Deep Wisdom

A new way of thinking in the old South

I’m goin’ deep down to the backwoods of Chattanooga, to a place where bullets have the courtesy to stop and ask where you’re from, where snarling hounds smile through cotton teeth, and where the land is what it has always been promised to be.

I’m goin’ to an area where grapevines and briars part to let you pass, where blazed trails grow naturally on the hillside, and where bugs, rain, and humidity vacation in Colorado.

I’m goin’ to Deep Creek. At the crag that gravity built, the cliff is like a sandstone tsunami, white-capped with chalked jugs, permanently breaking in a marbleized swirl of overhanging blue and black stone. I’m goin’ deep down to the best sport crag in the Deep South. But I’m not sure I’ll tell you where it is.

If you’ve spent any time in the South, you’ve heard the same old story: Colorado has Rifle and its public beta classes, California has the Valley and its speed junkies, and the Deep South has its secret Edens of virgin sandstone—a quarter of which may be real rock, with the rest being overhanging rumors. The region is full of sandstone evangelicals who testify to the beauty and quality of their secret crags, but quickly revert to whisperings and winks when it comes time for full disclosure.

But before you dismiss us as intolerant hosts, realize that the issues affecting the Southern climbing community have long run deeper than personal choice. The climbing culture here is a direct artifact of the history of our land and the rock on it. In the Chattanooga area, we don’t have BLM or National Forest land. Instead, our serpentine gorges and rock-rimmed plateaus are subdivided by barbed wire and gates that proudly display Private Property in bright neon-orange. And as a result, the precarious balancing act of climbing on private land has been absorbed into our psyche, and cliques and secret areas have existed here for a practical purpose. But now, with Deep Creek, everything is changing.

"You look different,” he said.

“Yeah, I guess that’s what college does,” I replied, slapping my gut to cut the tension. The blood that moments before had been overpowering my forearms now seemed to have settled in my core, heavy and nauseating. I’d just been lowered from my first route at Deep Creek, and I stood 40 feet from the base of the overhanging wall, fidgeting like a dog on the end of a 100-foot nylon leash. I wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Rob,” said the grim-faced man, nodding to my partner.

“Hey,” replied Rob Robinson, feigning a genuine smile, unable to dodge the fact that he’d breached an oath of secrecy.

The two seasoned climbers locked eyes momentarily, and the volume of silence was deafening. Above Rob, a patchwork of light filtered through the canopy, illuminating 20 or so freshly scrubbed and chalked routes, each with a line of camouflaged bolt hangers spouting small streams of week-old bolt dust. The place exuded an aura of novelty and growth—a feeling that was rapidly evaporating as I faced the counterpart to everything that is fresh and exciting about the Southern climbing life. As many others had before me, I’d been caught climbing at someone’s secret area.

Discovered by climbers in 2007, Deep Creek saw its first routes created the traditional Southern way, by a small group of obsessed developers with an arsenal of hammer drills and a blood oath. For the better part of a year, local climbers managed to keep their presence in Deep Creek unknown while they harvested nearly 50 plum lines. But where there are secrets, there are ears to hear them. And as bits of information leaked, climber-on-climber tensions flared. Ironically, though, it was a passing hiker who spied some “unusual geology” and blew the whistle to the landowner, Tennessee’s Cumberland Trail State Park.

Immediately, the state implemented a ban on bolting as well as an “up in the air” policy on climbing the existing routes. In the past, most Southern climbers would have retreated and tried again on another cliff. But this time, inspired by access success at the nearby Stone Fort bouldering area a few years earlier, a group of Deep Creek developers, led by Chad Wykle and John Dorough, made a concerted effort to change the paradigm—this time, they would transition from users to stewards. The climbers at Deep Creek unlocked the door by walking the trails and cliff line with park offi cials to consider impacts from existing and future user groups. To open the door wide, the group petitioned the Southeastern Climbers Coalition (SCC) to raise funds and volunteer hours for Cumberland Trail bridge building and trail maintenance. And finally, to make sure the door never closes, climbers educated each other on hot-button issues for land managers like endangered flora recognition and fixed hardware standards.