Tag Archives: New River Gorge

A 5.12 for Mother’s Day (and a bunch of other awesome stuff…)

May 16 2012

The build-up to this weekend at the New was admittedly a bit chaotic. But despite last-minute partner bailing, a forgotten ankle brace, and a moody weather forecast, this Mother’s Day ended up being the best yet! I had two goals in mind – to send as many hard .11′s as I could, and to get redemption on a 5.12 project from last summer… Day 1 Routes (Butcher’s Branch and Seven-Eleven Wall): The Greenpiece (5.10b): I’d only been to Butcher’s Branch one other time, and it was almost exactly 4 years ago. I remember having an epic almost-onsight of this route…Read the rest of this entry →

New River Gorge: Round 2 (aka Let’s Stop Playing Games)

Apr 18 2012

Considering our history with rainy weekends and the New River Gorge, we are all too aware of how fickle spring weather can be – so another weekend of sunny ad 70′s was too tempting to pass up, even though we were just there last weekend! It also didn’t hurt that our family has been in real rock withdrawal over the past 6 weeks due to me and that ugly black boot (which is currently perched high upon a shelf in the garage, hopefully to never be resurrected again!) So once again, we loaded up the car (this time we weren’t as rusty!), and hit the…Read the rest of this entry →

A New Season at the New River Gorge

Apr 10 2012

As we packed up our climbing and camping gear as a family on Thursday afternoon, I realized that it had been quite a while since we’d done this. Our last family camping trip had been at the New last October, our last day multi-day climbing trip had been at the Red just before Thanksgiving, and our last day trip at the crag as a family had been at Hidden Wall 8 weeks prior when I fractured my ankle. To be honest, I was feeling a bit rusty. Family Packing Hour used to work like a well-oiled machine – but this time…Read the rest of this entry →

Rocktober-fest at the New River Gorge

Oct 27 2011

After a small string of crappy weather trips a few weekends back, I was starting to think our rain curse was back…but au contraire! Despite both nights plummeting to a frosty 35 degrees, the daytime temps went from frigid to an ideal 60 degrees within a couple of hours of the sun rise, much to everyone’s delight. Although we had a pretty big crew with a wide range of skill levels represented, I think everyone managed to get their fair share of pump and exposure, along with a healthy dose of fall color. We spent Saturday at Endless Wall, which is probably…Read the rest of this entry →

Birthday Bonanza at the New River Gorge!

Aug 25 2011

Its that time of year again where I get older and wiser, which in our family means we fly north to the New River Gorge to celebrate. In years past we’ve hit Summersville Lake (for the trip report on last year’s bash, click here), but this year we decided to stay in the gorge and climb away from the crowds. The weather was (for August), spectacular – temps below 90 with decent cloud cover, and the only rain was in quick passing showers on Sunday afternoon. Had we been able to lift off that smothering blanket of humidity, conditions…Read the rest of this entry →

“Not all who wander are lost.” —JRR TOLKIEN