Tag Archives: Sport Climbing

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 →

The Art of Projecting (Continued)…

May 10 2012

Last week I went into detail about the art of projecting a route, and included the perspectives of three of my climbing friends who were also on the quest for a meaningful send. Well, our crew reconvened again, same time, same place, this past weekend, each of us ready for a rematch with our own personal nemeses. Here’s how we fared… OVERHANGING HANGOVER (5.11b) Steve: I got right down to business and warmed up on my project. I was feeling a little jittery before starting but once I got going I was locked in and felt really strong. The lower section…Read the rest of this entry →

A Weekend of Projects – Part 2 (Pilot Mountain)

May 03 2012

I mentioned in my last post that I’d be separating the weekend out into two posts, since each day was so different from the other. I thought it would be fun to change things up a bit, so rather than the typical play-by-play trip report, I thought I’d focus on “projects.” For those non-climbers out there, the term ”projecting” is used to describe the process that one goes through to successfully redpoint a route near or at their limit. A route is considered “sent” (aka redpointed) when the climber is able to lead the route from bottom to top (bringing the rope up with them…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 →

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