The Guide’s Beta: North Carolina’s Best Trad Adventures

May 2, 2025

forreststavish

Part of our mission at Fox Mountain Guides is to educate climbers of all skill levels. We do that in our day to day guiding, courses, and cover special topics in our blog posts. You’ve seen gear reviews and tech tips, but it can be hard to find good route beta. In this new blog series, our goal is to provide key beta for North Carolina’s best trad adventures. These routes are either of classic status or more obscure, but still worthy of becoming the next NC Classic.

What will The Guide’s Beta cover?

We will cover routes from Whiteside Mountain in Highlands North Carolina to Moores Wall in Hanging Rock State Park and everything in between. Some routes are well known while others deserve more attention. The intent of these blogs is to provide detailed beta for a successful ascent of the route. If you’re going for an onsight attempt of any of these routes, then these blogs may not be for you. However, if you’re wanting to gather as much data as possible to set yourself up for success, you have come to the right place.

This Guide’s Beta Series will provide details about the route including a brief history if available. We want these blogs to be easy to use, so each one will have the same basic layout. We will provide an introduction with history, and then present each route from approach to descent. If there are key gear placements, tricky descent beta, or specific considerations for the route, we will discuss it in these blogs. We will also reference technical skills like “tethering on multi-pitch rock climbs” with links from our older blogs. This will help you brush up on those specific skills.

If you have a route you would like us to include, let us know. We are going to start our series off with The Nose of Looking Glass Rock, arguably the most classic multi-pitch route in North Carolina and possibly the East Coast. Stay tuned for beta on North Carolina’s best trad adventures!