In his towering epic about a CIA operative who learned his earliest lessons on Maine’s island cliffs, Norman Mailer writes that rock climbing is “the meeting of Truth and Courage.” Jill Hendrix knows all about soaring prose; after all, she owns a bookstore. But when she shares her enthusiasm for the sport of upward mobility, she’s far more down to earth.
“While I’m climbing, I am just in the moment and looking at the rock in front of me, and that’s what I love about it,” the proprietor of Fiction Addiction says.
A onetime gymnast, she and her partner, Paul MacGregor, have been scaling heights together for 20-some years. Just watch them in a breathtaking 37-minute video from Shortoff Mountain in Linville Gorge, North Carolina.
“What kind of things do you think about?” asks a man off-camera.
“Usually, the beauty of it is, you’re not thinking,” she says.
The day-to-day grind simply slips away when you’re face-to-face with the face of a cliff, she says, then: “You’re worried about your partner, you’re worried about the next movement you’re going to do on the rock, so you’re very much in the moment.”
To which MacGregor gently teases: “She’s not worried, she’s thinking. We don’t worry, we’re focused. That’s the important thing: you’re focused on your safety, you’re focused on what you’re doing. Just trying to have fun with it.”
Fun, sure, whatever rocks your world. But gravity isn’t just a good idea, it’s the law. Still, Upstate climbers shout from the mountaintops about the ascendant benefits.
“For a lot of people that move here, they have their church, and climbing is the same thing,” says Jimbo Lynn, a Greenville native who took up climbing in 1991. “We get the same fellowship with other climbers, and we get to be in a spectacular setting. That’s all inspiring.”
Lynn can take you to the heights with his adventure stories. Snowboarding and mountaineering in Antarctica and Alaska, ice-climbing in Alaska, climbing the Grand Teton in Wyoming. Now a family man with two teenage daughters, Lynn, who works at Sunrift Adventures, still manages to climb once a week or so. He just doesn’t go as far or for as long as he used to.
Wick Warrick doesn’t, either, though he still goes bouldering three times a week. These days, he climbs indoors, scaling the 14-foot-high walls at BlocHaven, the light-washed, 25,000-square-foot gym in Judson Mill. While he’s there, Warrick can enjoy a cup of coffee and watch others scamper up and down the multicolored “holds” along hundreds of routes pegged into the blond-wood walls.
Warrick, 82, started climbing at 45—and gives Lynn a raconteur’s run for the money. Like that time he was packing his father’s pearl-handled, Derringer-sized .22 in a bullet-ridden room in Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, with his new bride, Liz. Or when he worked for a diamond buyer in eastern Africa.
Alas, let’s leave those tales for another day. Today, he’s our guide to the summits—in fact, six of the world’s famed Seven Summits. Excluding Everest, he has seen, attempted, or conquered Denali, the highest peak in North America; Kilimanjaro, Tanzania; Aconcagua, Argentina; Elbrus, Russia; Carstensz Pyramid, Western Papua; and Vinson, an Antarctic accomplishment he shares with Lynn.
Seriously, though, what is the pull of climbing?
“It just seemed like a natural progression and it was a goal and I didn’t belong to a golf club and I didn’t have a mistress,” the retired insurance man says. “So I had a little money and it was a wonderful, wonderful way to see the world.”
Like the others, Warrick likens climbing to working a puzzle: “It’s a little bit like chess. It’s not just that you put your hand here and then you put your hand here. You have to figure it out, so there’s a little bit of mental gaming.”
What about a sell-by date for folks of a certain age?
All scoff at such a notion. They exult in the aerobic and anaerobic exercise indoors and out, the camaraderie of the booming climbing community here and, of course, the vistas.
Just don’t fall for any of that reckless stunt-double stuff, they say.
“Most activities that you see in the media on television and movies, they’re all generally exaggerated,” MacGregor says, while Lynn chimes in, “Whenever you see somebody rock climbing on television, they want to be falling, the rope catching them.”
Okay, then, if all y’all make the sport look easy, just how difficult is it?
Lynn insists that anyone who can climb a ladder can climb a rock.
“You’re climbing with your legs, you’re balancing with your hands,” he says. “You don’t have to have fantastic feats of strength.”
And finally, Hendrix echoes all the others’ views when she says, “I can just focus, all that other stuff just falls away. And then you would get to the top and you turn around and look out at the view, and you’re just like, ‘Oh, my God, I can’t believe this is where I am.’”
Onward and Upward
Here are a few select spots for climbing indoors:
BlocHaven
Greenville’s newest climbing gym creates community in its 25,000-square-foot space. Four climbing areas, fitted with 14-foot-high bouldering walls, provide different degrees of difficulty, while a café and coffee bar create convivial places to relax after your workout.
Judson Mill, 701 Easley Bridge Road in Greenville | blochaven.com
projectROCK
Coming soon, this enormous indoor climbing destination is the second iteration of a gym in Florida. With 18,000-plus “holds” and walls said to be soaring up to 80 feet, this one likely will offer the highest indoor climbing in the state.
2121 Farrs Bridge Road, Easley | projectrock.com
Climb at Blue Ridge
Formerly Rocks & Ropes on Pendleton Street in Greenville’s West End, Climb at Blue Ridge, now in Taylors, is the longest-running climbing gym in the Upstate. The gym offers 5,000 square feet of climbing surface and an array of family-centric activities.
301 Bulls Rd, Taylors | climber.com
Get Outside
The Upstate has several outdoor climbing opportunities, including Big Rock in Pickens and spots at Table Rock and in Pumpkintown. A drive of an hour or so leads to hundreds more opportunities in North Carolina.
Learn more at carolinaclimbers.org.
Types of climbing:
Traditional Climbing
Trad climbing, as it’s known, is just that — original: part adventure, part sport, with plenty of gear.
Sport Climbing
The focus is more on the physicality of the climb than on self-sufficiency. Sport climbing is popular because it requires significantly less gear than traditional climbing, which makes it more accessible to the general public.
Bouldering
Bouldering is pretty much what it sounds like: takes place on boulders, rather than on crags or cliffs. Gyms largely consider their walls “bouldering.” Many climbers believe bouldering is the purest form of the sport.
Top Rope Climbing
If you’re new to climbing, chances are you’ll start with a top-rope climb. When top-roping, the rope is attached to an “anchor” at the top of the climb, which is designed to catch a climber’s fall should they slip.
Lead climbing
The lead climber starts with the rope at the bottom of a route and clips it into protection as they move upwards. Top roping is significantly less risky, while lead climbing falls can be violent, particularly on poorly protected routes with lots of ledges.
Speed Climbing
Speed climbing, considered a niche, is generally part of competitive climbing.
Source: The Climbing Guy
