That’s how lots of people describe some of the easy routes on West Virginia’s Seneca Rocks: the scariest easy climb in the world. The “scary” had given me pause; the “easy” had appealed. Also, my climbing friends Jay and Abby had done their first climbing ever at Seneca Rocks, when Abby was thirteen to boot, so I figured it had to be OK. The easy had to beat the scary, I figured.

(If you don’t want to read the lengthy stuff below, just watch the video at the bottom of the post.)

Here’s how this trip came to pass. I was scheduled for a work trip to Duke University in June. North Carolina, I knew, was not all that far from West Virginia, where good climbing abounds. My two very good friends, Liz and Eric, live in Washington, D.C., which is even closer to eastern West Virginia than Durham, N.C., and they are always up for an outdoorsy adventure. So: let’s go climb Seneca Rocks.

It’s bit more easily said than done. Seneca Rocks is all trad climbing, which Liz and Eric had never done, and I had only done as the second, not as a leader. (If you want to know about what trad climbing is, Google it or read my earlier account.) So we hired a guide who’d do the scary technical stuff. The guide was Stephen, from Seneca Rocks Mountain Guides, and a fabulous guide he turned out to be.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Just getting to Seneca Rocks was fun. I had flown to Durham and rented a car there. It’s a beautiful five-hour drive to Seneca Rocks, through rural Virginia for the most part, and my early start got me to the thriving metropolis of about seven buildings called Seneca Rocks right before noon on Saturday, June 23. Right around then, Liz and Eric also showed up. Our climbing appointment was for Sunday, and after setting up our tents on the campground, we headed about ten miles south to Spruce Knob for a fun hike Liz had scouted. (What did we ever do before the internet?)

The hike was fabulous and took us to the highest point in West Virginia, at 4863 feet. You might scoff at this, but do note that it’s higher than anything in Scandinavia.

But, OK, the purpose of the trip was to climb Seneca Rocks. So a word or two about the rocks. Don’t ask me why they’re named after Seneca. I happen to like Stoic philosophers, but I’m not quite curious enough to find out. What is interesting about the rocks is that the formation is quite thin. From the side, Seneca Rocks looks like a pretty common rock formation, but what that picture doesn’t convey is the way in which the rocks are more like a rocky fin rising out of the wooded hills. At times, especially around the top ridges, it’s no more than a few feet wide.

Exposure!

The forest at the bottom of the rocks also drops down several hundred feet. This and the thinness of the rocks make for very exposed climbing. “Exposure” is a semi-technical climbing term; it basically means there is no way of denying you are off the ground. You might say you feel exposed. This happens when you can see far down or when you can’t see much protective obstacles around you. Except for some rare settings where exposure can bring about objective danger — greater vulnerability to weather events, say — exposure’s effect on climbing tends to be entirely psychological. Seeing several hundred feet straight down just feels scarier than if you can’t see. At Seneca Rocks, you can see several hundred feet down on both sides from the summit ridge. That makes for a freaky feeling!

Yet the route we chose to climb on Stephen’s recommendation is in fact very, very easy. Gunsight to South Peak is rated 5.3, although climbers’ “consensus rating” on Mountain Project puts it at 5.4, this still means it’s so easy I wouldn’t ever want to climb a route like that in a gym. The combination of objective ease and psychological scariness made it a perfect adventure for us. And having a professional guide to lead and place the protection took our minds off from what would have been a genuine risk factor had we climbed by ourselves.

I’m copying the “beta” photo from Mountain Project here to indicate where the climb goes. It’s easy to figure it out, given the helpfully descriptive name: from the Gunsight notch to the southern summit. (Even though it doesn’t look like it, the north summit is actually higher. But you can hike there, so it’s not interesting.)

At the Gunsight notch.

Getting to the Gunsight took some climbing. We went around Seneca Rocks to its east side, or what would be the back side in the photo. There was a steep hike through a forest called “Cardiac Hill,” for a pretty obvious reason. Once we got to the rock, we roped up. This wouldn’t have been, strictly speaking, necessary until we got quite a bit higher, but it was a good way for Stephen to teach us the complicated logistics of trad climbing and of rope management with four people. Once we tied into our three ropes — Stephen first, then Liz, Eric, and me last — we’d be tied in until our rappel down from the summit several hours later. I was last because I had trad climbed once and knew how to “clean” the route, that is, remove protection as I went.

The weather was perfect: mostly sunny, mid-80s, minimal wind. Given the exposure, this also meant a bit of a sunburn for me, despite sunblock, but it was a price worth paying. And given the way the Gunsight to Summit went, we were actually in the shade for part of the climbing.

View from Gunsight. Look very carefully, and you’ll see Liz climbing.

Coming to terms with scary things is one of the things that interests me about climbing. I hadn’t quite known how I would feel on the very exposed climb. Sitting in the Gunsight notch and looking at the awfully narrow arete above did creep me out a bit, but once climbing, things were surprisingly comfortable. It definitely helped that the climbing itself was so manageable. Climbing the second “pitch” of the route was basically just traversing the summit ridge, and that felt like great fun. The views were fabulous and exposure all you could ask for, as you’ll notice if you watch my video below. I had my GoPro video camera on my helmet as I went.

Easy though it was, it was great to make it to the summit. There was just one other party (using a different route), so it wasn’t crowded. We signed the summit register, which was in an old ammunition box, and then got ready to rappel down. It was three long rappels to get all the way down; we stopped after the first, had lunch, relaxed, and basked in the sun and sense of accomplishment. After that, it was a long drive for Liz and Eric back to D.C. and a quiet night in the tent for me before an eight-hour drive back home to Michigan.

On the summit.

Below is a video that captures some of the climbing — and the exposure.