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bradlmd
Mar 9, 2010, 7:38 AM
Post #1 of 5
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Registered: May 5, 2003
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Im probably going to get sacrificed for posting this thread but Im going to do the deed and post directions to Little River Canyon. This is an email I received from a guy about 7 years back when I was looking for the place. He made a good point then and I am seeing it more evident now that if there is never any written history of this place it will eventually be forgotten. So here it is. This is all I know of the area and since I don’t live in the dirty south any longer I probably cant help you any more than what this letter can. Good luck.
Okay.....on the LRC NPS website you can find a map. That's what I'm referencing to describe landmarks. I know where all the wall and trails are.....but I can't positively describe how to get you there. I could easily take you or me or anybody there.......just to give directions is harder....because my knowledge is based on memory and visual cues. Also, its been a while since I've been to every single spot. Some of the locations get few visits and if you or I were to go, we'd find them to have fallen into semi obscurity. A couple of spots have fallen into certain obscurity and we'd have to thrash around to uncover them again.
First of all to consider is your climbing fitness level. The average difficulty there is somewhere between .11c and .12a. Most spots have one or two or three 'easy' routes, warmups......usually in the upper 5.10 range. There maybe be the odd 5.9, but very few and far between. If you are very fit then you'll be fine. IF not, you can do what most people do, use the easy climbs at any particular wall to work off of or into the increasingly harder climbs.
There is not a guide officially.......there are individual's hand topos I've seen floating around in the past. In the old days, it was all word of mouth.......those last with comprehensive knowledge have faded off somewhat so that system of info transfer has broken down. Most routes have names......many have been forgotten. Now may be a good time to talk about a guidebook again. The reason that there is not one is that all involved early on wanted to not have the place become overrun.....plus when new routes were still going up, we didn't want the state, and later the NPS to know just how much activity was going on there for fear of being shut down. Now the consideration is more over impact.......lots of cars parking, lots of feet treading........the parking can't accommodate tons of cars in most places.
Another thing.........one cannot say that each and every route is totally safely equipped. You will find routes with single lowering anchors, rusted cold shut top anchors, homemade anchors, galvanized bolts that are rusting and 15 or so years old, poorly placed bolts, bolts with hangers missing, bad stick clip starts, bolts in bad rock sometimes......and related hazards. You are going to have to be in charge of you. Most routes do not have cliff rim access.....you cannot set TR's from above easily or at all. You cannot easily rap and retrieve left gear.
The best way to learn the areas is from someone who knows....to take you to each one. If you've done a bunch of looking and only found one route.....you must have been in some obscure place....because just about every area has a good many routes. Each of the areas have their own unique sorta qualities. Lizard's good when it rains, Concave is very overhung super hard routes, Unshackled has a two minute approach, Toomsuba has some tespiece classics, Crazyhouse has a reasonable number of lower grade routes.....some are better at certain times of the year due to cliff aspect and path of the sun overhead through the day.
I'm going to reference the NPS map for general location relativity of the different areas......and then try to describe where the path is to get to the cliff base. The general locations are easy to describe......their locations along the parkway........but where the sometimes access trails are, that may be harder, the trails, if seldom used, will be come faint and hard to make out. You will have to likely do some scouting.....without stomping down all the clifftop vegetation in these areas. Tread lightly, use good judgement, and pick up litter when you find it.
Using this link to the parkway map
http://www.nps.gov/archive/liri/Areas/Overlooks/Maps/Maps.htm
Lizard Wall is just downstream of Wolf Creek overlook and upstream of Crow Point overlook. Its closer to Wolf Creek.
There are several county road entry points that will insert you in various places up or down the parkway. You'll have to get map savy......i can't describe them all. If you choose to come in from the hwy 35 bridge, you will have traveled as far north as possible in your selection of entry. You might want to get familiar with other roads to shave off some travel time. There is one road that comes in just above Wolf Creek.
After you pass Wolf, go down about 100 yards and you'll see a small pull through parking spot on the cliff side (left) of the road. It would hold maybe up to five cars. That's the parking for Lizard. Get out of your car and look down the road about 20 yards and you'll see a small drainage that's been piped under the road. Walk in this direction and look as you approach the drainage for a faint trail going off to the left, vaguely towards the cliff rim. This trail will zig zag down through small pines, laurel, and rhododendron, scrambling down some small cliffy spots......and finally land you at a small stance at the top of the final section of solid cliff. There is a fixed rope you have to then use to hand over hand down. It looks easy but can be deceptively dangerous. Heavy packs, dogs, faint-hearted people are all going to complicate getting to the ground. Be carefull.
When you are finally at the ground, the trail continues across the rock filled basin and drainage the little stream flows through. During wet, cold weather crossing here can be a challenge. Right now, it's a breeze. This spot can freeze up during cold weather and be very pretty.
Follow the cliff contouring faint trail on around a low point.....keep walking on around......the cliff becomes huge and looms overhead......keep walking through grape vines, shale talus, sand and dirt........finally the last of the trail makes a right acending 'turn' up to a higher terrace and you are beneath the first routes at Lizard.
The Lizard angle of repose is pretty much constant all along its length. You will clearly see one route after another. The warm up routes are two just to the right of a large bench-like boulder. One of them is named Bon Voyage and is 10+/11-.
You will likely be astounded and get a neckache from looking up and inspecting all the routes.
Mid day, Lizard will bake.....and so will you if you decide to climb there in full sun. This is a decently good winter spot and almost the entire wall is sheltered during rain from a capstone kind of feature at the rim. The routes do not go to the rim.
Although Lizard technically ends at a certain point on the far end where things get slabby and discontinuous, walk past there and routes pick back up again at what was called Spider Wall. A handfull of routes there end in a corner with a huge chimney feature and just around from there is another section of routes.........and routes continue along this wall in interspersed groups all the way till Crow Point. There is no rim access between where you went down at the Lizard entry point and Crow Point......and the way out and in at Crow is sketchy and coming in there requires a rappel. You'll never find it on you own.....so just consider that the only way in and out is at the Lizard access. It's a long walk from Lizard entry to underneath Crow Point
Recall going down at the waterfall fixed rope? When you hit the ground you could have just as well gone to the right......and around that corner after a brief walk is another section of routes.......typically in clusters, interspered among empty stretches........Its a lower cliff height....until you've walked all the way down to beneath Wolf Creek, then the cliff gets huge again. These routes have been largely forgotten. In the beginning of your walk you will pass under cliff with trad route potential. In fact there is a large offwidth crack that is a component of a seep/waterfall and is located in a section of more or less vertical red-brown sandstone. The beginning part is a cave-like feature. The top part is a roof crack with old bolts and aluminum hangers. The offwidth is stellar and if the roof section is retrofitted with stainless hangers and bolts, it would be a nice climb.
This direction is not of choice for the first time visitor. The trail is basically beneath the cliff but I'm sure has gotten little travel in the past years.....and will likely feel as if its never been walked. There are unfinished routes in this section of cliff.
The next area downstream from Lizard/Crow is Brand Nubian, after that is Grace High Falls and Liquor Wall, after that is Ninja Wall, after that is the Unshackled area, after that is the Delicious area, and finally Fuzzy Mule area.
Up from Lizard and on the north side of Wolf Creek, back around from the Canyon View overlook is Grey Wall. Between Canyon View and Hawks Glide is, going upstream from Canyon View, the Toomsuba area follwed by the Crazyhouse area. There are routes almost continuously between these two overlooks. Crazyhouse is one of the more user friendly areas and to get there travel on the parkway upstream past Canyon View and look for a pulloff on the right (cliffside) just before the road begins a small descent that corresponds to another piped drainage (there are more than one of these, try to find the lat before the road descends/dips). Park in this pull off.....it might hold around 4-5 cars....and walk upstream along the road till you see a faint trail that drops off toward the cliff rim on the right. The trail goes downhill and near its beginning you'll see old tar the road workers disposed of, poured on a earth-embedded rock you pass by or walk over. This sign is easy to miss.
Walk down to a low section of cliff where the trail turns and goes underneath, along terraces of rock......continue walking upstream under the cliff and you will begin to see routes. The Crazyhouse section proper is the area of cliff that forms a large cave/ampitheater-like feature. Two of the easier routes in this area are Bitless and Cedar Twist. As you walk downstream and the ampitheater feature curves around to a point, right around on the point, on the left hand side of the arete feature of this point, is a more or less vertical route that ends near the rim. That's Bitless. Cedar Twist is the next one left and to start you have to carefully climb up on a dead twisted cedar tree trunk.
Back up on the road, the other areas upstream include Lynn Overlook and the Concave area. Lynn is easy to find since it corresponds to an established overlook......Concave is harder and I never climbed there much.......I'd have to feel my way back to that one.
There is bouldering at the Mushroom Rock area and at an obscure small band of rock directly towards the rim/river from the Lizard parking spot. Walk over and scramble down into some overhangs and small corridors to find this spot.
There is also good bouldering at a place called the Citadel which is near where hwy 35 tops the plateau coming up from Ft Payne. Its private land but unmaintained.
There is little known but public camping in the upland LRC property, above hwy 35. Most of this land is preseved for habitat and hunting periodically.....but there are camping sites right on the river.......i've taken my family there and done the car camping thing with them, swam, explored.......and I've done the pull over in a spot and sleep in the truck bed style back in there too. The roads in are a maze of narrow, winding single width affairs.....but it's a cool place to explore, mountain bike.....and goes all the way up to Desoto Falls State Park.....which is another bouldering and climbing spot. The upland area where the East and West Forks of the Little River flow are likely good for paddling as well.......canoes......no white water......good backcountry paddling though.
Very near the hwy 35 bridge there is also Jamestown.....and area the SCC just purchased a portion of. And then beyond that, further up the Lookout Mountain trend toward Chattanooga is Lost Wall/Rocktown at Pigeon Mountain near Lafayette, GA
I could go into more detail on more of LRC but my fingers are tired and I have to get back to work. We'll save more for later. This should get you started.
This place, even though its right next to a road and lots of car/people activity, is a wild, senic area.....with lots of spiders, snakes, scorpions, bees, bats, poisonous plants, stinging plants, rotten rock, bad rock, ants, skunks, coyotes, varmits that will chew on your stuff, local weird folks who you're not sure what they are up to, litterers that trash the overlooks and throw things off the rims, bugs, and other objective hazards. Behave yourself and respect the place. Climber rapport with the NPS people is important but don't count on them for any worthy information about climbing or its locations. Be mindful of how you drive and park. It's a super cool place to climb and at cliff base, you'll likely not encounter many, if any people, certainly not non-climbers.
If you encouter any life threatening climber fixed hardware issues, let me know and we'll get them remedied
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johnwesely
Mar 9, 2010, 10:40 AM
Post #2 of 5
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Registered: Jun 13, 2006
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I no idea about the routes past Lizard Wall. I will have to check them out some day. Also, all of the bolts have been chopped off of Lynn's wall.
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bradlmd
Mar 9, 2010, 4:16 PM
Post #3 of 5
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Registered: May 5, 2003
Posts: 28
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The only time that I have personally explored the LRC for routes I started at Eberhart Point and hiked down. From there I went up stream and across the river to a wall that is directly across from crow point and I found one route that looked really old and had some rusty bolts on it. I dont remember what it was rated but Im sure it was a mid 12. It was probably one of the most gorgeous routes I have ever seen. It started on an arete and twisted around into a large 100+ foot cave. The hike was terrible and we ended up getting into a yellow jacket nest during the hike. I would not recommend this climb strictly because of the approach.
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adam14113
Apr 1, 2010, 11:49 PM
Post #4 of 5
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Registered: Aug 14, 2007
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God I miss climbing there. Used to hit it up all the time ...
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johnwesely
Apr 2, 2010, 1:09 AM
Post #5 of 5
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Registered: Jun 13, 2006
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adam14113 wrote: God I miss climbing there. Used to hit it up all the time ...
I used to climb there almost every weekend, but I haven't climbed there lately.
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