Climbing Stone Mountain a treat for the adventurous
By PHIL KLOER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/18/08
Those who climb Stone Mountain early enough — say, 6 a.m. — sometimes get a rare treat. Look east, and the sun is rising. Turn around, and the moon is setting.
Or you might see something more mundane.
 Todd R. McQueen/Special | ||
| It's tradition for each member of the 6:00 a.m. Mountain Climbers that makes it to the top to step on each of the three markers than claim the highest points of the mountain. | ||
|
"We were up there one morning, it was before the Olympics and they were getting ready, and there was a helicopter setting a Jiffy John down on top of the mountain," said Annette Slaughter, a bookkeeper at Stone Mountain's First Baptist Church.
Later in the day, and particularly on weekends, the mountain may be home to a dozen different languages, from Russian to Japanese. Hispanic families trek together, blacks and whites wave friendly hellos and exchange huff-and-puff greetings.
People climb Stone Mountain with prosthetic legs, in high heels, barefoot, playing guitars and singing, lugging 50 pounds of rock in a backpack, pushing babies in strollers.
The mountain — 825 feet high, and 1.3 miles along its most traveled trail to the summit — is a true melting pot. And never is it more melting than in the summer, when the heat index can simmer above 100.
Stone Mountain Park is celebrating its 50th anniversary this summer. But the mountain itself is a little older — about 300 million years older.
The sheer variety of Stone Mountain climbers is dazzling, but they can be divided, roughly, into those who do it on a daily schedule, and those who do it occasionally, on a whim.
The latter would include Raymond Delva, a Haitian immigrant who lives in Lithoina and was climbing the rock recently with his family, talking rapidly in Creole with his brother.
"I need to lose some of this," he laughed, patting his stomach. "You sit in front of a television and a computer all the time. This is the cheapest way to exercise."
As Delva headed up, Mandy Susten headed down. A stay-at-home mom from Brookhaven, Susten glowed with a potent combo — 37 weeks of pregnancy and 90 degrees of Georgia heat. Her husband Steve carried their daughter Lindsay in a frame on his back, where she had fallen asleep from the steady bounce of walking downhill.
"We usually do it once a week, but the pregnancy has slowed us down," said Mandy, patting a belly considerably bigger than Delva's.
Some climbers do it daily, but few do it with the devotion of the 6 a.m. Mountain Climbers, an informal group that's been hitting the mountain five or six mornings a week for more than 25 years. Jim Payne and Slaughter, two of the founders of the group, have probably climbed the mountain 6,000 to 7,000 times each.
"We start at 6 on the dot!" proclaimed Slaughter in the early morning light as the group milled and joked in the parking lot. "This train waits for no one."
The Climbers vary in number from day to day — there might be three, there might be 25. They brag that they climb no matter how hot or cold it is, but rain can make the mountain stones slick, so sometimes they "flatwalk," as they call it, around the base.
The mountain's incline varies, from easy to challenging, but most people in decent shape can make it to the top. Just don't say you walk to the top. "Anybody who doesn't call it climbing needs to come up to the top with us," said Payne. "They'll call it climbing!"
Ranging in age from late 50s to late 70s, many of them are retired, and some, like Payne, now work in second careers as volunteers. Some have survived cancer and various surgeries. Beverly Brookhart, a Snellville pet sitter, started in 1996 when she was recovering from knee surgery, as a form of physical therapy.
"It's never boring," said Slaughter, who gave her age as "older than the mountain." In addition to the portable toilet dangling from a helicopter, the Climbers once chanced upon a dawn wedding on the mountaintop and stopped to bear witness. Another time they discovered two teenagers in a sleeping bag who had broken park rules and spent the night on top of the mountain.
On a recent trek up, the Climbers reminisced about their friend Herta Park, who sometimes climbed barefoot, and gave some of the trees Biblical names like Ruth and Naomi. On her 60th birthday, she climbed the mountain 24 times in 24 hours. When she died in 2005 and was cremated, her ashes were scattered on top of the mountain.
Not all the 6 a.m. Climbers make it to the top. Some have asthma; Slaughter leaned on a cane. The ones who did made a point of touching three small metal disks that had been set into the top at the highest elevation points by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
"There's so many things in life you don't know if you've even accomplished anything or not, things with the phone or the computer," said Bob Rust, a volunteer with Touch the Future, a non-profit group.
"But with climbing the mountain, it's 6 o'clock in the morning and you've accomplished something. You've set your whole day."
In the summer, the mountain is busiest in the morning. By 4:30 in the afternoon on a recent weekend, it was all but deserted. The sun hit the white rock in the lower stretches and cast a blinding glare; there was no breeze. But Monday morning at 6, the regulars will be back, and the melting pot will soon start to bubble again.
No comments:
Post a Comment