Rock Climbing in New River, West Virginia

Check out this article in the USA Today on Rock Climbing in New River, West Virginia

New River Mountain Guides gets a great plug! Holla!

Adventures In Service- Venturing To The Summit Part 5

Simple Mechanics: Why Tricams Still Rule

SIMPLE MECHANICS - WHY TRICAMS STILL RULE
The following article was shared from CAMP's website, the manufacturer of the Tricam. The article offers great insight on why and how it works, how to correctly place a Tricam, how to remove one, and other tips for using them. You'll find here at the New, that the pink and red Tricams are awesome in the horizontal cracks you'll encounter on facey-trad climbs.--NRMG

There are climbers who were raised on bouldering pads, micro crimps and the technique of boinging who would argue that Tricams are poised for extinction. For every one of these, three trad junkies or alpinists will emerge in ardent opposition to such a preposterous claim. Tricams, they will say, are the greatest piece of gear around. The sentiment will grow stronger the closer you are to areas like the Gunks [and Seneca Rocks].

Why do Tricams face such a love-hate predicament? The point of this article is partially to tout the advantages of the Tricam’s simplicity, but also to validate and address some of the negative connotations some climbers associate with them ...Read On

NRMG Guide Mike Williams establishes hardest route at the New River Gorge

"The trebuchet went down yesterday and I can hardly believe it. It is unbelievable to me that a world-class route in a world famous area just 10 minutes from the road can still be up for grabs. Thank you Red River Gorge! The trebuchet is without a doubt one of the best 5.14- routes in the country.

 

The climbing on this route is simply unbelievable. It really is perfect in every way. The bottom bit alone is one of the best 13b's I've ever been on anywhere. Perfect rock and amazing moves. Lots of cross throughs including a hard cross to a pocket on an otherwise blank face." Read the rest of Mikey's blog-piece

Congrats Mikey we're proud of you! Now onto the super-mega lifetime proj!

Lillian Goes to Camp: Warrior's Way Trad Camp that is

The following is a first person account from Lillian Chao-Quinlan, one of our participants in our Warrior's Way Trad Camp held last weekend.  This 3-day workshop is a crash course on how to put the rad in trad. We teach gear placement, jamming, planning for the trad lead and give you lots of opportunities to test your gear placements by taking whippers on them. It's the only way to know for sure if your pro is totally truck...or not so much.

7 sport climbers braved a horrible weekend forecast of 60-80% rain everyday, and they were rewarded with newfound love of crack climbing, minor loss of skin, egos intact, and not a single drop of rain fell the entire weekend.

Hi everyone!!

 

So I'm not sure if I should be flattered or worried that at some point, most of you checked in with me about trad camp, either before, during or after the weekend. ; )  I know, this whole thing is so juxtaposed to everything I do and know about climbing so you have every reason to worry but I MADE IT! ; )  Well......for the most part.  Here is my recap (or as Wayne has taught me...recapitulation) of the weekend's exciting events.

 

When:  April 23-25; go time around 7:30am and off crag by 8pm on Friday and Saturday, 4pm on Sunday. 

 

Where: The New - Friday - Endless Wall (Fantasy Area), Saturday - Bridge Buttress (new area for me!), Sunday - Junkyard (another new area for me). 

 

Weather:  We sooooo lucked out!  Was calling for rain almost every day but stayed high and dry every day with the sun peeking out just about every day.  The predicted forecast kept a lot of people away so we had all the crags to ourselves.

 

Who:  7 participants, including me,  5 from Sportrock (!).  Arno Ilgner from Rock Rock Warriors Way and Mike Williams from New River Mountain Guides and author of the new New River guidebook. 

8 guys + 1 girl made for an interesting group dynamic....more in a bit.....

 

Note: Drive down, a truck's tire blow's out and part of the rubber hits the front of my car, mashing my signal light.  Ugghhh!!

 

FRIDAY:  Endless Wall - Fantasy Area

• Carpool in Lil's car - Lil looks at one of the guy's packs and says..."Is that a pack or a man purse?" My pack dwarfed his little pack!  We got along just fine (really!).
• Begin with a 100' rappel off of roof into mid air.  Thank you Garrick for us practicing rappelling in your class!  I knew how to set up my prusik. ; )  One of the guy's prusik's gets locked in his ATC so Mike has to do a meunter mule, lock him off to transfer the weight so he could get enough slack to get his prusik out. It was actually pretty cool to have some clue about what was happening!
• After a very brief demonstration (like 15 minutes) on placing gear, my partner and I were assigned Black and Tan 10a.  "You want to go first?"  he asks.  "Sure!"  Since Lil has no idea what pieces she needs, she brings just about everything!  After racking up and tightening up her harness, she's off.  Scoping the opening moves, her concentration is rudely broken with a "do you need help with the sequence?  I'm good at reading routes."  "I think I got it," she responds. 
• After placing the first piece, she yanks (a bunch of times) and then sits on the piece.  It holds!  Score!
• Another piece goes in after a bit of futzing and more yanking and bouncing.....it holds! Score again! 2 for 2!
• Third piece goes in....."testing time?"  Arno asks.  "Testing time?"  she repeats. "Go ahead above the piece and take a fall."  "Uh, ok!"  Thank goodness for top rope back ups!!  "Falling!"  Hey, it holds!!! 
• All the pieces hold with some pretty big (10-15') falls taken on each piece (did I already say, thank goodness for TR backup?)
• After a rotation to Doe Si Doe and Fantasy crack, Day 1 is over.

SATURDAY: Bridge Buttress

• Ground school - placing gear on the ground and inspecting each other's pieces (wait, why didn't we do this first thing yesterday? oh....weather concerns, get everyone climbing quickly). 
• Building anchors
• Jamming techniques - hey, I want to try the "teacups!"  Owww.....I don't want to try to teacups anymore!
• Time to climb - first climb - Jaws - crack in a dihedral...Lil stems the whole climb, smearing on nothing.....the alternative was to cram my ankles into the crack...why?  Wow, that's tiring to smear and stem on nothing with a hand jam (hmm.....maybe there's a crimp in that crack I can hang onto?) and place gear......trying out at least 5 different pieces per placement.....running out of pieces....let's try this hex!!
• Next climb - Chockstone....
• Round out the day top roping another climb and focusing just on crack climbing.....OWWWWWW!!!!  2 hands, 2 feet all jammed up in a vertical slot.....feeling a little stuck......unwilling to let go of any 4 points....wow, I gotta work on this technique!!  Sorry, Chris.....I tried!

SUNDAY: Junkyard Wall

• Set up anchors and belay as if we were on a multipitch trad climb
• Climb New Yosemite - there are no edges on either side of that crack so it was full on crack for Lil.....lots of testing her gear without the intention of testing her gear....thank goodness (again) for top rope backup because I really, really fell out of the crack a number of times!
• That was all we had time for....2pm....another hour or so for debrief.

FINALE

Say our goodbyes.....Lil goes back to apt to pack up.  Steps out of car and walkup up the driveway, does a total face plant onto the ground rolling her right ankle....the kind of roll where you feel nauseous and need to take deep breaths (see lovely pic!).  Drive 5 hours home on the bad ankle.   I know....how does that happen???!!!! 3 days of doing all sorts of Houdini contortionist moves, cramming my feet into cracks and torquing them in positions one would think impossible.....get on safe ground and WHAM!!!  Genie...I can totally relate to your fall after a full day at Elizabeth's furnace!!  What the ------??!!

 

Anyway.......

 

PROS: 

• Something totally new, learned so much and was able to apply some things I've learned from sport climbing, from Garrick's class and from the SPI course.
• Fun group
• Great weather
• Feedback on my placements was invaluable....Arno would climb up after every climb, give verbal feedback, take pics of every placement, come down and we would go over the quality of each placement and look at the pics
• falling on gear with a TR backup!

CONS:

not a lot of cons....other than the 5.13 face plant and ankle roll in the driveway!!

 

THE FUTURE:

I would like to explore this world more....try to place gear without a TR backup and still feel confident about falling on it......that's going to take a lot of practice!!!! Oh yeah.....more crack.....climbing. ; )

 

Thanks friends for caring and sharing in my excitement!!

Lillian

 

Lillian Chao-Quinlan

President

Sportrock Climbing Centers

Mountain Hardwear: Mountain Hardwear Gives Back

One click a day donates $1 to one of several Climbing Summer Camp Programs for disadvantaged kids. Do it now to support a great cause.

Mountain Hardwear: Mountain Hardwear Gives Back

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New Hampshire Ice Climbing Part 2: Ice Festival

After our STERLING ROPE tour we beelined it to North Conway.  My cold was quickly killing my energy level and I could feel myself slipping into my own personal hell, complete with a faucet for a nose, Guiness world record continuous sneezing and a pounding headache to top it all off. I was ready to party...

We went straight to IME to touch base with our friends Stephen Meinhold, Freddie Wilkinson and Janet Bergman.  The beer was flowing and so was my nose, things were not looking good.  After all the demo gear was checked back in we headed over to the community center where the indoor mixed comp was getting underway. I decided to try and take a nap before the Steve House slideshow and slept all the way through till the following morning.

Saturday morning after wrapping up the Mountain Hardwear gear demo, we headed out to the North End of Cathedral Ledges to shoot some footage of Janet's Intro to Ice climbing clinic. The approach was nice and short and the ice climbing was super casual, pretty picked out yet still tons of fun.

Sunday morning dawned quickly after the late night AAC 80's themed party.  The Sub Zero Down jackets flew off the table in no time and I headed out to Trollville to join Freddie Wilkinson's Intro to Mixed Climbing Clinic.  Pat and I arrived at the crag and got some great footage of the mixed climbing action.  Whit Magro, from Team Mammut floated a sweet looking M6 line up a steep wall. He totally floated up the thing and was totally unfazed when his feet cut pulling the lip.  Whit regained his footing and cruised to the anchor.

With the Ice Fest over and the MHW demo gear shipped out, we had the rest of the week to hit the crags around North Conway.  The next morning we headed out to Frankenstein and after a quick tutorial on placing ice screws, I led my first ice route.  It was appropriately named Waterfall, probably a WI2, super easy climbing with short vertical sections broken up by ledges.  I sunk the screws with ease and felt totally comfortable on the sharp end.

Frankenstein was so good we hit it up again the next 2 days.  Pat and I climbed the Standard Route the next day and hng out in the cave taking in the view of the valley. Pat was pretty hung over so we took it easy and ran laps on it while we watched our friends Karsten and Lindsay scream their way up a route off to our right.

Wednesday I headed back to Frankenstein with Fowler and local guide Sam. We climbed a couple of pitches and I led the first pitch of Pegasus WI3 to the Rock finish. It was super sweet with taller vertical sections than the previous days climbs.  I got pretty pumped and took my time shaking out and making sure each tool placement was super solid. After I belayed Sam to the top of the pitch he told me I ice climb like a rock climber...I'm fairly sure that wasn't a compliment.

My friend Jason explained it best.  Rock climbers body positioning looks like the letter K.  Ice climbers body positioning should look like an X or an inverted Y.  That totally visualized it for me, wish I had that image in my head earlier in the trip!

All in all it was a great week of climbing surrounded by an even greater climbing community. The folks of North Conway were warm and welcoming, hooked us up with a place to crash, home cooked meals and put on an successful event.  I'm looking forward to making a trip back up there next winter and hope to bring some of y'all along with me for the ride.