Writing about Melissa Wine is always a challenge. Melissa was, like most of us, a riddle wrapped in an enigma surrounded by a mystery. She loved quiet mountains and riversides, heavy metal and loud bars, could drink like a fish and swear like a sailor, had a temper like a thunderstorm and a heart that was sometimes as tough as whale bone and others as fragile as spun glass.
She was my best friend in a time when that meant much more than it does in the Facebook age.
We drove up to Reddish Knob to watch meteor showers over the VA/WV border, listened to jazz and bluegrass on the Oldies Show on NPR, read and loved (or hated) the same novels and had long discussions about them, shopped kitschy pawn shops and backstreet jewelry stores, and once sang the entirety of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" while preparing lasangne for my housemates, who laughed at us the entire time.
Before we were bolting lines at any crag, Melissa and I were devouring climbing; we top roped and learned to place and fall on gear and set-up simple lines on the short cliffs of the Shenandoah Valley: Hidden Rocks, Hone Quarry, Lover’s Leap, Goshen Pass, honing our skills for the challenging sandbagged classics of Seneca Rocks.
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| Melissa at the base of Snakeskin Cowboys, Riven Rock Park, Rawley Springs, VA |
We were humbled and challenged by the bulletproof sandstone of New River and the granite of Old Rag. We bouldered almost every stone over the height of ten feet in Gum Run and Rawley Springs, on Dictum Ridge and Second Mountain. We spent a lot of time in a little shop called Wilderness Voyagers, with a great crew of hard-climbing outdoors loving men and women.
We found our way to Pendleton County, and to Franklin, where our lives changed, forever.
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| Working into the crux of Potential Energy, Contact Zone, Franklin Gorge |
One run up the juggy faces, and we were hooked. Weeks were spent plotting, and our climbing days were spent learning at light speed around a core group whose names could be found in any guidebook to Eastern United States climbing; Burcham, Tracy and her future husband Eddie Begoon, George Powell, Howard and Amy Clark, Darrell Hensley, Angie McGinnis, Mike Artz, Tony Barnes, Tom Cecil, and Harrison Shull. These folks had created a climbing community which became a nursery for young climbers, a place for testing personal limits, pushing the grade and learning about the basics of bolting and the ethics of sport versus traditional climbing.
It was here that George Powell and I completed the first ascent of Anchor's Away, and shortly thereafter Melissa and I put up our first sport route together, Belly of the Whale.
It was here that George Powell and I completed the first ascent of Anchor's Away, and shortly thereafter Melissa and I put up our first sport route together, Belly of the Whale.
Over the next four years, we put up Aloha and Hard Thang, and assisted Darrell and John with their routes Edge-U-Cation, Walk the Plank, and Rock Your World. Melissa spent countless hours in freezing conditions working with me trying to carve a working line out of the face just left of Belly before admitting that it just wasn't going to go. We climbed every line below 5.12 at Franklin and fell off several of the 12s with determined laughter.
We met some amazing climbers from across the nation and learned some hard lessons about impact when the area was included in several publications and traffic increased exponentially overnight. We watched and read as the problems plaguing our secret garden were debated and dissected in the national climbing press and, in some cases, the global climbing community.
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| Melissa on the first ascent of Aloha, Franklin Gorge, Franklin, WV |
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| Setting up for another day on the route that just wouldn't go, Franklin Gorge |
We met some amazing climbers from across the nation and learned some hard lessons about impact when the area was included in several publications and traffic increased exponentially overnight. We watched and read as the problems plaguing our secret garden were debated and dissected in the national climbing press and, in some cases, the global climbing community.
And, eventually, with a nudge from the previous generation, we found Smoke Hole.
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| Leading Batteries Not Included, Long Branch, Smoke Hole Canyon |
After Troy Johnson and I had broken ground, so to speak, Melissa Wine and Rachel Levinson joined us in a wave of stoke, and between the four of us routes began falling like dominoes.
The lady crushers ran up the FAs of routes like Hummingbird and Hippo's Head, repeated Through the Looking Glass and Hawk, then, further afield, bouldered in the Rawley Maze, on Second Mountain and Dictum, redpointed classics like Four Sheets to the Wind, Triple S, Rico Suave, and The Entertainer and kept coming back for more.
In the course of one frigid winter, Melissa and I put up six routes, including Batteries Not included and Overtime in Smoke Hole, and The Mushroom Tower and Rock of Ages in Germany Valley.
The lady crushers ran up the FAs of routes like Hummingbird and Hippo's Head, repeated Through the Looking Glass and Hawk, then, further afield, bouldered in the Rawley Maze, on Second Mountain and Dictum, redpointed classics like Four Sheets to the Wind, Triple S, Rico Suave, and The Entertainer and kept coming back for more.
In the course of one frigid winter, Melissa and I put up six routes, including Batteries Not included and Overtime in Smoke Hole, and The Mushroom Tower and Rock of Ages in Germany Valley.
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| Cleaning gear and crushing moves on Four Sheets to the Wind, NRG |
We were pushing our envelope, each exploring the boundaries of their own comfort level; sometimes progressing rapidly, cleaning and drilling a line in a single day on rappel, sometimes forging ground-up, often solo, in fits and starts.
I was working a construction job that had very little to offer the soul, and took the toll of a Titan on the body; pouring and finishing concrete three to five days a week, ten to twelve hours each day of wading shin-deep in material with the consistency of thick oatmeal, kneeling and trowelling for hours around some architect’s insane idea of a retaining wall; running jackhammer and building forms, tying rebar and then turning around to take it all apart again.
The mountains were my only haven of sanity and balance. My small cadre of climbing partners was my family.
And Melissa was the star by which I steered, the sun that shone on my world, my enthusiastic partner in every hare-brained misadventure and exploration.
Whether setting out into a -20F day to bolt new lines (we bailed), riding my GPz 750 Kawasaki down to Goshen to boulder and swim and just hang out, heading out at midnight to hear a band in a new bar with people we just met at the last one, or putting up new trad lines on lead with sketchy gear and bad landings, Melissa Wine was always good to go.
Time passed, friends moved on or moved away, life changed, and the distance between two friends who fell in love with each other and climbing began to tell. A series of bad climbing falls, one on Critter Crack at Seneca and two more on a trad project in Smoke Hole, left Melissa with a hairline fracture in her ankle. Desperate for money, she took a job in the poultry industry, working in the nastiest of conditions, on an egg farm, in winter.
After 6 months of this, she quit and accepted a job as a cashier at Wal-Mart, where she soon began to make new friends and move up through the ranks of employees.
When I decided to quit my hellish construction job and spend the fall and winter exploring the West, Melissa told me that she couldn't just walk away from her family, her new job and her life in the Valley. Three days later, she moved out of our cabin in Rawley Springs, and one of the most amazing chapters of my life came to an end.
The rest is history; I went west and had many trials, epics and misadventures in Yosemite, Red Rocks, the Sierra, Joshua Tree, Owens River Gorge, and Flagstaff, the beginning of a life that has taken me to 47 of 50 states, putting up 200 routes and dozens of new boulder problems along the way, and finding the woman who has weathered every storm, shared every victory, and stood by me through thick and thin, famine and plenty, sunshine and storm, despite all my rough edges, extreme opinions, and un-PC judgements, the amazing Cindy Bender, who honored me by taking the last name of Gray.
Melissa doesn't climb, now; she manages the Dollar General in a quiet little town just over the mountain from my home, and occasionally we run into each other in the grocery store or around town. She has weathered the years far better than I have, and her smile is just as bright when she thinks back on those days with a wistful nostalgia, those times "when my life was so much more exciting and interesting".
Melissa will forever be the amazing woman with whom I discovered so much of myself, the Shenandoah Valley, country life, and climbing, a country girl and old soul with whom I fell deeply in and never quite out of love with, not for many years after we parted company.
If I often wish things had gone differently, it is not for myself or what-could-have been, but because I wish her life had gone down a different road, to a place of happiness and realization of her amazing potential, surrounded by friends.
I've been trying to write this for seven or eight months, and it has been a challenge, for all the reasons above and because I lost my Dad in June and things with my family and that of my wife have just taken precedence.
Today I sat down and decided to finish this part, at least, to share with you, gentle reader, a glimpse, a snapshot, and my memories of an incredible woman who shared the journey and was a cornerstone of Smoke Hole climbing.
To fail is to be human, to overcome defeat, to try to be more is inspiring and to succeed, divine. To spend as much time and love lifting up others as we do in pursuit of our own dreams is the highest path we can aspire to walk.
It is important to acknowledge and remember; we stand on the shoulders of giants.
These are the unsung heroes of Smoke Hole Canyon; I'm just the guy who was lucky enough to climb with them and call them my friends.
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| Leaving the Endless Wall after a full day of sending. |
The mountains were my only haven of sanity and balance. My small cadre of climbing partners was my family.
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| L to R: Troy Johnson, Melissa, Tom Bunk and Owen Gartland, Ninja Walls, Smoke Hole Canyon |
And Melissa was the star by which I steered, the sun that shone on my world, my enthusiastic partner in every hare-brained misadventure and exploration.
Whether setting out into a -20F day to bolt new lines (we bailed), riding my GPz 750 Kawasaki down to Goshen to boulder and swim and just hang out, heading out at midnight to hear a band in a new bar with people we just met at the last one, or putting up new trad lines on lead with sketchy gear and bad landings, Melissa Wine was always good to go.
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| Gunsight to South Peak top-out, Seneca Rocks, WV. Melissa led this as her first gear lead a week later, and went on to put up a dozen trad routes in the next year. |
Time passed, friends moved on or moved away, life changed, and the distance between two friends who fell in love with each other and climbing began to tell. A series of bad climbing falls, one on Critter Crack at Seneca and two more on a trad project in Smoke Hole, left Melissa with a hairline fracture in her ankle. Desperate for money, she took a job in the poultry industry, working in the nastiest of conditions, on an egg farm, in winter.
After 6 months of this, she quit and accepted a job as a cashier at Wal-Mart, where she soon began to make new friends and move up through the ranks of employees.
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| Melissa and Caspian, North Peak of Seneca |
When I decided to quit my hellish construction job and spend the fall and winter exploring the West, Melissa told me that she couldn't just walk away from her family, her new job and her life in the Valley. Three days later, she moved out of our cabin in Rawley Springs, and one of the most amazing chapters of my life came to an end.
The rest is history; I went west and had many trials, epics and misadventures in Yosemite, Red Rocks, the Sierra, Joshua Tree, Owens River Gorge, and Flagstaff, the beginning of a life that has taken me to 47 of 50 states, putting up 200 routes and dozens of new boulder problems along the way, and finding the woman who has weathered every storm, shared every victory, and stood by me through thick and thin, famine and plenty, sunshine and storm, despite all my rough edges, extreme opinions, and un-PC judgements, the amazing Cindy Bender, who honored me by taking the last name of Gray.
Melissa doesn't climb, now; she manages the Dollar General in a quiet little town just over the mountain from my home, and occasionally we run into each other in the grocery store or around town. She has weathered the years far better than I have, and her smile is just as bright when she thinks back on those days with a wistful nostalgia, those times "when my life was so much more exciting and interesting".
Melissa will forever be the amazing woman with whom I discovered so much of myself, the Shenandoah Valley, country life, and climbing, a country girl and old soul with whom I fell deeply in and never quite out of love with, not for many years after we parted company.
If I often wish things had gone differently, it is not for myself or what-could-have been, but because I wish her life had gone down a different road, to a place of happiness and realization of her amazing potential, surrounded by friends.
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| Soloing up into the Gunsight Notch of Seneca Rocks |
I've been trying to write this for seven or eight months, and it has been a challenge, for all the reasons above and because I lost my Dad in June and things with my family and that of my wife have just taken precedence.
Today I sat down and decided to finish this part, at least, to share with you, gentle reader, a glimpse, a snapshot, and my memories of an incredible woman who shared the journey and was a cornerstone of Smoke Hole climbing.
We all know heroes; friends and strangers who go out of their way for no better reason than to to pay it forward from a place of plenty, to hold themselves accountable, if only for a while, to a standard that we can be better, all of us.
To fail is to be human, to overcome defeat, to try to be more is inspiring and to succeed, divine. To spend as much time and love lifting up others as we do in pursuit of our own dreams is the highest path we can aspire to walk.
It is important to acknowledge and remember; we stand on the shoulders of giants.
These are the unsung heroes of Smoke Hole Canyon; I'm just the guy who was lucky enough to climb with them and call them my friends.
