Stitched Panoramas

Just a few stitched panoramas from our trip last weekend. (Click to embiggen these shots.)

At the Crazy Fox Christmas Tree Farm.

Stone Mountain.

High point of my scramble.

Climbers ascending an enormous flake on the cliff.

Climbing

Almost every time I go to Stone Mountain State Park I get to see technical rock climbers making their ways up the face of the cliffs. I really like watching them working the routes to the top. They're all very careful and take their time on the walls. As I understand it, Stone Mountain is a relatively easy technical climb and many instructors use it as a classroom because of the relative safety of its routes.

Generally, I shy away from such steep areas. As I've said before, those kinds of risk just aren't for me. However, as I was scrambling up to the edges of the technical routes, I looked up to watch the real climbers high above me. And I really wanted to join in.

Maybe one of these days before I get too old, I'll give it a shot.

Information kiosk at the base of the climbing routes.

Self-service permit box so that the rangers will know who you are if you fall and go "squish".

Instructor and student above a point where I felt safe enough to climb.

Telephoto shot of the very patient instructor and student.

This guy was part of another climbing team to the right of the highest point I scrambled.

Another place where I climbed as high as I safely could.

This flake of rock kept telling me to keep climbing. "C'mon," it said. "It's safe! Keep goin'!"

Two climbers about halfway up the face of the mountain.

Homestead

I've been to a lot of state parks that have recreations of old-time homesteads. Some of them are pretty complete, but the finest one that I've encountered is the one at Stone Mountain State Park just east of Sparta. The buildings are in exceptionally good condition, even the main house which is quite large. What's amazing to me about the place is that the house served four generations of the same family. Here in the USA, it's hard to think that a single house was used for so long and that one family looked upon it as the old home place.

Carole and I had a good time touring the restored farm and buildings. Here's a brief photo tour of our wanderings...

Carole on some farm contraption in the barn.

Another barn.

Old wagon, complete with load of wood.

This was a building for curing tobacco and meat.

Another storage building.

The main farm house. It's quite large and had five bedrooms, two fireplaces. It's extremely well built.

The front of the main house.

Detail of the side chimney. I'm always interested in stone chimneys.

The outhouse.

Shed for cutting firewood.

Walk in the Woods

Simple photo album of our hike to the field below the cliffs of Stone Mountain.

The beginning of the trail just past the parking area. There's a nice bathroom here, trash cans, recycle bins, and a vending machine for bottled water. (Many idiots try to hike up Stone Mountain in summer with no water. Big mistake.)

The trail is extremely well built and graded. Lots of stairs.

There are also plenty of bridges wherever they are needed. Also all in good repair.

Carole trudging up one of the few climbs on the way to the field of views.

Typical hiking in Southern Appalachian forests.

The side trail that leads to the Hutchinson Farm.

Carole resting on a rock beside a stream on the way back to the truck.

And there are so many deer in the park that you can't walk very far without seeing one.

Hike to see Stone Mountain

After we left Sparta we headed down the mountain. I wanted to stop at Stone Mountain State Park which was on the way home. It's located at the base of the Blue Ridge escarpment, so while the namesake of the park is a true mountain, it rises out of the relatively low Piedmont area just below the high country east of Sparta and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

I've been to Stone Mountain many times, but I never get tired of hiking there. I still haven't seen a couple of sections of the park, so there's plenty for me to see in the future. Since we still had plenty of time left in the day, I wanted to take Carole on a brief hike to a spot where there's a great view of Stone Mountain and which also has a historically significant preserved farm (the Hutchinson Homestead) which served as homeplace to four generations of the same family. This spot is also the basis of the climbing routes up the sheer stone face of the summit, so there's generally some activity going on there.

One thing that I was hoping for was to see some technical rock climbers. I wasn't disappointed, and there were several groups doing technical climbs of Stone Mountain. It was fun to watch them make their ways up some of the routes on the cliffs.

Sometimes when you're at the base of a big mountain and looking up, you lose sense of scale. However, take note of the dark crack to the left of the pale flake of granite above the line of trees growing up the face of the mountain. If you click on the photo and enlarge it, you should see a red dot. That red dot was a human being:

See the climber? He's wearing a red jacket and a white helmet. This is another reason I like the mountains. It reminds me of how puny the human race is in the scale of the Universe.

While Carole waited in the field below the cliffs, I went to the climbing routes and made my way as far up the mountain as it was safe to go. At this spot I was at a point beyond which you needed technical equipment to continue. Above me about 100 feet or so was a climbing instructor and a student. I was able to speak with them a little before I headed back down.

This was the climbing instructor and his student high above me.

Carole and Yours Truly in the field at the base of Stone Mountain. The mowed path leading to the mountain is to show rock climbers where the technical routes begin. There the climbers can register and begin their climbs.

Stone Mountain from the field at the base. Click to see this sucker in full monster mode.

Tomorrow...the hike in and the Hutchinson Farm.

Afternoon Hike

What am I doing standing beside this gigantic boulder? I'll try to find the time to post details tomorrow.

Tradition

Tree cuttin' time in Sparta, North Carolina.

For years and years, Carole and I would drive up to Alleghany County where she owns property and go to a choose 'n' cut Xmas tree farm to get our tree. Sometimes one farm and sometimes another. Whichever one looked the most likely. After a while, we settled on one called Crazy Fox Christmas Tree Farm. We always find a good tree there. But the last two years we didn't go to a choose and cut place. Why? Who knows?

We heard that Sparta had gotten a good snowfall yesterday. As we seldom see any snow. we decided to drive up there to get our tree. What could be cooler than picking our tree in the snow? So we went. And, yes, the snow was nice and beautiful. They had about a six-inch snowfall, so it was still gorgeous when we got there at around 10:00 am. We quickly found our tree, showed it to the cutters and waited while they knocked it over and took it to our truck.

We capped off the day by going to Stone Mountain State Park on the way home to take a hike. While there, we watched rock climbers scaling the sheer cliff face of Stone Mountain. More on that later.

Carole and I pause for a self-portrait. Not the tree we ended up with.

They had a pretty good snowfall the day before.

The tree we picked out. They're ready to cut 'er down...

Timber! She's down! Now to tie 'er up and brang 'er home!

Forecast: Delivering mail in a cold, freezing rain.

One guess where I'd rather be today.

They're Dead, Jim

Back in the earlier days of the Internet, there were a few websites that I quite enjoyed. Some of the ones that I enjoyed reading the most vanished. I don't know why they vanished, but they did.

The first one to vanish was a site called Media Whores Online. It was produced during the early days of the hijacking of our so-called democracy when George W. Bush was installed into the White House after a rigged election. The USA press refused to address this obvious fraud election, and so was born Media Whores Online in an attempt to address the media whores who went about acting as if George W. Bush was anything more than a mildly retarded figurehead. At some point the site vanished, along with any hopes I ever had that this nation would grow a backbone and produce some brain cells.

Another site that I loved to read was a very crude humor review column called "B. Fatt & Lazy". It was a movie review bit wherein the authors gave vent to every atom of vitriol and stream-of-consciousness nastiness that was stuck in their craws. They unloaded in the most hilarious manner on the popular movies of the day. Rarely did I fail to get a good laugh out of the site. But--alas!--it faded. After a (hopefully) faux suicide report of B. Fatt's last day, the site was quietly retired into oblivion. I miss it.

The third site that I admired for its sometimes nihilistic approach to society was Cruel.com. It was a non-political website that found humor in the strangest places that the owner located (with online community help). These displayed sites were generally "cruel" in that they did manage to (intentionally or not) display the bizarre workings and ironies of modern society. It, too, finally closed its virtual doors and is now a part of online history.

I miss all three of those website for various reasons. I've seen a lot of these ether-places come and go, but few of them made me think and laugh as much as that trio. And, unfortunately, not a single creator has risen out of the mudheap of the Internet to replace them.

So it goes.

(And before I could even post this bit, I've been informed that Cruel.com has been resuscitated. I'll withhold my opinion until I take a good look at it.)

Now This is My Kind of Humor

Language

You'd be surprised how many "American" idiots are out there. A few years ago I was walking away from a car dealership where I'd delivered the mail. Most of the employees were Hispanic. As I was heading to my vehicle, an "American" salesman who'd been in the office walked by me. "Damn, I'm sick of these people," he said. "Not a damn one of them speaks American!"


A clerk I used to work with (guy named Curtis) was whining about immigrants. "They should all learn to speak American before they're allowed to live here," he said. But he speaks with a powerful accent himself. What he said sounded more like this: "Thay shooood AWL larn tuh SPAKE 'murrkin if they wawn tuh live hyar."

After pointing out to Curtis that he didn't even know the correct name for his own native language, I told him he needed to learn to speak English before he started whining about the ability of others to do so.

The Chimneys, Map versus Reality

For years I would head up to Linville Gorge and see a tower of rock standing against the rim of the gorge. Checking my maps, I would try to figure out if this formation had a name. Time after time I would come to the conclusion that it was a spot on the map called "The Chimneys". This made sense to me, as the rock tower did resemble a chimney. The fact that I could really only see one so-called "chimney" didn't preclude there being another one out of sight, so I figured I had it pegged.

In addition, it went on my bag list. These are peaks that I want to hit, just to say that I'd climbed (hiked) them. The whys of such an undertaking are part of the old tale: because it's there. I love hiking to summits, so I'm always looking for new ones to place on my list so that I can mark them off as having been climbed.

My main problem was that it looked like the formation I wanted to bag was quite difficult. It looked, in fact, that it would involve technical climbing, which I don't do. As I've stated before, I admire folk who are into technical rock climbing, and I think I might even enjoy it. But I don't like the idea of plummeting to my death, so I've avoided technical climbs. However, that doesn't mean that I won't at least look into a peak. I can always back down, if it looks too difficult.

Earlier this year I went to climb Babel Tower, also in the Gorge. Initially, it looked too hard for my skill level and I was ready to give up. But, at the last minute I saw a safer route to the top and was able to take it to the summit. It was worth a try for The Chimneys, too.

When my pal Andy Kunkle suggested that we hike to The Amphitheater, I knew that we would be passing directly beside The Chimneys. This would be my chance to bag the peak(s). I was looking forward to at least standing at the base of the towering rock and getting a good look at the geology up close. Then came the surprise.

What I had thought was The Chimneys was, in fact, a secondary formation a good distance below and to the west of the actual summits on the map. If the formation I'd mistakenly targeted has a name (I'm sure it does--rock climbers love to name stuff), I don't know it. But I did quickly realize that the true summits named on the map were quite a bit larger than the one I'd wrongly identified, and perhaps much easier to climb. As Andy and I got to the base of them I thought that I could give it a go.

Andy had warned me that he had seen a number of people climbing The Chimneys, but that they had all had ropes, helmets, and hardware for making a technical climb. My limits are scrambling, with only slight windows of exposure to falls. I just don't want to take any chances--I enjoy seeing the world. So I told Andy I'd just look around, go up on some shelves and see if I could locate a good, safe way to the top. Andy was good enough to wait at the base of the towers while I did just that.

I finally did see what looked to be a relatively safe route to the top of the southernmost of the two summits, but I just wasn't sure. And we had a lot of hiking yet to do, so I called it off for another day. I stopped about forty or fifty vertical feet from the top--I'll go back on another trip and give it a good try.

The tower of rock at the lip of Linville Gorge that I initially thought was part of The Chimneys.

A telephoto shot of the same formation.

The moment that I realized that the actual peaks called "The Chimneys" were, in fact, the pair of rocky peaks to my right in this photo. The tower that I had erroneously identified can be seen lower in the gorge on my left.

This was what I finally figured would have been the safest route to the top. Just follow the notch in the rock and move along the line of vegetation to the summit. But I was making Andy nervous, so I'll try it another day when I have more time.

This was about as close to the actual top as I could get. I took this shot of Andy and Boone at the base of one of The Chimneys.

Map: The red X is the actual location of The Chimneys. The blue X is the rock formation that I initially thought was the peak.

Work, work, work, work, work.

I've been too exhausted to produce the blog column lately. Sleep around the clock and still awaken exhausted.

Trying to work on the latest novel during lunch breaks, but that's about the only free time I have when I'm not working, or sleeping.

Alas.