Rob laughs and with it I hope he forgets my groveling. He ropes up and pulls the love handle. In one swift effort passes over the crux like butter. Same for the second crux. No hesitation, just doing. He climbs the route like he invented the place, and in a lot of ways that’s true. And he seems to know just about everybody at T-Wall and as the climbers he’s doesn’t know walk by him, I hear them say to each other with all the hushed reverence for the Pope, “Hey, wasn’t that Rob Robinson?”

Robinson started coming here in 1984. Back then, he dared not drive up the road below because it had a reputation for highway robbery. Leaving a car by the side of the road unattended was the least of your worries. A car would pass you, then slow down while another car came up from behind, boxing you in. If you decided it prudent to roll down the window, you had probably already made up your mind that these were the type of fellers who had little interest in seeing to it that you were not lost or needed a beer.

So Rob came in from the other side of the river, and right away knew he had stumbled on some of the finest sandstone the South had ever saw. The potential increased the intestinal fortitude and Rob and his longtime climbing partners Arno Ilgner and Roger Fleming bushwhacked up to the base from the road, highway robbers be-damned. What they found little resembles the T-Wall of today, when, aside from the closed turkey hunting days, there’s most always a rope bag strewn over the dead leaves. Copperhead snakes, skin-ripping brush, and dirty cracks greeted most FA’s that were lessons in vertical gardening.

It’s cleaned up pretty good over the years, though the wildness still prevails. Bald eagles and vultures thermal the cliff-line and aside from the padded down dirt at the base, the trail, and welcoming rap anchors, it’s civilized trad as nature intended it.

We move down to Dirt Bag (5.8) and China Doll (5.9). Around the corner, Kirk Brode, a sturdy talented climber (whom I later recognize from Harrison Shull’s coffee table book “Southeastern Rock”) is holding forth deep in the dihedral of Point ‘O Contact (5.10C). His old, arthritic dog Comso waits below, lost in the weighty decision between seeking sun or shade. And around another corner still, Emily Martin works an elegant finger crack on Finger Lockin’ Good (5.10 b/c). Her dog Casey, who had the foresight to bring a doggy pack stuffed with the accouterments that make life bearable for a crag dog, waits under a roof with a carabiner below her neck. These dogs must certainly look down at their paws every now and again and thank their canine stars that they weren’t born to golfers. I know my dog did, bless his soul.

But it is getting on in the afternoon. Luke’s son has, no doubt by now, found the eggs that the rabbit laid. Time then for Luke to get back to his family. Robinson stays on, warmed up and ready for another route in what he calls the “T-wall orchard.” And I’m hungry and tired, a long drive south ahead of me. Luke and I head down the trail under fresh leaves and good thoughts, the splitters still warm in our heads and in our hands.

Editor's Note: Coming Fall 2009 — Rob Robinson of Southern Sandstone Publishing is producing a new and improved full color guidebook to the T-Wall. It will be packed with new route information and mouth-watering photos.