which you then fire up a steepening wall to the a tipped out roof. Lower Hawksbill did not disappoint at All
Dark Angel
The 2nd Weekend, I teamed up with Bennett, Caleb, Will F, and Ashley P. to the underworld and take a better look at the underworld. This trip would be 80% trail work and 20% climbing. We made the slog down the hill from the pull off parking lot clearing with snips as we went. This made the approach about 150% as longer than it normally would be, but we had opened up the trail more. Once at the top of the cliff, we dry the sweat soaked clothes and rapped down to the cave. The cave was a perfect summer spot. It was shady, breezy and offered spectacular views of the gorge. Bennett and Ashley went to work putting up new slings on the route. Will and I took off towards the gully approach trail to make sure we had a way of getting out. We had 2 pairs of shears and made a spectacular trail to access/egress the cave. I had determined that with amount of tree growth and old torn up rope, no one had been to the cliff band in about 3-4 years, and it have been about 8 years since any trail maintained was done.
We only ended getting 1 route fully re-equipped, but we had opened up the spot for more and easier access. The hike out was even more brutal as we did more trail trimmings on hike up hill, because you always have a different view going the other direction.
