It's a "New" World

Last weekend (Wednesday-Thursday) I had one of the most amazing climbing outings of my life. On Monday night I was at work drying up from not getting to climb enough outside. I told Grace this. So she said, "Ok, let's go climb this weekend". And so a trip was born. We invited other people, but the inclement weather forced people to bail. But I was determined to go climbing. So on Tuesday night Grace drove down from Northern Virginia to meet up with me. I got off of work at 10pm and met up with her at CNU. From there we started the drive out west. We swung shifts of driving, but even still ended up passing out at a rest stop about 70 miles outside of Fayetteville. 

After a collective 2 hours of sleep, I was anxious to get climbing. We arrived at the Endless Wall at around 8am. The sky was gray, and threatened to open up, but the temperature was perfect. We hiked down to the Cirque, and I nervously paced infront of Trebuchet. This will probably be my long term project, and I've been psyching myself up for this climb. For now I'm just trying to focus on the 5.13c lower section of the climb. Mostly it's a lot of committing lunges to decent holds. At the 5th bolt there is a deadpoint to a jug. Apparently it's possible to do it without cutting feet, but for whatever reason I couldn't do it without cutting feet.

Me monkeying around on Trebuchet (5.13c)

 After a couple hours of projecting, we moved out, and headed to the Upper Meadow. At the meadow we got on Infatuation (5.7), Berecik (5.8), and Pedelante (5.9). Pedelante seemed a bit hard to me, awkward moves, but definitely fun. If anybody get's on Berecik, BEWARE!! There is an angry Black Jacket hanging out on this climb. Just the week before it stung our friend Tate in the face! After climbing these moderates, I got on Eye of Mordor (5.13a). I sent this rig in January when it was 26 degrees outside. This time around the weather was good. I didn't pull the crux, just having some fun on it! I lowered down from the route and we made a fun rope swing off the route. After climbing we headed to the Summersville Campground, which is free!! That was the only reason we went there! Grace went straight to bed, and I hung out with some rowdy West Virginians! Eventually they did get to rowdy, so I headed too bed, and made a point of locking Olga up.

Hiking into Upper Meadow

Smelling the Roses

The Mordor Swing

Tired after the Eye of Mordor (5.13a)

Hitchin?

The next day we woke up to stunningly clear blue skies. Since it didn't look like rain was going to happen, we headed out to Summersville Lake to climb. The original plan was to head to Orange Oswald and climb the moderates there, but we ended up stopping at Under the Milky-Way (5.11d), and the 5.9's around the corner. The 5.9's were fun, a little bit tough. Under the Milky-Way was an absolutely stunning climb, with very intriguing moves on an arete. 

After the second bolt, the sun is out to destroy your sight (Under the Milky-Way 5.11d)

Under the Milky Way (5.11d)

While I was lowering off Under the Milky-Way, we had a conversation with another group of climbers. They said that they had just gotten off of Narcissis (5.12a). Internally I scoffed because most people are out to get on that climb specifically. They tell me I should try the Direct start which comes in at 5.12d. Somehow in my mind I got convinced into it. But first we had to go get on Hippy Dreams (5.7). I had never been on this climb and it's a classic, so why not? We climbed Hippy Dreams in the setting sun, enjoying the views of the lake, and the pleasure of each others company. Taking in the fact that nobody else would get to see such an amazing sunset on the beautiful day. After climbing Hippy Dreams we casually walked back to Narcissus Cave, and started setting up. By the time we got set up it was dark. With headlamp on, I tried to do the start boulder problem. I couldn't quite pull it, be it from physical fatigue, mental fatigue, or just plainly not strong enough. I'm not sure, but it looks like one tough move off the ground, followed by easier climbing. After throwing in the towel on the direct start, I headed up the normal climb. I had an odd connection with this route, and not a pleasant one. This is the route that all of the rock jocks come to redpoint. So I to really wanted to get this route. About half-way up I started getting tired, thrusting from jug to jug, trying so hard because I wanted this climb. Just as I was about to fall, something clicked inside my mind. Let it go. I don't need this climb, why can't I just let go of my ego, and enjoy the pure and simple fun of climbing. As soon as I realized how much fun I was having, I continued climbing up, just savoring the amazing climbing. I got to a bad bat-hang/ high heel rest, and looked down at the ground. I couldn't see anything except for the rock that my headlamp illuminated. Everything else was left behind. I pulled the crux, clipped the chains, and let out a yell of pure joy. Life was suddenly clear, and I knew that I didn't want to leave. 

Narcissus Cave, about to go get on Hippie Dreams

We hiked out, dreaming of pizza. But by the time we got to Pies and Pints they had been closed for an hour. Instead we made Mountain House lasagna in the gas station parking lot. We began the long drive home, and acted like goof balls on the way.

Safety first kids.

How I feel after climbing Hippy Dreams

Next week we'll be spending 5 days at the Red! Happy Climbing!

All Work and No Play

I've been slacking, I know. I haven't posted in almost a year. I'd love to say that it's been a super busy year, but it hasn't. I've just been lazy. I work everyday at Virginia Beach Rock Gym, and any day I don't work, I climb. On top of the working, I've managed to go on 5 or 6 climbing trips around the Southeast. Most of the trips have been to West Virginia, going to the New River Gorge, Franklin, and Seneca. The only place that I've actually managed to climb in Virginia is Iron Gate. Turns out Franklin and Iron Gate are the exact same distance away. Iron Gate has a lot of rusted bolts, and no guidebook. Getting to the crag seemed to be the hardest part. We ended up bushwacking above the cliff line unknown to us. We ended up rappelling in on a sketchy sling. When we finally did get to climbing, we got on four climbs. An unknown 5.9 mixed slab climb, a 5.10b called Mind Games that Jonathan had told us to get on, a short 5.5, and a 5.12c called Ganja. Of all of them my favorite was Mind Games, fun movement on beautiful orange rock, with a killer view of the James River. A good trip to see what was out there, but I don't think I'll return to climb there again.

Ganja 5.12b/c

Rainbow Rocks from Iron Gate

I've also taken one very memorable trip to Linville Gorge where we got lost, and ended up getting on a random climb that we couldn't find in any guidebook. Somebody at the cliff remarked that they had never seen anybody climb it. Probably not a first ascent, but definitely a cool feeling. I thought that the climb was Little Corner (5.6). Later on we found the true Little Corner, which turned out to be a lot harder than the first climb. I definitely plan on heading back to Linville to get on some of the more classic climbs.

Lake James from Shortoff Mountain

1st pitch of Little Corner (5.6)

3rd pitch of Little Corner

Hiking in the Gorge

One of my favorite locations in West Virginia (mostly because it's the closest) is Franklin Gorge. At first Franklin seems like a pretty small area, but in reality the cliff line keeps going and going. Every time I go, I make a point to get on something new. I don't own a guidebook for the area so everything is a guess! So far I've gotten on about 10 routes, my favorite one is called "Blood, Sweat, and Chalk". It's a 5.9+ on beautiful jugs. It's pretty tall too, around 90 feet of climbing.

Most recently me and Chris Presley (Yes he's related to Elvis) went to Seneca Rocks. It was Chris' first time outside climbing, so I decided to throw him in the deep end. Instead of cragging around and looking for hard climbs, we opted to attempt to climb the whole ridge line of Seneca. This ended up being a wonderful idea. We woke up at 6am, packed up, and hiked in. By 6:30 we were at the South End, tied in and ready to climb. Once again in true unpreparedness, we had no idea where we were going. Just following the path of least resistance. Carrying packs that were without a doubt too big, we set off. The first pitch headed up a left facing corner with big in-cut jugs that was protected very easily. I cut the first pitch off at about 80 feet, so that Chris and I could both decide on what looked like the PLR (Path of least resistance). I belayed Chris up to the small ledge, and we decided that continuing up the corner looked easiest. The second pitch was the first crux, but only the first 5 feet. Awkward laybacking lead to a low 5th class slab scramble. The second pitch ended on a beautiful belay ledge that was basking in the rising sun.

Hiking up to Seneca

Hiking up to the South End

I made a habit of looking at the next pitch and saying, "This next pitch is looking pretty hard". So yes, the pitch was looking a little hard, kind of wide. In my mind I was contemplating bailing off, but I convinced myself that we had just drove 6.5 hours to do this, and damn it we were going to do it. After an easy 60 foot traverse in which I clipped three manky pitons. After the traverse I headed up to a large crack, which had a ton of face holds, and even a cool mono pocket. Instead of continuing up into the blank face, a popped out around the arete and continued onto the face to belay off a tree. 2 more pitches of easy traversing brought us to a large ledge where we had our first break, and the wonderful realization that we didn't have any food. After a 20 minute break, having deep meaningful conversations about life, we headed up to the top of the ridge.

We separated it in two zig zagged pitches and came to a pretty cool gap in the rock where we could see through to the other side. We decided to untie and free solo the summit pinnacle of Humphrey's Head. 

About 20 minutes after, we continued heading up. Now facing the very intimidating Cockscomb. From our point of view it appeared overhanging on the main face. Through the center of the pinnacle was a chimney that went clear through to the other side. We opted to head through the chimney, which only took one piece of protection. To make it through the chimney we had to take our packs off and throw them ahead of us. Once though the chimney, we headed straight up onto the west face of the Cockscomb, with mostly pitons for protection. This pitch seemed to be the crux, with a weird rock over onto a bad side pull. After topping out the Cockscomb, we sat on the summit and watched the vultures circling around below us. 

Standing in front of the Cockscomb, the chimney is right between my legs!

From the summit of the Cockscomb, we traversed the ridge, had one short 30 foot rock step, that spat us out onto another huge ledge, where we stopped, pretended to eat, and got into talks about life and climbing. After our break, we headed up to the South Peak, traversing the scary ridge, eventually hitting an anchor, and calling it a day. 

Somewhere near the South Peak

Climbing makes me dance!

South Peak Ridge

Descending through hip deep leaves! 

Climbing trips are a great way to get in some serious power bonding. It's really either going to make or break a relationship. On most climbing trips I've been on, I've made amazing new friends. Monsieur Presley was no exception. Happy Climbing!

Seneca Rocks

I had decided about 1.5 months ago that I wanted to take Julie outside climbing. I wasn't sure where to go at the time, I just knew that climbing was the goal. After asking a few people at the gym, I got a group together. We left Wednesday night and would come back on Sunday. A friend from Oregon that had been road tripping around the states, and took a great photo of Seneca Rocks in West Virginia. I decided that Seneca Rocks would be a beautiful place to go climb, and finalized the plan to go. The drive out is beautiful in the daylight, but the road into Seneca can be dangerous. We arrived at the campground around 1:30am, set up camp, had a few beers, and crashed for the morning. 

Thursday morning we awoke to some perfect West Virginian rain. Not super conductive of rock climbing. We bojangled around (according to Julie and Urban Dictionary this is a word.) waiting for the clouds to clear, but it never happened. We headed to Yokum's, sat on the porch and played card games to pass the time. 

 Rainy Seneca

 Waiting for a Clearing

Hmmmm.....BS!

After playing card games, we went to the visitor's center, asking about weather, and trails to the climbs. The lady behind the counter said two things. "It barely rains here", and, "There's only one trail". These to nuggets of information we're both lies. Not her fault though, she only knew of the hiking trail to the overlook. After Erica bought some awesome books on mushrooms and insects, Christine decided to give us all a lesson on headstands....because....well....why not?!

 Erica's Headstand

Christine's Headstand!

Julie's Headstand!

Trust me here, you don't want to see my headstand! After headstand sessions, we drove up Roy Gap Rd. where we met a great guy named Ricardo. He was a photographer, who also turned out to be our campsite neighbor. He was super nice and shared stories of his son, wife, and stories from Chile! Wherever he is we hope he is having a great time!

After some headstands we headed back to camp to check on the camp gear under the tarp, while there we waited for an hour and practiced our flagpoles!

Erica and Ricardo on the Bridge

Apparently there are some bombs in West Virginia

Julie's Flagpole 

Christine's Flagpole

Erica's Flagpole

Julie's Bathang!!

After monkeying around in camp, we headed back to Seneca to hike to the top. Everybody else decided (smartly) to not take packs up. Me on the otherhand did, and I suffered. It also didn't help that everybody was either a cross-fit junky, or cross-country runner. I gasped my way up the trail, and we made it to the lookout deck in about 35 minutes. The lookout was beautiful, despite being in and out of the clouds.

Picking Berries!

At the top of the Hike

The overlook at the top!

After the summit we headed down and the clouds started breaking apart for the sunset. We headed into town, got some beverages, and headed back to camp.

Seneca at Sunset

Safety First here at Seneca!

At the Camp with Ricardo

After our first rainy day, we woke up to brilliant sunshine, but unlike Virginia Beach, it was actually still cool outside! We got a lazy morning start (bojanglin'), ate breakfast, and headed out to the rock. After reading the book, we decided to head to the lower slabs. We hiked up the same path, this time my pack was even heavier, finding the trail that branched out, we headed down. We warmed up on R2D2, a sweet 5.5 in a corner crack system. The climbing "crux" was the first 30 feet, after that it was low 5th class to the top. After first leading it, and everybody else had toproped it, I decided I wanted to free solo the climb and clean the anchor at the top. Well I'm typing this right now so the solo went well, and I felt great at the top! I set up another toprope on a 5.8 that I don't know the name of! All I know is that it was fun! 

 Julie on R2D2

 View from the top of R2D2

View of the Rocks

Erica on the 5.8

Julie on the 5.8

Julie learning to rappel

After climbing and exploring around the area, I decided to take Julie on an adventure, this being her first time outdoor climbing. I wanted to show her some awesome exposure and a beautiful sunset. I had planned on going up to the Gunsight Notch, then up the amazing South Peak. Julie and I started hiking from Lower Slabs and ran into an Italian couple, who said the we wouldn't be able to access Gunsight Notch from the West Face, and were also a fair hike away. We thanked them for thier information, and contiued to head up. Worst comes to worst, we have a good hike. Not to much later we came up to the cliff face directly below the Gunsight Notch. I didn't even bother looking at the guide book, wanting to adventure climb up it. I found the path of least resistance, a left facing flake that went up about 60ft to a large ledge. I led the route, only needed to place 5 or 6 peices, and tried to dodge the huge loose blocks. The top had an odd crux, that was hard to pull, especially with the weighted pack. It involved a heel hook and left hand lock-off. I had to take once, but then figured it out. I would say the grade would be 5.8, but it's Seneca Rocks, it was probably only 5.6. After the climb, it turned into a hike up big ledges all the way to the Notch.

Julie following the 1st pitch.

Julie on the Notch!

South Peak!

We stayed at the notch for a few minutes taking in the beautiful sunset. Soon I started leading up the South Peak, quickly I realized I was "off-route" and away from the path of least resistance. Instead of going to the right of the fin, I went to the left, which turned out to be super exposed and very fun. A bigger plus is that so many people had bailed gear, that I only ended up putting in one hex at the start. I also threw in a 30ft runout, which felt amazing! I belayed Julie up and we enjoyed a spectacular few minutes basking in the sun. Soon we rappelled from the summit to a big ledge...barely.

Julie Rappeling down.

After rapping of the top, I put the rope away. Thinking that this ledge would eventually lead towards the ground. We followed the ledge down and south, hitting 10-20ft rock steps, that we down climbed. Some of them were very commiting, and involed some tough moves. Julies was completely fine the whole time and we made it to the ground after what felt like a long time descending. We eventually came out on Roy Gap Rd., realizing that we had to meet Christine and Erica in 10 minutes. So we jogged down the road with our packs (I wish I could run cross-country!) We made it on time, but they weren't there. Eventually they came driving down the country road into Seneca. We headed back to camp tired, and in my case sore. 

Christine demonstrates what a banana does.

After a slightly restful night we arose to another glorious day of sunshine. Erica made us some amazing breakfast burritos that filled us up for the whole day. We decided to head to Franklin Gorge, about 25 miles from the Seneca. Franklin Gorge is on private land, but the owners have allowed climbing on it. Unfortunately the cliffs have been graffitied, which is to bad, but head uphill for 5 minutes and there are some seriously classic climbs. Erica and I climbed a 5.10+ that was super juggy but had some huge (lunges for me, dyno's for Erica) moves on it. While we climbed this, Christine and Julie we're putting up their own 5.7 around the corner. While they were playing around on that, Erica and I went and climbed a 5.9 called "Aloha".  The route was not a gimme, it started in a very intriguing stemming corner, where the holds weren't all there.

Julie on "Aloha".

Erica leading "Aloha"

After Julie cleaned the route, Erica told us of this long 5.9+ a little ways up the cliff called, "Blood, Sweat, and Chalk". The climb was on amazing jugs with a crux section on positive crimps. Very cool climb.

 Julie leading BSC!

Me on BSC!

After climbing this a few times, we decided to boulder in the hueco covered caves nearby. There have definitely been others to have done this, and the boulder problems are really fun. I wouldn't make a trip out of it, but of you're there, might as well go for it!!

Erica campusing!

Boulder Cave!

After a successful day on the rocks, we headed back to Seneca to celebrate Tess' birthday, and watch "Almost Alpine" with some of the guys that helped put it together. The next day we woke up once again to rain, and decided to head home early, stopping by REI on the way back in. I think this was the first trip where is was home before 10pm!

Toad at Franklin Gorge