Check out this rad video my good friend Matt Hanner put together of a problem at Little Rock City, Tennessee. He is a professional photographer in Atlanta who recently started dabbling in climbing videos. His first videos are amazing so I can’t wait to see what he produces in the future!
I’m in Atlanta for the holidays and luckily I had a couple of free days to go climbing. On Monday we headed up to Little Rock City which is just north of Chattanooga, TN. It was a beautiful day with a high of 50. Conditions were prime and I was psyched to get back on The Shield. Every year I come home the sandstone blows my mind. It’s so completely different from climbing anywhere out west. You can use features here that would be impossible to hold if it were granite. The rock is so smooth yet it grips like sandpaper. After warming up we headed over to the Tristar/Dragon Lady corridor. I managed to do Celestial Mechanics V7 first try which was rad. It’s one of those climbs that I could hardly pull on the starting holds a few years ago. After that a few of us started working on King James V10 which starts on the left arete and climbs up and right with a crux that is higher than the finishing hold of Celestial. On my first try I climbed up the arete and then over onto cool blocky features and made the big cross at the top to gain a small three finger edge but fell trying to grab the next hold. On my next go I grabbed the same three finger edge and committed to grabbing the positive right hand hold. At this point I tried to swing my foot out right to a ledge but couldn’t immediately place it there so I had to fight to hold the swing on the tiny crimp. Mid-swing I heard a pop from my left hand…
