BONUS: The Cohutta Death March (S24O)

viewpoint midway up Cowpen Road

Less than a week after posting a blog titled, "The Art of Sucking It Up," I found myself sitting in the middle of a monstrous hill climb contemplating my existence and wondering if this was all worth it or not. Maybe not, but I did not want to keep going. When Max pitched the idea of riding the Cohutta Death March, I thought it would be hard but not that hard. As it turns out, this classic southern Appalachian gravel grind lives up to every bit of its name. I won't write a route description or trip report as many exist online, but you can watch an Instagram reel of our ride HERE. 

For the folks thinking about doing the route, I'll just say this: Max and I started at Cottonwood Patch Campground and did the loop counter-clockwise, which meant a 2,000 ft push condensed into just a few miles. This turned into a lot of hike-a-bike on my singlespeed, but even Max had to walk some of it. That said, I can't imagine doing this loop clockwise. I'd rather knock out the climb on West Cowpen Road the way we did and "coast" the back half (still a bit of climbing) instead of slogging up those gradual rollers and then squeezing my brakes the whole way back down to the valley. 

elevation profile for CW, we rode CCW 

Here's three things I learned while on the CDM: 

1. Unless you want a raw tushy, do not sleep in sweat-soaked chamois. 
2. Leftover pizza is the ultimate in bikepacking nutrition. 
3. Max is a modern-day mystic; I think everybody should have a friend like him. In a world desacralized by modernity, Max still sees a world of mystery, meaning, and myth. Max inhabits, what Max Weber said of traditional societies, a “world that remains a great enchanted garden.” Everything is suffused and enveloped in import and our conversations demonstrated that. I think the way he reads the world is necessary and beautiful. He can also enter the Pain Cave with a Zen-like coolness that I am jealous of. I want to be a bit more like Max. 

the descents are hard-earned but fuuuuuuun 

Max

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The Art of Sucking It Up

*~SpRiNg BrEaK 2007~*

Have you ever woken up to a pack of raccoons tickling your feet? I have. I was 18 years old, camping on the eastern end of St. George Island with Russ. It was spring break and we were backpacking with our skimboards in tow. Two seniors in high school living on the beach for spring break? I had high expectations. I can't speak for Russ but I had envisioned the trip to be like hiking into the actualized lyrics of Katy Perry's "California Girls." But my eighteen-year-old brain vastly overestimated how many "daisy dukes, bikinis on top" would be hiking to a primitive backcountry campsite on the beach. The sum total was zero.

Instead, the trip went like this: Russ and I backpacked into a desolate campsite by the bay. It was cold. Sand filled every crevice of our bodies while sand gnats and mosquitos ravaged every exposed piece of our flesh. We wore makeshift burkas to shield our faces from the bugs. Even the skimboarding was bad. A couple of nights in, I forgot to hang our food and awoke under my tarp tent to a pack of raccoons tickling my feet, searching for treats. I got Russ up, packed our bags and hiked out. 

Some cherished memories happened that night, like hiking without headlamps by the starlight over the Gulf of Mexico (Russ told me years later, it was so beautiful he cried). But that doesn't change the fact that we gave up. We quit. When it got hard, we went home. That wasn’t the only time something like that happened either. In fact, Russ and I began making “a thing” out of hiking out in the middle of the night to find the nearest Waffle House. It was fun. But as I began to spend more time outside and the trips got longer and more remote, there weren’t any Waffle Houses to retreat to. Eventually, I had to learn the art of sucking it up.

You should read Haruki Murakami's What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. There's this line: “Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” I think about that all the time when I'm out trail running or rock climbing because I have a choice in how I respond to pain and discomfort: give up or keep going.

Renowned psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl maintained that between stimulus and response, there is a space. And, “In that space is our power to choose our response.” Whether climbing mountains or running long distances, I think human-powered endurance activities help build the muscles used to make the responses required for suffering in the real world too.

Whether you’re running an ultramarathon and every muscle in your right foot is screaming...

Or you’re festering in a tent while bad weather batters your high camp... 

Or you’re working two jobs to pay off medical debt from a routine hernia surgery because Americans pay 40% more for healthcare than the rest of the industrialized world...

Each creates a space where the pain is inevitable but the suffering is optional. 

"Suffering," here, is the choice made to see it through. I don't mean this to romanticize or make light of anyone's actual physical, emotional, existential suffering. I think there's a difference between suffering and "things that suck." Yet it's all very subjective. And to be fair, navigating a pandemic, working an unsatisfying job, or arguing with a partner is not the same thing as trad climbing, ultra-running, or waking up to raccoons sniffing your feet. But the ability to take a deep breath, figure something out, and keep going when you're in the mountains might also help when you need to plan a budget, discuss your feelings, or finally find a therapist. 

Alpinist Kelly Cordes said of ultrarunners, "To keep going when given the option to quit is hardcore." If you're reading this then you made it through 2020 and you probably suffered something. We all learned a little about the art of sucking it up this year and I think we all got a little more hardcore. On a recent bikepacking adventure with Russ, I brought up that 2007 spring break trip. I talked about how thankful I was that playing outside taught us the same lesson running taught Haruki Murakami. Russ looked at me and spoke through the cloud of mosquitos and campfire smoke."It's funny you mention that," he said, "because I really wanted to call it quits today." We laughed and kept eating our ramen bombs and then we got back on our bicycles the next morning.

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The 5 Worst Kinds of People at the Crag

Josh at an empty crag near Chattanooga

It's hard to have the crag to yourself these days. That's okay. But there's no denying that our cliffs and boulders are seeing more people than ever before and climbing's ever-growing popularity has changed the landscape of the sport, sometimes literally. I'm increasingly and un-inronically convinced that the most ecologically responsible thing a climber can do is quit climbing. But nobody's going to do that. So whether you're headed to Ten Sleep or the New River this summer, there are lots of climbers out there and there's some that you should avoid and avoid being like.

5. The Bluetoothers & Hammockers

There are worse people on this list but the Bluetoothers and Eno Hammockers are my personal least favorite. These easy to spot (and hear) user groups are likely young granola types from the local university's outdoor club and they treat the outdoors like their campus's green space: bright colored hammocks strewed about with electronic toilet-noise music blasting loudly. Nobody likes your music. Nobody likes mine either. This is a forest/cliff/desert/mountain, not a chill hang-out spot to vibe with your friends. Leave your boombox and hammocks at home.

4. The Screamers & Wobblers

One time, my friend Julia and I went to the Obed for a day trip with a couple from Nashville. Julia and I were not a couple. In fact, I spent the whole drive talking about my friend Eli and now Julia and Eli are married (a point I did not neglect to mention when I officiated their wedding). Both members of that couple were strong climbers with even stronger personalities. They spent the entire day arguing about route choice, screaming about beta differences, yelling at each other about belay catches, and throwing humongous hissy fits when they did not send. Except for Julia, I never climbed with those people ever again. 

 

I understand being frustrated with bad climbing or bad belaying or obnoxious beta spraying but yelling, fit pitching, and temper tantruming (otherwise known as a "wobbler") is inexcusable behavior when other people are at the cliff. 

 

I also find screaming while trying hard a particularly annoying crag occurrence. There is some evidence that it helps with the send but it is really about the short, powerful exhalation -- not the noise. My friend Josh is a great example of a strong climber who exhales with purpose, rather than screams like a banshee. Noise pollution comes in many forms. Keep it down...

Cora and Josh being good land users AAA Crag in the U.P. Michigan

3. The Sandbaggers & Beta Sprayers

Everybody knows these guys -- usually guys -- and the Venn-Diagram of sandbaggers and beta sprayers is quite large. Sandbaggers undersell the difficulty of an objective while Beta Sprayers give unsolicited advice about how to accomplish the objective. Maybe you have had a conversation like this:

me: hey, we're looking for [5.8 hand crack in a dihedral].

Sandbagger: oh, you should totally get on this [5.10c overhanging splitter finger crack]

or like this: 

me: *falling off difficult-for-me boulder problem and not asking for help*

Beta Sprayer: bro! you gotta hand-heel match, then cross, then throw for the lip!

Both, Sandbagger and Beta Sprayer, are so plagued by their own ego that they feel the need to spray or "word vomit" all the information and not-so-humble brag they can muster to anyone in earshot. Everybody begrudgingly listens but nobody actually likes them. Don't be one of them.

2. The Non-Hole Digging or Wagbagging Woods Poopers

I'm not quite a crusty trad-dad yet, but I have been climbing long enough to see how climbing's growing popularity has caused growing pains at our local crags. Nothing demonstrates this more than the proverbial minefields of human feces that surround our most popular cliffs. I haven't climbed at Foster Falls in years (I refuse to anymore), but even a few years ago you couldn't wander into the woods to pee without stumbling on, what the Access Fund calls, "toilet paper flowers." AKA "flowers" or piles of soiled toilet paper erupting from the earth. Do we even need to talk about how reprehensible this is? 

It's gotten so bad that WAG-bags -- special bags you poop in and carry out -- are being implemented at southeastern crags, like Deep Creek. These bags were once reserved for delicate desert and alpine environs but increased use and impact at southern climbing destinations has necessitated them. Fun.

1. The Dangerously Stupid Help Rejecters

I watched a climber deck at Horseshoe Canyon Ranch. It was from the first bolt so it wasn't as bad as it could have been but I'm pretty sure he was going home with bruised or broken heels that evening. After we checked on him, to our dismay, he started up the route again! This time, when he struggled at the first bolt, he put his finger through the hanger in desperation. We let out a collective, "NOOOO!" and offered to spot him for a downclimb and let us stick clip it, if he was still committed to the route. He rejected our help and we packed up and hightailed out of there because we didn't want to scoop up brains that afternoon. 

We were all gumbies at some point. I had a few helpful mentors along the way but I am very much a self-taught climber. I've built anchors I'm ashamed of and I've done things that have caused me traumatic flashbacks about how I could have died or severely injured myself. One thing I've always appreciated is when a more experienced climber offered me a teaching moment in a kind, helpful way. 

Pride, ego, and insecurity combined with stupidity is a dangerous concoction. Be humble. And when the visibly ignorant are openly recalcitrant, it's probably just best to pack your gear and move on.

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