Daniel DeMoss

Today, I had the awesome opportunity to deep water solo-climbing at Lake Eufaula. One of my climbing buddies, Ben Haan, and I got invited out to the lake by our good friend, John Otjen and were ferried across the lake by boat to the cliffs by the dam. It was there that we were able to climb the cliffs, which I would guess were about 30 feet high. The water was nearly 40 feet deep under the cliffs, which made it possible to climb with no ropes! It was a blast. I was able to complete both of the routes that were set by Maury Birdwell, with some variations because of my poor memory of the routes. After completing the red route without any falls, I felt kind of cheated, so I climbed back up to try a couple of crazy moves and fall. Well, I fell, and it was such a rush to just fall back into the water. After doing that several times, I decided to go for the green route. I didn’t think I’d do it without any falls, but gave it a try anyway. I ended up tracking a little further to the left than you see in the diagram, traversing under the lower roof and coming up under the higher one. I onsighted it and jumped back into the water from the top. It was such a blast!

You can find more information on the routes on MountainProject.com.