Day before yesterday (Thursday) four students on springbreak from Rutgers University and I went out to climb ourselves a big pine tree in the Dawson Forest. The students had just completed their climbing class and it was time to challenge them with a wild tree in a real forest.

Nicole Guido, Lindsay Modugno, Matt Minder, Nate Altomare and I started our hike draped with all the gear we would need, a half-mile walk ahead that would take us down along the Etowah River bottoms.

As we walked along we saw clouds building to our west and I began to wonder if we might have a shower on the way. No problem! I have climbed wet before, and these students, all interested in climbing in the rainforest, needed to experience the joy of climbing in the rain.

We reached the tree, a big yellow pine more than a hundred feet high, and began to sort out the gear on our tarp. Nate assembled my Sidewinder as Lindsay and Nicole flaked out the ZingIt. The sky was getting a bit darker as Nate made his shot and put the line over a nice limb at seventy-five feet. The rope was raised, the climbing system assembled, and Nate was ready to be our lead climber.

That was when we were greeted with a huge roaring peal of thunder immediately following a lightning bolt directly overhead. Rain began falling and then we were being beaten with hailstones. Hailstones, even the conservatively marble-sized variety, can hurt! In seconds we were all huddled against the trunks of surrounding trees trying to stay out of the way of the painful deluge. The rain got worse, the hailstones continued to fall, and then, suddenly, it was all over and the storm was past.

We spent a few minutes laughing at each other and trying to decide whether to go for the climb. Then there was another monster bolt of lightning followed immediately by an earth-shaking blast of thunder. That did it! Climb cancelled!

Forty-five minutes later we all walked into SwampFox’s coffee shop, dripping water and telling our storm story. SwampFox was glad he hadn’t been along.

The next morning, yesterday…Friday, we started out early and returned to the tree, this time accompanied by SwampFox. Once again we got our line up with one shot and this time Matt got himself ready to be our lead climber.

The climb went very nicely and Matt acquitted himself well on his first time as a lead climber. We all made it to the top, at just over a hundred feet, and the weather cooperated nicely, even though we could see clouds building as the afternoon progressed.

This morning the students were on the way back to New Jersey, their Springbreak about over. As for me I have spent most of today taking care of all the gear, most of it still wet from our storm encounter.

All in all a very pleasant week spent with some great students!

Looks like good fun all around, in between being terrified!

Just wondering if any of the technology savvy young'uns with you happened to look at doppler radar with their smartphones? We're all pretty good at observing the sky, wind, etc. and having an idea of whether or not the hammer of Thor is about to pummel us, but... it is very handy in that climb situation to be able to see exactly what's coming at you when there is any doubt in your mind. Being a confirmed Luddite I still (as of today) don't carry a smartphone but I mentioned in a climb report last year that having smartphone access to doppler radar made the difference between climbing and not climbing. We had a really scary looking sky, all the signs and sounds of impending doom, checked the doppler and determined the storm cell was going to slide just north of us so we went ahead and continued setting ropes. Once the cell was past us we climbed. Boston just to the north of us was hit hard with high winds, property damage, trees down, flooding etc. We just had a short period of light rain.
-AJ

One problem with the high-tech smartphone weather monitoring: Sometimes there is no phone service when you're out in a place like this. This was one of those moments. Not even one bar!

Good thinking but it does serve to emphasize one of my favorite teaching points for those climbing in wild remote areas: Don't put too much trust in modern technology. There are areas with no service, there are times when batteries go dead. High-tech equipment sometimes gets wet and doesn't want to work. And when things like that happen you are suddenly no longer "connected".

Thanks for the great climb report! What an adventure.

Nice report, Joe.
Hey, you should send some of those college girls my way!!