Tag Archives: New River Gorge

Jun17

Spring Break 2018 – West Virginian adventures, Thursday, 31-May

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Spring Break 2018 – West Virginian adventures, Thursday, 31-May

A West Virginia adventure – Spring Break in the New River Gorge, 2018

Saturday, 26-May, through Saturday, 02-June, 2018

 

“Life is old there, older than the trees. Younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze. Country roads, take me home… to the place, I belong! West Virginia, Mountain momma… take me home, country roads.”

I’m pretty sure that the first real spring break I ever had was with Daniel, years ago, when we drove down to the New River Gorge to climb, and attend the New River Rendezvous. Since that year, we’ve done our best to always link up and go on some glorious climbing trip on or around Memorial Day. This year was a tough one, with Sarah breaking her leg, but she insisted that I go anyways, and let her live vicariously through me as she convalesed at home. I’d already cleared the week as vacation with my boss, even before I was hired for the project, so I was free and clear for a throwback adventure…

 

Thursday

Thursday.
A sad day.
A day without climbing.
The saddest of days.

It started out well enough; I woke up and, per what’d become a very pleasant “normal”, made bacon and eggs. Or… sausage and eggs, if I recall. They were really good. Then the sad bit: everyone headed out to go rafting, and I stayed in to write and nap for a bit. I’m not a huge fan of white water rafting, honestly… not only was it fairly expensive, but it’s just not my jam… as far as activities go. Not a huge fan of water, of swimming, or of being out of control. And, funny story, rafting has all of those things in spades.

So instead, I went hiking and scouting.

Specifically, I drove out toward Lower Meadow wall, to check out a specifically beautiful 5.14a called Mango Tango.

But… after spending 15min looking for the parking lot, I gave up. I’d planned on parking on the side of the highway, but when it came time to actually do so, I decided that was silly and dangerous, and instead I’d park at the official parking lot. Which… is invisible? Maybe? I don’t know, man. I couldn’t find it.

I moved on to my next destination: the Endless Wall. A massive fortification of stone, a rock face 3 miles long, consistently 80ft tall, and covered in brutally hard routes.

I started on the far Eastern side of the cliff, planning on hiking the whole wall and then following the Endless Wall trail (a nationally renowned hiking path) back to the car.

I met a guided group. They were cool. They told me where I was, and gave me a bit of information about there area… but we mostly left each other alone. Since, you know, they were guiding people.

I explored an open-air museum for the abandoned nuttall mine. There were placards and rusted buildings, and mine cars with plants growing out of them.

 

I hiked West bound, and ran out of trail repeatedly. Let’s talk about this bit for a second: The New River Gorge has between two and three gagillion routes. And I found an entire section of cliff with almost no routes. No joke – I didn’t see more than two or three bolt lines for hundreds of yards along the cliff bottom. There’s so much room for development here, you don’t even know.

After I got turned around and I lost the trail for the fifth time – I could have kept bushwacking my way through… but my guidebook mentioned something about a “sea of poison ivy, hip height in summer” that made me slightly cautious about continuing. Instead of risking ichy devastation, I turned around.
Then I tried to stop at the general store for lunch. They were closed, which made me sad and hungry.

Sadness and hunger were drowned out by parking at the next trailhead, and starting into what USA Today called the best hike in the country. Instead of getting food. Which was a decision. I’m not quite sure I agree that this is the absolute best hike in the United States, but it was definitely quite pretty – I got some really awesome views, and that’s even before I descended three ladders, a cave, and a few short drops to get down to the base of the cliffs.

The trail around the bottom of the cliffs was amazing – It reminded me of the Gunks, but with smoother rock. Cliffs towering a hundred or more feet above me, continuing on unbroken for miles. I never did make it to the far end (or even the sea of poison ivy), but I did very much enjoy the hike and exploration.

After exploring the cliffs, the rest of my day was pretty simple and boring – I got lunch at Burger King (because I wanted to), picked up some groceries, and hung out with everyone at the house. Nothing particularly exciting, except for maybe the volume of food that I bought at BK, though dinner was really good – Lauren and Thomas cooked up some burgers and bratwurst, which we gorged on while washing it down with some pretty excellent beer.

A good rest day.

Jun16

Spring Break 2018 – West Virginian adventures, Wednesday, 30-May

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Spring Break 2018 – West Virginian adventures, Wednesday, 30-May

A West Virginia adventure – Spring Break in the New River Gorge, 2018

Saturday, 26-May, through Saturday, 02-June, 2018

 

“Life is old there, older than the trees. Younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze. Country roads, take me home… to the place, I belong! West Virginia, Mountain momma… take me home, country roads.”

I’m pretty sure that the first real spring break I ever had was with Daniel, years ago, when we drove down to the New River Gorge to climb, and attend the New River Rendezvous. Since that year, we’ve done our best to always link up and go on some glorious climbing trip on or around Memorial Day. This year was a tough one, with Sarah breaking her leg, but she insisted that I go anyways, and let her live vicariously through me as she convalesed at home. I’d already cleared the week as vacation with my boss, even before I was hired for the project, so I was free and clear for a throwback adventure…

 

 

Wednesday

 

Today’s the day! The big day of the trip! And big days start with… breakfast! What? Bacon and eggs? That’s crazy!

But you know what? We’re cool kids, and we can do what we want. So we break with all tradition and have bacon and eggs and coffee for breakfast. Just like the last three days, because it’s awesome.

 

The goal for the day is to go back to where we went on Monday, but to use our new knowledge to set up more routes now that the whole crew had been gathered. The forecast looked good, the sky looked pretty clear, and we were energetic and ready to go.

We started in pretty quickly – taking two cars meant that packing and unpacking was actually really quick, even with six peoples worth of gear, so we found ourselves setting up routes rather impressively quickly…

  • Butterfly Flake, 5.7, Lead – I did this one at least twice, and it was definitely worth doing multiple times. Fun, powerful, and just slightly sketchy due to the fact that you’re climbing a massive, detached flake of rock that probably weighs something around a hundred tons.
  • Shady Lady, 5.7, Lead – Cindy (from Monday) had recommended this route rather intensely… which makes sense, since she set the route herself in years past. I found it to be really fun, but a little weepy and wet thanks to the constant rain.
  • Layback and Enjoy it, 5.10d, TR – Ohh my lord I loved this route. The first crux was gloriously, horribly, evilly hard, and I don’t think I honestly did it cleanly. But I did do it… mostly by going around the hard bit. The second crux went super cleanly though, since I love laybacks. And, interestingly, this route had a pretty big one.
  • The Decameron, 5.10b, TR – This route is the test piece for the area, and it was evil. I didn’t complete it, I’ll fully and honestly admit. The crux is a terrifying traverse over open space, followed by a super thin move. As Daniel said, “Move onto the really bad sloper, then match your hands on the bad sloper, and then move to the worse sloper above. Then jump”.

 

Now, the original forecast for the day was bright and sunny all day… but of course this was the New River Gorge, and weather reports are really not super accurate. None of us were particularly surprised then, when we checked the weather at noon and found that a storm was quickly bearing down on us.

Thankfully, it was still a ways out, so we had time before we had to run out. But climbing always takes longer than expected, and soon enough I was trying to rush up The Decameron to pull it down and hopefully avoid a repetition of our earlier, soaking wet adventure at Sandstonia. I’ll be fully honest with you all here, dear readers; I got my butt handed to me by that route. The earlier 5.10d was easier for me, and I kept getting thrown off the crux move of The Decameron.

 

But I’m not a good loser, and I refused to leave any gear at the top of that climb… or worse, call Daniel over to clean it for me. So I swung over to a slightly easier line, climbed up, and then swung back onto the main route a bit above the crux portion. Because I’m smaht that way. Wicked Smaht.

 

I had the route cleaned, and we could head out. The walk was quick, and soon enough we were heading toward WalMart for boat shoes for everyone.

Wait, boat shoes?

Yup. Boat shoes.

Not everyone is as obsessed with climbing as I am, as it turns out, and so everyone else decided that they should do something other than scrambling up rocks while wearing strange shoes. Instead, they wanted to splash over submerged rocks, also while wearing strange (but strange in a different way) shoes.

They didn’t own those new strange shoes yet, though. So we had to go to Walmart to buy them.

If it isn’t apparent, the summary of the above is: “Everyone else wanted to to whitewater rafting, but needed water shoes. So we bought them at Walmart”.

We also got some food, since we needed it. That turned out to be a mistake, since we were all quite hungry, and shopping while hungry is a bad idea. But we persevered, and finally found ourselves at home, making dinner.

And by that, I mean “we went to an ice cream shop called Fat Eddies, and ate amazing ice cream and I also ate a corn dog which I dipped in the afforementioned ice cream because this is America and I can do crazy things like that if I want to especially when I’m over hungry from climbing and then herding cats in Walmart who are also hungry”

 

Dinner was awesome. Daniel and Erin make chicken foccatia, and it’s delicious.

We all hung out, and I soaked in the hot tub for a while, which was awesome.

Then a well fed sleep.

Jun15

Spring Break 2018 – West Virginian adventures, Tuesday, 29-May

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Spring Break 2018 – West Virginian adventures, Tuesday, 29-May

A West Virginia adventure – Spring Break in the New River Gorge, 2018

Saturday, 26-May, through Saturday, 02-June, 2018

 

“Life is old there, older than the trees. Younger than the mountains, blowing like a breeze. Country roads, take me home… to the place, I belong! West Virginia, Mountain momma… take me home, country roads.”

I’m pretty sure that the first real spring break I ever had was with Daniel, years ago, when we drove down to the New River Gorge to climb, and attend the New River Rendezvous. Since that year, we’ve done our best to always link up and go on some glorious climbing trip on or around Memorial Day. This year was a tough one, with Sarah breaking her leg, but she insisted that I go anyways, and let her live vicariously through me as she convalesed at home. I’d already cleared the week as vacation with my boss, even before I was hired for the project, so I was free and clear for a throwback adventure…

 

Tuesday

 

In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye says that Tradition holds the world together.

Bacon and eggs, with a cup of not-bad instant coffee held my world together. It had only been a few days, but I’m confident that this was now tradition, and thus sacred.  And I’ll be honest, I was pretty tired and sore already, so the boost was quite welcome.

Today was the day we’d get the final members of the expedition in – Brian’s friend Thomas would be driving in, arriving around 4:00… exactly when Daniel and Erin would be leaving for their date night in Charlottesville, planned to see them finishing dinner just in time to pick up their friend Lauren from the airport in town.

With those times in mind, we headed toward the Endless Wall; an easily accessable crag that would get us a few fun routes without loosing too much time to the approach. In theory, at least.

(Quick Side Note: We all wore nearly the same outfit today.  See the pictures below.  Kinda cool, Kinda strange)

I was driving again today, but this time our navigation was by phone, instead of by uploading it to the car. A bad decision, it turned out… as we realized that the GPS was trying to take us to the cliff, instead of to the parking lot. And while the X1 is a very rugged vehicle… it’s not qualified to drive down sheer cliffs. Or through peoples yards, which is what google was telling us to do.

You could say that we ended up getting a bit turned around.

That confused ended with us settling in at the Bridge Buttress – literally almost directly under the huge bridge spanning the New River Gorge itself. Although everything was wet, we set some top ropes and enjoyed the rock as best we could:

  • Monkey See, Monkey Do, 5.5, TR – Well, this was wet. It’s a slab route, that we climbed right after it rained. Funny story, it’s hard to make friction moves when the rock is an active river.
  • Easily Flakey, 5.7, TR – This route. This route was amazingly fun. Simple, pleasant, and great laybacks, I very much enjoyed it and absolutely want to lead it on gear the next time we’re in town.

Unfortunately, the forecast called for rain… and the schedule called for lunch. Neither of which would wait for climbers, so we packed up and headed into town before the 4:00 plans started arriving.

Side story: As climbers, we run into non-climbers at cliffs and parking lots semi-regularly. There’s usually a set few questions that we get asked, along the lines of “what are you doing?” and “aren’t you going to die?”. Sometimes, you meet a lovely family from Cincinnati who wants to know if their 100ft rope is long enough to set up the 70ft climb. As a note, you need a rope 2x the climb length to set it up… so to do a 70ft climb, you need at least 140ft of rope. This gentleman didn’t have that. Instead, he had a massive bag full of gear that would put the most equipped mountaineer to shame. Also, stores don’t sell rope in 100ft lengths, but in 60m (180ft) lengths. So… I’ve got nothing as to what was going on there. When we left, he was walking around to the top… and we haven’t heard any accident reports, so… all’s good?

 

We ate lunch at the Cathedral Cafe. It was fun. I had a reuben and a cup of coffee. We also explored Fayettesville a bit… nothing majorly touristy, just checking out some tourist shops, and stopping into the climbing store for me to get the new guidebooks that had just recently been released.

We went back to the house. It was relaxing; Daniel and Erin got all dressed up, and Brian and I lounged on the couches.

Thomas arrived, and Daniel and Erin left for their picking-up-Lauren-Date.

Brian, Thomas and I got antsy.

Brian, Thomas and I went climbing.

 

We picked the easiest wall we knew of – The Orange Oswald wall that we’d done the first day. But instead of setting the harder routes that Daniel had led, I went easy. Because I was being nice to Brian and Thomas. Not because I was being a weenie about leading hard routes.

  • Hippy Dreams, 5.7, Lead – I led this twice, and top roped it twice. Brian and Thomas both climbed it twice as well. It’s called “hands down the best 5.7 in the region” in the guidebook, and it absolutely earns that title – not only for the main route, but for the nearly limitless variants to it. I could have climbed it half a dozen times more, and not repeated a line of holds. Not that there’s infinite holds on it, but that each sections is subtly different, with really interesting movements that can be strung together. I loved it.

The danger of leaving to climb at 4:30 is that you stay out late.

We didn’t stay out ’till dark, though. We only stayed out until almost dark – we got back to the car literally exactly as the sun was setting… and you know what? I call that a win. A fully realized day, thank you very much.

 

Driving back to the house, we met up with Daniel and company on the road. Literally, they pulled in behind us at the traffic light turning onto the road that our condo was on. Kind of creepily perfect timing, but I’m not going to complain because it meant that we all got to the restaurant at the same time, and that Brian, Thomas and I had company for scarfing down our burgers. And I had Daniel to inspire me to order a cup of irish cocoa, which was unbelievably good.

So… that’s a good way to end the evening, right? Meeting up for 10:00 dinner, and gorging on huge bacon burgers and cocoa?