Who Else has Climbed This Choss Pile?

[WDW4]

Red River Gorge
Tunnel Ridge Road Region

On the uphill side of Auxier Branch trail, between where it intersects Auxier Branch creek and Double Arch trail, there is a sizable (about 40' high) rock about 200' off the trail.
It was easily visible from the trail when I climbed it in July.
The Northeast, Southeast, and Southwest faces are exposed, with ground sloping up to meet the forested top of the rock on Northwest edge.
The exposed faces looked interestingly pocketed, spider webbed, cave cricket infested, and wet, with a few dirty and flaring cracks. Naturally I gave it a go.
I enjoyed some enthusiastic, repeated, and profound failure on two potential lines and then topped out via another, less attractive (i.e. chossy, mossy, and glossy) line on the corner of the Southwest and Southeast faces.
I'll be going back to try to finish the better lines, but I wanted to know if anyone else had climbed it just for kicks. I'm guessing someone has.


The location of the rock is approximated with the red arrow in the left side of the picture below.

And, to be perfectly clear, the rock quality does not actually qualify for "choss pile" status. The lines upon which I experienced such exquisite disappointment look pretty good.

[Rotarypwr345704]

You my friend, are indeed the first person to climb this. Congrats! It's weird, a lot of people have been getting FAs this summer by climbing obscure cracks. There is this man named Ray and if you give him your information he'll put you in this book that he writes every once in a while...

[WDW4]

Ah Rotary, the cynic muse of RRC.com.

You brought up an interesting topic - the first ascent. In a place like the RRG, I doubt there are any lines in my ability level within a few hundred feet of a trail (or in sight of a road) that haven't been climbed yet, so I am pretty sure I didn't snag a mad, rad, gnar first ascent on this chossy 40 foot boulder. Luckily, that is not my goal.

The cool thing about climbing is that the quality of the experience does not have to be determined by guidebooks, other climbers, or RRC.com, but by what happens there on the rock. The meeting of goals, challenges, ability, and willpower is enough to make a high quality experience, whether I'm the first one there or the 1000th. I guess most climbers understand that - the exception being those who are focused on climbing the next hardest grade, which is of course a real and admirable goal.

Climb on Rotary. May we one day meet in a place where incivility cannot hide behind anonymity.