I feel like everyone has that one place that was formative to them in their teenage years, the place that once they could drive, that was the place that they were going to go. For many people, it is a friend’s house or a restaurant like Chick-fil-a, but for me, it was Stone Mountain. Due to basketball, I was a little late in getting my license, because it was just not something I was worried about, but once that started to slip away, I put the work in and got my license, so the summer between junior and senior year, I had my license, and I was working as a lifeguard, so I had some money, and I used it to go to Stone Mountain at least once a week. I had my season pass, and just like with my movie pass, I made sure that I got my money’s worth. It was only $40, and it costs $20 for a single day entrance, so just going three times is good, but I went way more than three times.
At this point, I was already in love with nature. The Summer after 8th grade was probably the most formative in creating that love, where my dad and I took a trip to Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, and that is when I realized how special nature could really be, and I have continued to chase it since then. So during this summer, my best way to chase this love was to climb Stone Mountain over and over, and to have others come climb Stone Mountain with me.
This led to one of my greatest finds, and an even further cementation of Stone Mountain as the place to go. One day on a hike with one of my best friends, Ethan, instead of going straight up the mountain, like one is supposed to do, we went up a little bit, and then we decided to start going around the mountain instead of up it. Initially this is part of the Cherokee Trail, but it quickly just turns into finding your own way. For those who do not know, Stone Mountain is the world’s largest piece of granite, and it lives in its own little park, and there is a road that goes around it, so a person cannot really get lost. There is some tree covering, but it is limited depending on where you are, typically it is just exposed granite that can be very steep depending on where you are.
So we continue to traverse around the side of the mountain, and it has some seriously steep sections, and you can tell other people had been there, because there were spots that had been spray painted, and we keep going until we turn a corner, and the landscape of the mountain really opens up. There is a massive steep slope that takes you up closer to the top, and you can either go straight up it, and eventually get up to the normal hike again, or you can keep going around a little more to where there is a giant granite over hang, where it looks like a celestial being took out a massive chisel and cut part of the mountain out. This overhang was well spray painted, but it had a rock ledge perfect for sitting on in the shade, and some other boulders that were fun to climb, and this became our spot for years to come. We called it John the Slayer, which was due to someone spray painting their name, John, across the wall, and someone else spray painting the Slayer band logo, but it was typically referred to just as John.
I cannot tell you how many times I went to this specific spot. Many times by myself, and many times in the company of some of my favorite people in the world like Ethan, Matt, Arslan, Luke, and Austin, but like all good secret hideouts, you had to swear not to take anyone there, and if you did, you had to make them swear that they would not bring any one new to the spot, because well it was a secret. Once we were done hanging out in the spot, we would return back to the steep incline, and trudge our way up the mountain, to some more boulders, that would need to be climbed, and after that you have to climb over a fence to get back onto the normal trial, and there would be one more climb to get to the top, but it would spit you out pretty close to the top.
One thing to keep in mind when hiking on a giant piece of exposed granite, is that it becomes very slippery when wet. So the smart thing to do would be to just climb up the normal way, when it had just rained, but in high school, a person may have book smarts, but they are rarely ever responsible human beings, because there is that inflated sense of ego that makes you think that you cannot get hurt, or that you will not slip and get hurt. I am sure at the time, there was that voice in my head telling me to make the smart decision, but I was not going to listen to it. So there were times, when we would do this hike, when there were still streaks of water flowing down the surface of our giant gray rock, and we would slip and stumble, and sometimes slide down, but thankfully none of us ever got hurt, and it was always just a bunch of us having fun. Also the more time we spent on the mountain, the easier it was to tell which spots you were going to slip on, but there was one time where we all slipped into some brush like we were going down a water slide.
We went in high school, and it became a good place for us to go in college, when we had a chance to reconvene on a similar break, and sometimes we would eat lunch at John, where everyone had an assigned spot that we all naturally went back to each time, and other times, we would use this as a starting point, and end up going to eat at our beloved Stevie B’s pizza buffet close to home. The great thing was that there were no wrong answers, because we just all enjoyed spending time together. We also did some added exploring of the spot, there was a little canyon down below the spot, and it could be safely examined, and it was explored at least once, and alternate routes were also fun to find as well. An awesome place to continue bonding and grow together.
This can also be linked to my love of endurance endeavors. When I went by myself, I rarely went just to climb up once, and when I did only climb once, it was by going the special way because it was longer and tougher. At this point in my life, I enjoyed being more of a minimalist, or more accurately, I was weird. So there were many a time, when I would climb up the mountain bare foot, come back down and climb it in my Chacos. I loved feeling the rock beneath my bare feet. It was smooth for the most part, and it felt like with just my feet, I had good grip, and the more I did it, the more used to it my feet became, so it was not painful, and on the days when it was slippery, I felt like it helped even more to have that skin to surface contact to have an understanding of how slippery it really was.
One day in particular, I was feeling especially interested in a challenge, so I decided I was going to climb Stone Mountain as many times as I could. So per usual, I started out barefoot, and I climbed, and went the special way, and I made it to the top, and I went back down. Part of the way down at the top diverts, and one way is for trucks (I saw a truck go up it once, and it was impressive), and I always went down this way to start, then I would go back in to where the people are. Then I went up again, the normal way without shoes. Two times without shoes is a good amount, after the second time, your feet start to hurt, so I switched to the Chacos, and I went up again the special way, and then I did it two more times the normal way. The cool thing is that even when you go up the normal way, there are so many small variations you can take, that it is never really the same. On this day, many people would say something to me about how many times I had gone up, and about how fast I was going (I was walking, but sometimes I would run down part of the way to speed up the process). Even on days, when I was not marching up and down the mountain five times, if I was barefoot, usually people would stop and talk to me about it. My favorite of which was a lady, who said that it was good for me to be so connected to the Earth, and that being barefoot allowed me to receive extra energy from nature. The real reason was because I wanted to be different and weird, and that was a good way to do both, but then I took her explanation to heart.
So after being gone from Stone Mountain for years, last weekend I finally made my triumphant return. I woke up at 4 a.m to catch my 6 o’clock flight to Atlanta, and when I landed, I got my rental car, and immediately drove to Stone Mountain. Sadly, I had to pay the $20 single day pass for the first time in forever, I almost bought the annual pass just out of principal but decided against it. I switched out my shoes. I had a serious mental debate while packing about whether to bring my trail shoes to do this, because as mentioned it is basically smooth granite, so would it make a difference if I wore road shoes with more cushion or trail shoes? I looked it up online and could find nothing, so I went with road shoes. Literally right at the base of the mountain where the trail starts, I stepped in a small puddle and immediately started slipping. At that moment, I thought this was going to be a long day, but after that initial slip, everything was perfect.
Georgia in June can be hot, humid, and miserable, but I got a day, where it was below 80, overcast for the most part, and humid, so all things considered it was an ideal day. Previously, I had tried to run up this mountain on multiple occasions, but I had only been successful once, and now I was planning on not only breaking my record of five times, but I was planning on running it all six of those times, and I was surprised at how quickly and smoothly I made it to the top the first time. I got some looks the first time, but not a lot of attention from the people around me, but many of these faces would see me over and over and over again.
It is a little over a mile to the top the way I did it, which was by following the normal trail the whole time. There are two cruxes of this route, and they both come in the back half. Before the first hard hill, the mountain is fairly runnable, it is no walk in the park by any means, but it is manageable, but then you get past the shaded shelter, and you hit the first big climb. It is so steep that they have a railing, and when I used to climb, I would go on the outside of the railing, but on this day, every time I stuck to the middle between the rails, and there were never too many people clogging it, so it worked well. While going up, I would make small little switch backs, and I would look for specific ridged foot holds to help me continue to push up.
Once you get passed the railing, you get a brief reprieve, and then you make it to the next steep climb. It is not quite to the level of needing a railing, but it has to be pretty close to the same amount of steepness. Without the constraints of the railing, it makes it easier to create wider switchbacks, so you are not going up as much with each step, this adds a little bit of distance, but it will help the leg muscles out in the long run. Once atop this hill, it is a short finish to the actual top, and I went a little past the actual top each time to make sure I was getting the full mile in, and there were some trash cans, so I used them as a consistent turn around point.
I was interested to see what running down would be like. I have done this part so many times, and I used to fly down, well at least it feels like you are flying down. There was that added sense of reckless abandon that was had as a teenager, that I felt had left me at this point. I have done so many runs in the Morgan Hill Forest in New York, where I just could not get going when the downhills presented themselves, I thought it would probably be the same here. The biggest difference was the terrain in which I was running I found out. Stone Mountain is mainly just rock, it may be bumpy at times, but it is not like running down a hill filled with roots and only a little bit of wiggle room, and this makes Stone Mountain so much easier to run down. So I was able to move pretty quickly going down, especially after I got done with the steeper part. I was able to get those miles done in around 8 minutes going down, and going up I kept those miles around 11 minutes, so it was close to 20 minutes for one trip. (A little over two hours for all six trips for over 12.5 miles.)
At the bottom, I would take a small loop around a giant elevated plant box, and then I would go right back up and start the process again, and once I went up once, and people saw me go back down, and then I went up again, and I passed them, before they had made it to the top for the first time, this when they started to notice me, but at this point it was still just looks and maybe they would say something small. I also like to make eye contact and smile to let them know that we are all in this together, and I always hope that this taken with kindness and not as condescension. This also allowed me to make a small connection to people I knew I would see again. Made it to the top, and then went back down. Two done.
On the third one, more people started to talk to me and make comments about how many times have I done this, and that they could not believe that I was running it again, but at this point it was still smaller comments and smiles. Once at the top, I opened my clif bar, and I headed back down, and it felt good to know that I was halfway done and still feeling good. This was also the first time someone asked me how many times I was going to do it, so it was nice to tell them I was halfway. Also it is not easy to eat a clif bar going up or down a mountain, but I try my best not to choke.
On the fourth climb, many people who I saw going up on the first time were starting to make their way back down, and so I got more questions on this round and more comments about what I was doing, and there was a big group going down in matching red shirts, that I had seen at the top a couple of times, and they started to take an interest in me. On this round, there were still people who started around the same time I did still finishing their trip to get back to the bottom, and there were more groups of kids starting to climb up with families. My favorite interaction I heard was, “So why do they call it Stone Mountain?” His friends started to make fun of him, and he said he was kidding, so hopefully he was actually kidding, because I started laughing as I was running past too.
On the fifth climb I saw a family that had started at the same time I did for the first one, and when I had run past them a few times, I noticed that they were not speaking English, but this time going up the mountain the Dad asked in what was a little hard to understand how many times I was going to do it, so I told him six, and that I was on the fifth one, and I had a similar interaction with a few other people as I did my fifth repeat. One person commented on the fact that I was doing it without even listening to music, to which I replied that it was hard to run downhill while listening to something because it takes a lot of focus. There is so much processing that needs to be done quickly, so that a misstep is not taken, and thankfully on this day there were no falls. Also going down on this one, there was a kid who said to his family that he had seen me this five times, and I thought it was cool that he was actually accurate.
For my last climb, when I got to the bottom, the group in red shirts was sitting there waiting for other members of their group to arrive, and when they heard it was my last time going up, they all started to cheer for me, which was really cool, and if you read my paper about the Boston Marathon, you know that it means a lot to me when strangers cheer for me. I also saw the family that did not speak English again, and they held up one finger and gave a little cheer, because they knew that this was my last trip to the top, and there were a few other people as well that I had talked to in passing that also knew this was my last time that gave me a little cheer or said something like last one. There was a guy, who climbed the mountain with his kid in one of those carrying bookbags, and he called me a machine, but I thought what he did was also impressive.
I was starting to feel quite tired on the last climb, and it probably was part mental, because I knew it was my last time, my body felt like it would be okay to feel a little drained, but I made it! Then on the way back down I stopped for the first time, and I asked some people who had asked me what I was training for that I was running up and down the mountain so many times, and they were more than willing to take the picture.
While doing my last decent, I stopped two more times to take a picture of the two big climbs, so that I could put them on Strava for reference for those who do not know Stone Mountain, and I had to tell a few people that I was not going to be doing another climb, after they said they would see me soon, which almost made me want to do another climb. When I got to the bottom, I refilled my water pack, and did what any other normal person would do, and ran around the mountain to get to 18 miles for the day, but not before receiving a respectful nod from a guy I had talked to multiple times on my climbs. Then when I finished my loop, some guy came up to me at my car to ask me how many times I did it, and to tell me that it was awesome.
Was this a race? No, but it had a ton of crowd support. It felt so good to be at a place that is so meaningful to me, do something that is so meaningful to me, and have other people get involved, when it could have easily meant nothing to them. People are great, and that is what makes racing and running so awesome. They will never know how much it means to me that they are asking me these questions while I run past, but it is very meaningful and motivating. I always tried to answer with a smile on my face, and to not sound like I was dying from climbing up and down a mountain. Hopefully someone saw, and it made them want to run it too. This epic run netted me 4,000 feet of elevation gain, and it got me 7th on the Strava board for a segment that measures the amount of time it takes to go from the top to the bottom. One day I will be back, and I will do this seven times, and maybe I will even get a group and go to Stevie Bs afterward.
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