Excerpted from Great Adventures in North Carolina , by Lynn Setzer

We spent nearly two and a half hours learning how to get into the harness, how to tie knots, and how to communicate. The harness looked like a nylon maze. I couldn't identify a leg loop from a waist belt. I'm surprised I didn't hang myself stepping into and out of the thing. Then Burton showed me how—over and over and over—to tie figure-eight knots and then tie myself into the rope using a second figure-eight knot so that I would be secure. But I kept tying an overhand, not a figure eight."Everybody sees knots differently," Burton said. I was no different. Eventually, I learned to tie a figure eight instead of an overhand.

Once I'd mastered knots, we used trees to simulate belaying, the "process of securing the climber with the rope so as to create friction in the rope to hold a fall," as Burton explained it. (We weren't talking about preventing falls; we were talking about how to hold them. I vaguely wondered how scraped my knees would be by day's end.) Burton walked away from me to a tree and wrapped his rope to one side of it. Then he walked to another tree and wrapped his rope on the opposite side of that tree. He zigzagged through the woods around several trees and then stopped. Then I followed him, simulating the climb.

Throughout the course of my training, Burton commented several times on the role the mind plays in climbing. "The brain can shut down physical performance," he said several times. "If you get brain lock," he said, "you won't be able to climb. It's all about control. You have to stay in control. Part of what we're doing here is showing you that the equipment will work, so that you won't get brain lock about that."

What was he talking about? I was already getting a mild case of brain lock. I was overwhelmed. Knots, harnesses, ropes, belay devices, carabiners, chocks: I might as well have been learning to read Chinese. If I made a mistake, I could endanger both Burton and myself. But Burton exuded confidence enough for both of us.

Move on to Twice Up Two-Pitch

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Explore the Southeast! North Carolina Getaways - Cruise past glittering waterfalls and scale gnarly granite. Florida Frolics - Leave Disney in your wake as you sail and fish off the coast of Florida. Wild West Virginia - Learn what all the fuss is about in the East's most rugged wildlands.

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