Somehow I convinced my brother Chris to get up at sunrise and go climbing with me. I was visiting him and my mom in North Carolina for Thanksgiving and had lugged my rope and rack along, just in case. A few days after the turkey and gluttony, the weather was clear and cool. We packed up and headed north.

At the foot of the great grey stone, I gave Chris a refresher course on belaying and slab climbing. I convinced him that we needed to carry a pack for water, food, and jackets, and that he was just the one to carry it. We asked the party of four ahead of us if we could start up the wall first, and they politely let us pass. Nerves steeled and mojo workin', I led us up to the big treed ledge, where we would begin our ascent of a Stone Mountain classic.

Little did we know the danger and calamity that awaited us on... The Great Arch (5.4, 3 pitches)!

Fear and loathing on the overhanging slabs

Chaos descended as soon as we reached the ledge. I watched in horror as the belayer in the party ahead of us took both hands off the belay to untangle the huge knot in the leader's trail line. Ascending to the ledge on our left was West Virginian caver, helmet covered in mud and adorned with a duct-taped flashlight. On the face above us, 50m slab routes sported three bolts apiece. Verily, we trembled as we racked up. What hellish crag was this?

The right-facing corner of the Great Arch tempted us upwards, and we succumbed to its pleasures: clean granite, ample protection, the occasional nubbin or wave to rest the smearing right foot upon, perfectly-spaced tree belays. And then, the crux, somehow invisible from the safety of the ledge: 30 feet of 95-degree featureless slab. Lowly gumby climbers that we are, we somehow didn't realize that the grading system used by the local hardmen was logarithmic, modeled after the Richter scale. Thus, our 5.4 route was one thousand times harder than your average 5.0.

I threw myself on the tiny crystals and desperate smears. After numerous gruesome lead falls, I gave up and resorted to aid: knotting together all my slings, I lassoed a tourist at the top of the wall. Before the slow-moving creature could react, I had hauled myself up hand-over-hand and lay panting at the tree island above the arch.

Chris followed, fingers bloodied from his own failed attempt at the death slab. We sat amid the few trees at the summit, contemplating our mortality while eating turkey sandwiches. West Virginia boy and his homely girlfriend topped out on the mountain just as we started our descent down the slabs of the tourist trail. I peed on the rock, like a scared puppy, torn between fear and a primal need to assert dominance.

Past the hordes of gaping tourists we descended, reaching the boulder fields at the foot of the monolith. By now, light was fading and Chris, dissolute college student that he is, was fading, too. Unsatiated, I fell off boulder problems on the grippy granite blocks scattered about until the sun at last dropped out of sight.