Monday, April 5, 2010

Spring Break

Here I am, back at school, after a great spring break with climbing at the New River Gorge, WV. First, I headed down last Saturday with Jay to visit a friend in Claysville, PA. We had planned to only stay one night but ended leaving mid-Monday morning due to poor weather conditions in Summersville (town near the climbing area).

At Cabela's in Wheeling, WV

Mary and I try on some hats at a souvenir shop. Good luck finding anything without a confederate flag on it.

We arrived later that day at the house of Mark and Kamila Spitzer in Princeton, WV (farther south than the climbing area by about 1.5 hours) after doing some exploring of our own in the Bridge area of The New.

The New River Gorge Bridge - The 3rd largest arch bridge in the world

While we only had 2.5 days to climb at the New, our experience was great. The weather cleared up within twelve hours -- from snow to 70's and sun. We climbed primarily fairly easy sport routes the whole time (5.7-5.10). The sandstone was shockingly good quality of rock but took some getting used to.


Whippoorwill Area. When the lake is filled, the water rises up to the dark mark on the cliff. You can see Mark and Kamila by the cliff on the left.


View from inside a small cave.


CLIMBING IS DANGEROUS!


Jay climbs a 5.9 at Orange Oswald area

We left Thursday after a short morning of climbing. Unfortunately, our trip back did not go smoothly at all. We had some minor navigational errors, but the major problem happened when we decided to stop in Nutter Fort, WV for a lunch at Subway. We hit a vicious pothole at speed and damaged the sidewall badly enough that the tire was completely flat within a minute (note to parental units: I wasn't the driver). Luckily, we were able to put on the spare -- which was only rated to 50mph -- and drive to a tire place in town, thanks to the advice of a random guy with a heavy southern accent who also lent us a tire iron. Although our tire was beyond repair, we were able to purchase a new one and got back on the road.
Quality establishment. Thanks Tom & Keith!


$38 in tolls and 600 miles later we made it back to Providence and school work. Hopefully I'll be able to put up some more school work later on this week, as it is piling up in my room right now.

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