Deep Water Solo

The summer in Maine is an explosion. The world that had been so deeply dormant as to seem dead under a blanket of snow, bursts into vibrant shades of greens in what seems like a blink of an eye. Reinvigorated by a sun that once again heats and bathes the world in energy, plants and animals spring forth, and soon the air feels alive with the calls of frogs, insects, and my favorite, the arrival of migratory warblers.

My time in coastal Maine was strongly tied to the seasons. It was the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I was holed up in a friend’s house with 5 others, with nothing to do except wait out the disease, and go outside. As the weather warmed, I began running outside regularly, and though at first I ran mostly on the streets in town, I began to feel more and more drawn toward the woodsy trails that the region had. I would look on Google maps for trails, and since I had no car at the time, I would run to the trailhead, and then run the trail, and then run back, sometimes being out for 2 or 3 hours at a time.

At some point, I realized that the biggest joy was running a trail I had not run before, and being surprised by what I would find at each turn, be it lilypad-filled ponds, or abandoned structures, or any of the other fascinations that the Northeast tends to bring. In just a short while, I had run every trail listed on Google Maps and Open Street Maps within a ~4-5 mile radius from the house, and I turned my attention to the smaller, often nearly hidden trails that existed unmarked in the green patches around streams or other vacant land. I would find a green area on Open Street Maps, run a circle around it, and poke around at anything that looked like a trail leading into it. I would then systematically run every trail in that area, and use a phone app to plot the locations of said trails. I managed to find several miles of trails this way, and by the end of my stay, Open Street Maps had a complete record of all the trails in my vicinity, thanks to my efforts.

One such trail that I discovered was at the end of a housing development. Between some houses, a dirt path led to a hilly area, and rounding a bend, you could see several deep pools in the ground, surrounded on most sides by steep cliffs going up 20 or 30 feet. This was an abandoned quarry site, and hardly anyone seemed to visit! I came back to this place several times to run around the quarry pools, observing deer, eagles, various species of ducks, and countless more varieties of wildlife that lived in the area. At some point it occurred to me that this might be a good place to try deep water soloing, that is, climbing over deep water with no rope or harness, and just splashing into the water in the case of a fall. The pools were certainly deep enough, and they all had good ways to access the water level on one side, while having vertical cliffs on all other sides.

Some time in June, another friend of mine came to visit the house, and she, together with me and one of my housemates, were discussing what outdoor trips we could do. I knew we were all into climbing and itching to get a session in with the gyms all closed for the pandemic, so I mentioned this abandoned quarry I had found. In no time we were packing our climbing shoes, bathing suits, towels, and chalk.

We arrived at the quarry in our bathing suits, walking around the area looking for the best spots. An older couple walked by and told us the area was going to turn into a housing development soon, and so for some reason we shouldn’t go in the water. We were clearly allowed to be outside of the water, and there didn’t seem to be any written indication to suggest we shouldn’t be in the water, so we waited until they left, and then began approaching the first pool. As we walked down a slope to get to the water edge, we nearly ran into a large hornet’s nest on a rocky overhang above our heads. A couple of wasps started flying around us, and we ran away quickly, managing to avoid getting stung.

Returning to the water edge, taking a long detour to avoid the wasps, we began to have doubts about our plan. The water was less clean than I had remembered, and we could see plastic bottles and old car tyres around the edge. Still, we were already here and there was rock around us, so we walked to the start of the cliff, and began climbing horizontally, traversing farther from the flat shore and toward the area where the cliff was taller. This was quite easy climbing, except for the crumbly, flaky, and often dirty rock. We were maybe 15 feet out when my roommate yelled, “this cliff is full of spiders! And they’re massive!”

We looked around near our handholds, and sure enough the entire wall was crawling with some of the most massive, terrifying looking spiders I had ever seen. We all, without another moment of hesitation, began scrambling back toward the shore to leave this cursed wall of spiders. My roommate, who had been climbing cautiously up until then, grabbed a loose rock and fell backwards, fully submerging himself in the dirty pool.

When he surfaced, he gasped and made us aware of just how cold the water was. As it turns out, that explosion of sunlight and warmth that came with the summer in Maine had not been sufficient to warm the water any deeper than about a foot from the surface, and everything below that was, “freezing”, as my friend described. I’m sure it was closer to 4 degrees. My other friend exclaimed, “Gonna be extra careful to not fall in…” and as if it were a scene in a movie, also lost her footing and fell backwards into the water. I was trembling at this point, and suggested to the two swimmers that maybe I should jump in as well and avoid having to struggle to not fall in while choosing spiderless holds to grab onto, but they urged me to keep going. Apparently, their time in the icy dirty stagnant water was subpar.

I made it back to the shore dry and spiderless, the other two also soon swam back to join me, and we waited for a while in the sun until they dried off and regained sensation in their fingers and toes. I’m sure one of us remarked that this had been a bad idea from the start and that the wasps had surely been trying to warn us. It didn’t matter. In a few minutes we wanted more.

We walked to the next pool and were more careful to observe the water on this one. It was a bit clearer than the water in the first one. We couldn’t see any obvious trash strewn about. There were also fish swimming in it, unlike the other one, which suggested that if the water hadn’t killed them, it wouldn’t kill us either. But mixed with the fish were leeches, so we might get our humors rebalanced while we were here. Maybe that was another good thing.

We waited around anxiously, sizing up the water and the rocks around it. In this pool, we would have to start from where we were, swim maybe 25 feet to the other side, and start climbing straight out from the water. Finally, we decided to just go for it, and one by one we waded out until the water was deeper than we could stand. It was also cold here, but at least we were prepared, and we shivered and swam across and started climbing. I made it maybe 6 feet up from the surface of the water, the other two about the same, but soon we all realized that this wall was also infested with spiders. One by one, we let go and jumped back into the water. We swam back to shore, panting and shivering, and told stories about people we knew who had broken bones while climbing. Really, we were the lucky ones in getting about 20 feet total of climbing in, with no physical injuries to speak of, and probably only minor toxin exposure from the water.

Once we were warmed up enough, we began our walk back out of the quarry area. As we exited, we noticed a big sign off to the side, which we hadn’t seen on the way in and that I had also somehow missed in all my times of visiting this place to run. On the sign, in all capital letters, it said:

WARNING: RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL

DO NOT TAKE OBJECTS FROM QUARRY SITE