a little bit of a Tommy Caldwell kick… but man these pictures are sweet…
About the Author (Jordan)
My name is Jordan Edwards and I currently am a student at the Ohio State University. I’m 19 years old, live in the wonderful state of Ohio, and have a beautiful girlfriend named Lilly. I started climbing in 2010 when a guild took my friends Aaron, Tyler, and myself to a local park to do some top rope climbing. After that I bought a 10 dollar rope, a steel carabiner, and looked up some videos online about how to make a harness. Before I knew it I was backing over the edge of a 50 foot cliff in an old quarry about to do my first rappel. Needless to say it was pretty sketch. Soon I upgraded to an old alpine harness I found in my local Military surplus store, a figure 8, and a 150 foot static rope. Growing up in Ohio you don’t see many beautiful cliffs with perfect lines straight to the top. What you do see is crumbly sandstone everywhere. Aaron and I frequent the red often and have become very familiar with the area. Although were not the best climbers (maxing out around 10d/11a currently) we’ve come a long way. Choss Pile Chronicles was inspired by our local crag in hocking. Although technically a “climbing and rappelling area” you’ll mostly find wet choss covered walls or crumbling faces.
Despite the obvious shortcomings hocking has, I’ve spent many many hours bushwacking through the long forgotten approach trails looking for the perfect line. We’ve yet to find a nice trad line but there are actually some decent top ropes. If you look hard enough you may actually find a few bolted routes. We refer to these routes as “Sharma’s secret projects” due to the fact they look near impossible and also because the bolts are giant rusting hunks of metal. Although Hocking isn’t exactly a climbers paradise it gets us out on real rock exploring for the perfect line and gives us a sense of what it would be like to be seaching the world for that next perfect line.
I have a passion for climbing that often distracts me from my studies. I find myself daydreaming about El Cap and fighting the urge to climb the sides of buildings when I walk through campus. If you’re anything like me I encourage you to visit the page occassionally. With 2 passionate climbers posting there should be no lack of fresh content.
