Cragmama "Not all who wander are lost…" JRR Tolkien

Tag Archives: North Carolina

Crowder’s Mountain – Our New Local Crag!

Crowder’s Mountain – Our New Local Crag!

We’ve been in Charlotte for a little over a month now, but hadn’t had a chance to explore any of our new local rock until this weekend.  We’d been to Crowder’s Mountain before two other times when we were relatively new climbers, but not since 2007, so it felt like a new area.  Crowder’s Mountain is located near Gastonia, NC, and is only 35 minutes away from our new digs!   I can see why Crowder’s doesn’t always have the best reputation among NC climbers. It can get overrun with red-helmeted boy scouts and biting flies during the summer, hikers stand in amazement gawking at those “crazy folks…Read the rest of this entry →

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Pilot Mountain Trip Report

Pilot Mountain Trip Report

The weather was stellar this weekend, so guess what we did – we went rock climbing! Surprise, surprise… Oddly enough, our first crag day since the move to Charlotte was NOT spent at local rock. Our plans were with a Raleigh partner as well as a Charlotte partner, so it made more sense to head to a halfway point, and since we just had one day free this weekend, Pilot Mountain got the winning bid! Even though the parking lot was pretty crowded and we saw lots of other climbing parties hiking around, the only route we had to wait…Read the rest of this entry →

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Pilot-Palooza aka Cragbaby: Scene 2

Pilot-Palooza aka Cragbaby: Scene 2

Sunny, highs in the 50’s in February…thats enough to draw a crowd at just about any crag.  We’ve been doing a lot of bouldering recently, but this weekend we decided to rope up at Pilot Mountain.  Incredibly enough, it was the first we’d done any roped climbing since October when we spent several days at the Obed in Tennessee.  Today turned out to be a darn near perfect day – despite how much I enjoy bouldering, I’d forgotten that nothing beats tying into the sharp end of a rope!  We met up with Jan and his wife Crystal in the parking lot. …Read the rest of this entry →

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Lights, Camera…FRICTION!!!

Lights, Camera…FRICTION!!!

  My writing focus these days has been mostly on the Creating a Cragbaby series, so I’ve been a little slack on the trip reports…but a couple of  weekends ago we enjoyed yet another wonderful weather weekend bouldering (and I’m glad we were able to squeeze that in before all the cold and rain set in…)  It was the usual suspects – me, Steve, Canaan, Christie…but this time there was a twist.  Enter Jan Balster, a professional photographer / cinematographer.  We’d worked with Jan before a few years ago as guinea pigs for a promo-shoot at Pilot Mountain.  Well, about a month ago he contacted me…Read the rest of this entry →

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Falling Up and Falling Down at Asheboro

Falling Up and Falling Down at Asheboro

  Our house went on the market last Monday, and after a smattering of showings towards the end of the week, we got slammed with 5 requests for Saturday showings.  We figured since we were banned from our house for all but an hour here or there, we might as well get outside and enjoy the weather.  We decided to meet up with a few folks at Asheboro.  Since it was a gorgeous day, lots of other people had the same idea, so we ended up making several new friends as well as a Charlotte connection!  We didn’t get on…Read the rest of this entry →

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