Stella's Roadtrip

Summer's End

2011-09-29T13:36:00.001-07:00

Most of these pictures are from September, with a few from earlier in the summer. But here's what's happened since my last update.

Joe came to visit for 2 weeks! Unfortunately I wasn't in a picture taking phase. Sorry Joe. Joe really good at climbing naturally, so he was great to climb with. As a beginner, he was just as good as a few others living at Roger's. We accelerated his learning process, and he can now top rope belay with a Grigri and an ATC, can lead climb, and can lead belay with a Grigri. Awesome. But here's his first lead climb! And below is just another climb we did a differnet day. It's a 5.10 crack, and he decided that day that he doesn't really like crack climbing.

Kittens! They were abandoned just up the road from Roger's. Bonnie collected them one by one and is the one feeding them. They're going to the vet tomorrow, then hopefully they'll be taken by campers this weekend. I'll really miss them, that's for sure. They're all boys, and I've named them Grumpy (the one in the back - he hissed when you tried to pick him up. He's over it now), Baby (the little gray one smushed in the back is the runt, and he's the most afraid of everything), Original Kitty (the one Bonnie picked up first. He also goes by OG, Adventure Kitty, and Midget Kitty), and the one in the front is Fat Stinky (he has a his fur is matted up by his tail, possibly with poo). Anyone want a cat?
naturally I needed some garden shots in here. These are harvest shots, but close. This was my best harvest ever. And I got a little artistic with it.

to make up for the climbing photos of people you don't know (they're right after this section), here's some photos people have taken of me! First is me goofing off and showing off, then me belaying (I think it looks really artistic and awesome). They're both taken by Matticus. Then my friend Donald snapped the next two of me on Preparation H, a really fun route I tried last week.

Here's some more climbing photography that I'm having fun doing! A couple of my friend John, and, of course, another of Ruth (who just seems to be the most photogenic person I know)

Micah and I are getting a new camera (actually, I was just told it is at Waterstone waiting for me to pick it up!), so hopefully I'll start taking way more pictures.
-Stella

Rendezvous and beyond! Part II

2011-06-29T19:49:00.000-07:00

After the Rendezvous the spring continued to be awesome (up until yesterday, when one of my campground-mates broke his arm. He got really lucky to have walked away, but he needs surgery later this week. He's trying to keep his spirits up though, and he expects to be back in a month)! I have 3 WOODSians (my college climbing club) friends visit for the Rendezvous and decide to move down here. One of Micah's good friends did as well! We're up to about 20 people at Roger's now. A great group of girls this year too! In fact, it's full-on girl power this year with our weekly ladies of Fayetteville climbing afternoons. So much fun!

Anyway, I've been really into getting good climbing pictures lately. It's a fun change of pace sometimes. Micah and I are thinking about getting a new camera, becuase ours is outdated and not so high quality anymore. Needless to say, most of the pictures below were not taken with our camera. But here's a few I've taken.
Casey top roping Easily Flakey Skervy on a boulder problem project that Micah's been working on (this one was taken with our camera. The colors came out all weird, hence the black and white)
Ruth (probably the most photogenic of all my friends, I have pictures of her in an earlier post as well) on High Times

And some photos I didn't take (some I wasn't even there for, but they ended up on my computer and they were so good I thought I'd share them anyway). Here's Donald on Labor Day
My new frog friend!

Donald, Megan and me at Bridge Buttressthese are the two I wasn't even there for, but they're so good!

And to totally change the subject...

Hanna and Joe graduated! Here's my photo memories of it.
Here are some obligatory garden photos. I hope I'm not overdoing it with all of last years' photos too. Here's from afar to close:

it's been weeded since this photo was taken, but it takes so long to go through it, that it probably looks this messy again.
I planted some peanuts to try out. We may be too cool a climate to get any, but I thought I'd try. They are looking great and flowering, so even of they never produce peanuts, they will have been interesting. See the zig zags in the middle in the foreground? I think those are new leaves. They grow folded up, and when they're big enough, they unfold to become full leaves.
-Stella

Rendezvous and beyond!

2011-06-18T15:36:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I mentioned that the Rendezvous was coming up. It was fantastic! NRAC (New River Alliance of Climbers the people who do all the trail maintenance and replace all the unsafe bolts) raised over $30,000. Here's a couple photos taken by professionals (can I even put these in my blog?) to give you the idea of what the Rendezvous is like. I thought I had one with me in it, but I don't know where it went. But here's one of Micah! A lot of the Rendezvous is free beer and dance parties late at night.
but there are other crazy events. This is a picture of crash pad sumo wrestling. The contestants are duct taped into a crashpad, then they go around running into eachother until there's one person left. The winner wins... a crashpad. My friend and yard-mate Adam won easily this year.
There was a race that was a couple miles, but if you chugged a beer afterward, you got seconds taken off your time. I'm pretty sure the green New River shirt wearer is our friend Vince. Everyone who entered got a free pair of running shoes. Woah.
Sunday morning is a free pancake breakfast for everyone. Soo good!
On Saturday from 4-6pm, these local kids stand at a table filled with socks. If you want a pair (for free) all you have to do is whatever they want you to. Make a human pyramid, drink a pickle juice concoction, and scream "I'm awesome!" into a stranger's face are examples.
This is vendor village. Each popup tent represents a different outdoor indurstry brand. You can usually get at least one free thing from each booth.
Dessertapalooza is just what it sounds like. Here's a cake made by one of the strongest local female climbers. That's not a birds' eye view. It's 3D.

Because I didn't have all the pictures in order to begin with, there will be a part II to this post.

Spring in West Virginia!

2011-05-16T17:39:00.001-07:00

Spring has been great so far this year! Wet, but really fun. There's a great crew living at Roger's, and I'm planting a big community garden and making a website about the bouldering here. Here's some pictures we've taken so far! I always mess up the order of pictures on this blog, so in no particular order here we go!

Micah and I are making a website to inform people about the bouldering here at the New. The New is only known for its roped climbing, but there's thousands of small rocks too. Micah's super into the bouldering here, and he thought of the idea, but he asked me to help him with the making-of-the website, so I've gotten kind of excited too. Here's a topo map I made (I know, SUPER high quality, right?)then here's a photo with all the seperate routes shown.
A picture of the bridge from basically just below.
It's so easy to take pictures of flowers
I had a day where I just took pictures of people climbing, and some of them came out really well! I'm so psyched! This is Ruth.
Ruth again
This one's Bill
we celebrated Passover at Roger's this year instead of Easter (we were going to do both, but Easter just didn't happen). I asked a Jewish friend what a normal sedar dinner involves, and this is what I made: brisket! It was SOOO good
Matzoh ball soup! basically dough balls in chicken soup. It was fun to make something new, and, apparently, it turned out right.
potatoes and onions (that bowl of plain potatoes were for me)
another flower
For Earth Day, the town of Fayetteville had a window decorating contest. This was our window, and we won. If you look closely, you can see my seedlings in the bottom left corner
I found my first morel mushroom! I didn't try it, but other people did. Results: 1 person said: "I'll probably never eat that again." 2: "It tastes like a mushroom." 1: "this is the best mushroom I've ever had!"
at night, crazy shenanigans ensue. Apparently, it's easy to hold someone on your back if you're both in pushup position. We took it a little further. 4 times further, to be exact. Yes, a stack of 5 people.
some evidence of the wet
this is when we first got here. I was so excited to see evidence of spring that I couldn't help but take a picture of these daffodils by the sign for my home
My friend Bill took this one day
The Rendezvous is this weekend, so things should stay fun! Love,
Stella

NV, UT, CO

2011-04-10T14:01:00.001-07:00

here's the rest of the trip pictures! From Bishop, Micah and I headed to Las Vegas! ... for a day.
then it was through the scenic state of Utah! It's almost impossible to get good pictures from a moving car, so here are some compromises. This snow bank is already 6 ft. high, so that snow is probably getting 12' of air. I'd never seen anything like it.
a really short tunnel
Utah is the best! Escalante National Monument. See the road winding theough there? Later it traverses a ridge only about 20 ft. wide. It's called Devil's Backbone.
down in the canyons
the sage (which smells different here than in Bishop) was blooming
the river
we tried to go in a slot canyon, but it was too hard to get to any. The closest we got was right here, where I took this picture. We could see one.
The scenic road goes back up! Here's some aspens on a snowy mountain (you'll just have to take my word for it that it was snowy)
Joe's Valley, UT. I love it here, but it was still a little chilly.
Triassic - Joe's warmer brother. There are pictographs!

Let me preface these last pics with the fact that I have an irrational dislike for Colorado. Everyone who lives there loves it so much, that they never stop talking about it. Climbing movies always have a segment about it. Every issue of every climbing magazine talks about it. The people in Boulder, in particular, are known to be cocky and egotistical (not to say I don't know people from Boulder who are awesome). Blah blah blah. The New has the best rock in the country (not only do I believe that, but every once in a while, climbing mags have a "where is the best climbing in the country?" article. The New always comes out on top), and Colorado is stupid.

So Micah and I chose a super obscure area in the desert half of the state and tried it out. It was awesome (but still not as good as the New). As for the Coloradans, we didn't meet a single one.
beautiful! Lots of rocks right off the road.
if you enlarge this photo, you can see the cool stripes in those mountains.
-Stella

California

2011-03-15T19:35:00.000-07:00

On to the next state: California! First stop was Joshua Tree National Park. We met up with our friend Sara as soon as we got here, and we all stayed together throughout CA. You can barely see her and Micah through this cool desert plantCholla Cactus. Sometimes called the teddy bear cactus because it looks soft and fuzzy from far away. Sometimes called the jumping cactus because each section on the plant is just barely held on. If you brush against it, the whole segment will stick to you.
The epitome of JTree scenery! Dr. Suess-esque Joshua Trees, giant boulder piles, mountains, blue skies, and Micah bouldering.
JTree has the best sunsets. The air is so clear, you can see all the pretty pollution-induced sunset colors of LA
Sara again
A true oasis in the desert! A little trickle of water can cause natural palm trees to grow! These weren't planted. That's not an everyday sight
Our sock monkey pal, DanDee, and I love palm trees!
Then we moved on to Bishop. Micah and I have spent lots of time here, so I wasn't really looking forward to it, but it turned out to be my favorite leg of the trip. I was really motivated, so I broke through my climbing barrier (which had been V3 in bishop before). That, in turn, caused me to be even more motivated. Plus we met a whole bunch of awesome people. Here's the white mountains under a faint moon
The Owen's River runs by my favorite bouldering areas. The Owens River provides water for Los Angeles (5 hours away). In fact, to take this picture, we were standing on property of the City of Los Angeles. There's a huge pipe that carries the water there. But apparently they've learned nothing from the Colorado River, because the Owens River Valley used to be a lot more fertile...
Here's where my motivation took me: this problem is called French Press, V6.
Sage dots the landscape of Bishop, permeating the atmosphere with it's slight, ever present scent
Micah was proud to do this problem, the super classic Soul Slinger, V9. In this picture, however, he's getting slung.
my favorite road sign of all time (runner up: "freeway entrance 1/8 mi." Gives you just enough time to wonder if you;ve ever seen the fraction 1/8 on a freeway sign before you've missed it)
we made this one up. Start with both hands and feet on this stalactite and go up. I had to get my butt swinging in order to grab the next hold.
Sara in the beautiful landscape of the Buttermilks
Micah on a long time project of his, Stained Glass V10. Next time.
I swear, March 1st I started noticing more green in my life. Turns out a couple dead-looking desert plants were budding!
Some Pennsylvanian from Micah's gym came out to Bishop, so we met them and climbed with them a few days. It was so fun! Here's Katie trying You've Gotta Be Kidding Me! V5
The PA crew again on Iron Man Traverse, V4. This is Gus, I think
Also from Micah's hometown, we saw Sarah (not to be confused with Sara), her boyfriend Mikey, and their friend Buhne. Here we are hanging out at our campsite. Our neighbors to the right were cool too. They also came over from JTree, and we had met them there. On the other side of them were the Canadians, and across the campground were the Norwegians. The Canadians and Norwegians always had good fires going in the evening. There were always people to hang out with
Sara and Sarah resorted to calling eachother #1 and #2, respectively. This is my #2. Interestingly, also the 2nd husky I've met who share my name.
me and the Sara(h)s (and DanDee)
I'll update again with Nevada, Utah, and Colorado soon!
-Stella
PS favorite conversation overheard in CA:
we are bouldering in JTree along with some other people, and in the background are some boyscouts scrambling dangerously on a giant boulder pile. One slips multiple times near the edge making all of us collectively gasp.
Boulderer (to boy scouts): Hey, do you guys know what your doing? You can die!
Boy Scouts: uh... we're wearing harnesses!
Boulderer: Yeah, but they don't do anything if they're not attached to a rope!

2011-02-05T09:56:00.000-08:00

Louisiana through Arizona

We've seeing a lot of new areas lately. We left the snow of WV behind

and ventured south. Our first stop was Chattanooga where we saw a Erich and Emily from this summer at Roger's. But we woke up to rain, so we bailed. We headed south and covered Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi (first time there! Nothing interesting on I-59S. Oh, except, I swear a poultry truck somewhere ahead of us had a hole in it because the over half of the roadkill looked like white chickens), and Louisiana. We checked out a bayou
Early the next morning we decided to check out a scenic route that we hoped would let us see a couple more swamps (and maybe an alligator!?) and a beach! Turns out, the only free way (as in, not a boat tour) to see swamps is driving down the freeway.

The beach road had pretty fields, swamp land, spanish moss, and lots of refineries lining it

We finally found a boardwalk through a swamp
but it still wasn't as amazing as the I-10 corridor

We really thought we might see an alligator in this swamp. We hugged the middle of the wide-enough-for-a-car trail.
Alas, we only saw a couple of these
On to Texas! We crossed 5 states in 1 day, but it took us 5 days to cross this one state. Here's a sunset over Houston. Possibly the biggest city in the world

Austin, Texas is known for it's amazing music scene, and, I learned, for it's food culture of eating food from foodmobile trailers. They were all over! Mexican food, hot dog stands, thai food, diner-on-wheels, etc. Also, their parks are nice. A lot of water for the desert

and some cool limestone formations

but proof that it is, in fact, desert. And proof that the desert loves
we climbed a couple days

This is DanDee the sock monkey. He's coming with us on the trip. And Evan! We stayed with him while we were visiting. We learned that he has a beautiful mullet

Then it was on to El Paso, where we went to Hueco Tanks State Historical Park. We've been here before, and we didn't take a lot of pictures, but here's one of a really brave bird. The other thing in the picture is my leg and foot

Arizona came next.We went to Cochise Stronghold outside of Tucson. It was pretty cold and windy, so we didn't stay long. We'll be back though. Here's some cacti and other nature shots

even though it's a multipitch route climbing area, Micah finds bouldering everywhere

Then we headed off to California (where we are now), but along the way, we checked out the Saguaro National Park. Here's one
and some other Sonoran Desert plants

we've already got some good California shots, but we'll be in this state for almost the whole month. More when we leave the state!
Love,
Stella

PS Favorite conversation overheard in AZ
Cool Guy in Green Shirt: where are you from?
Micah: West Virginia
CGIGS: do you climb at Cooper's? I know some Pennsylvanians who go there to climb
Micah: who do you know in PA?
CGIGS: do you know Chet?
Micah: yeah! I used to climb with him a lot!
CGIGS: do you know Micah?
Micah: ... what?

Exploring

2011-01-13T14:05:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone! The winter here is way too snowy, once again. People try to reassure us that it's not normal, but this is 2 years in a row.. I'm not really buying it. But luckily Micah and I are headed out west at the end of the month for a little vacation from all the snow.

But NOW, we're living here in Fayetteville at our friend Lydia's house. Which sits on 30 acres. So I did some exploring. Below are some pictures of all the interesting stuff I found on those 30 acres.

First, though, are some other pictures:

Roger installed a pole to "help support the roof" here's what happened on day 1:
I had fun, so I kept playing on it (on a side note, I'm eating melted chocolate in an eggroll wrap. Awesome)
I was working on getting my feet to touch my head. Obviously I haven't gotten very close
This is my most showy move. You kick up into the splits and hold it while you go 360 around the pole. I don't think I make it 360 though.
here's a picture of Waterstone. since I now spend the majority of my time here, I thought I'd add it.
And now to "Things I Found on Lydia's Property"

Micah on the bed
Ollie! Ollie is the softest cat ever
and the best cat ever
from the house toward the barn
from the bridge you can see the house!
this bridge is part of the driveway. Not gonna lie, it was kind of scary to drive over the first time
bathtub
deer poop! I also see deer tracks all the time
a fire ring! There are lots of these around
a chicken coop!

this chicken door leads out into a dilapadated chicken-wired space
"You can take a ride on my big green tractor!" -a country song that I can't stop singing everytime I see this. Also, that ladder used to be at the Junkyard wall. It was how you got in and out if you didn't want to walk up and sown the steep, glass infested hill. I miss that ladder.And here's where the ladder led! Someone's bed! Actually, later this same day, some of Lydia's friends spent the night at our house. Turns out, it was one of them who lived here all summer. He had to walk down to the barn to get the bed
stalls!
Proof that the stalls were used by horses
this was in the stall too
hmm. Actually, what's more interesting (though I didn't know it at the time) is those pallets on the upper edge of the picture. The guy who lived in the barn said it's an outhouse! You just slide a bucket under there, I guess. I'll look at it more closely the next time it isn't buried in 7 feet of snow (give or take)
the house!
there are two ponds in this picture, you just have to look hard to see them
this was in the field above the house
this was unexpected! Just outside that field above the house
and this is the ridgeline (of the hill) above the graveyard
from the house you can see this fire pit on a peninsula
this is a cool little patio in the backyard! There's a built in grill on the left there
..and a little man made pond on the right
grapes!
there's a dam in the creek, this is where it came from
Micah told me later that I should have examined this more closely. That nubbin left by the beavers has actually been carved into a face on the other side

-Stella

I know, this post's a little late!

2010-12-05T07:24:00.000-08:00

Sorry about that everyone who's reading! Hopefully it'll have enough pictures to make the wait worth it... Here we go:

In August, Micah and I went to the West Virginia State Fair. It's nothing like the Ohio State Fair. Not nearly as big or sweet. And it would have cost us over $10 to ride this ride. So we didn't. But I took a picture of it.Then in September, Micah took a trip to France! I included some of his pictures because they're so good! I took this picture, though, when I dropped him off at his house. This is his niece Savannah, and a Waterstone sock monkey (there are 6 or 7 sock monkeys that live at Waterstone. It is now a store rule that you have to take one when you go on a trip, and you have to take pictures of it). We named him Jean-Pierre.
Here's Jen Pierre checking out the street in Paris
They went to Fontainbleau, one of the worlds biggest, most famous bouldering areas. Unfortunately it rained almost the whole time.
Then they went to Chamonix. Micah and Jean-Pierre checked out this glacier
On to Ceuse. The home of the worlds first 5.15 rock climb. Micah's having trouble on this climb, but Jean-Pierre thinks it's so easy, he does it ropeless, in Micah's face.
The Verdon River Gorge was next. It's huge.
They hiked along the Verdon river one day.
And the coast! Hean-Pierre's psyched about the beach!
Here's a random picture I took of our friend Kati trying Toxic Hueco (5.11d). When she came at the beginning of the summer she hadn't done anything over a 5.9 outside, but she improved so fast! She didn't do this one, yet, but she will.

In October, on a whim, because it was rainy and cold at the New, but warm and sunny at the Red, Micah, Kati, and I went to the Red for a day and a half! A four hour drive each way, but totally worth it! Our friend Sara had just moved there, and our friends Adam and Ryan were there for the week. Two others, Philip and Johanna (pronounced YOhanna - she's from Austria!) followed our example and came too! There's just pictures of Micah and I though. Here's Micah in a hueco (that's spanish for big-hole-in-rock)Here's me on a fun climb. I couldn't do the first move, but after that it was easy!
here's some fall pictures I took from a bridge! It was scary up there! It was so high, and the walkway was a bit rusty...

We went to the Red again in the beginning of November! This time with the staff of the Vandalian, a resturant in town. We know everyone that works there. It was so fun! We also brought Waterstone's only female sock monkey with us! We need a good name for her.
Micah and I stayed at Miguels, but the Vandalian staff had a sweet house to stay in. The sock monkey stayed with us.Here's the sock monkey getting ready to hike in
our friend Craig climbs while the sock monkey looks on
sock monkey's turn!
me and Peilee! and the sock monkey.
here's a lot of the Vandalian staff: Emily, Peilee, Craig, Robbie, and Erin. Also, the sock monkey is in the picture too. This day we went to Torrent Falls. Only a certain number of people can get in per day, and we were too late to sign up as guests for the day, but Porter (the owner of the resturant) is so well known at the Red (just look at a guide book for the place! His name is ALL over it), that he just called the owner of Torrent Falls, and we were in!
Rachel came to visit! She brought her friend Kyle from Canada. The first night, we went to Open Mic Night at Pies and Pints, where she and Kyle sang (for the record I've never heard Rachel sing before. It was so random, but so sweet!). I didn't bring my camera, unfortunately. But the next day we climbed at Whippoorwill. The lake level is way down, so this is what it looked like
We all did a 5.6, two 5.7s, and a 5.8. Kyle had a bit of trouble on the 5.8, but Rachel got right up it even though it's been a long time since she's climbed (nice!). So here's Kyle on the 8
and Rachel on the 8
Now it's December and winter has finally set in. We moved into our friend Lydia's house, had our 3rd Thanksgiving (Turkeys were $0.50 a pound!) on the 1st, and now I can't get out of Lydia's driveway because we have a good 4 inches of snow. They finally started plowing, but our road is steep, single laned, and dirt. They won't plow our road. And they don't salt around here. It hasn't been above freezing for 2 or 3 days now, and it's not supposed to get there for another 4 days. And it's supposed to snow everyday until then. I already feel weak from lack of doing anything physical, and I can't wait until Jan 15th, when it's time to go out west again. On the upside, I'm getting a lot of reading done. I'll try to take some pictures of our new home soon.

Until next time,
Stella!

another so soon!

2010-07-28T19:15:00.000-07:00

classic NRG

the rock around here is as hard as granite. It takes a hammer drill and appx. 1 bit per 10 or so holes. That makes this old hand carved face even more impressive.a cookout I planned! About 50 people came
The ghost town of Thurmond

Plum Orchard Lake
we picnicked there

smile!
Monongahela! Cranberry Glades in July. Cottongrass
we took this same picture last fall
pitcher plant flower

the part that eats the bugs

some wildflowers for Grandma!

butterflies!
about 3-4in. high
we climbed on a random boulder in the Monongahela. And I did it in a skirt.

how the garden looks today: cantaloupes: thriving
giant pumpkins: dead
corn: getting ready to cross pollinate
ladybugs: also cross pollinating.
the best part of Thurmond (out of order, but I couldn't move the video to its rightful spot)

-Stella

more gardening

2010-07-11T19:02:00.001-07:00

some more garden pictures! This first set is a few weeks old.
Here's some corn. Newer planted in the front, older in the back.
and the pumpkins looking good some of the corn is growing really well!
but the garlic is not. Sorry garlic. I planted you wrong, so nothing will come of you.
Just last week, we took a short trip to Boone, NC. Unfortunately, I suck at taking pictures as proof. Here's the only one. That's Kyle and Timmy (who are from Boone) on a V4. It was cool to see people I know from the New, somewhere other than the New.
okay, pictures from today! Here's some of Micah's cantaloupe! It's still not quite as big as the pumpkins from the previous set of pictures.
the corn's still doing really well.
see! Waist high by the 11th of July. It's doing better than knee high by the 4th of July.
The pumpkins haven't been growing. A deer started eating them. I put up a fence, but I still thought they were goners. Turns out they were just using their energy to make flowers?
One of my fingers started swelling up while I was weeding. I have no idea why (but the hypochondriac in me was guessing black widow bite). It's done swelling now. I guess I'm allergic to a weed?
Right now Colin is visiting! He's my second visitor since last winter (Rick, Jan, and Sayre came a month or so ago). Be my 3rd!
-Stella

gardening

2010-06-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

not too much to update. Moved out of the cabin and back to Roger's. Weather's been much nicer (when it's not raining). I'm not climbing very strong, but I'm having a good time when I go out and I've been more motivated lately. I'm working 3 days a week, which seems too often for me. But most important is my garden. I'm super psyched to garden. Today I was out there in the 85 degree sun at 2. That's how psyched I am on it. Here's a couple pictures.
I have corn:
giant pumpkins:
and garlic:

also Micah and I went to the Monongahela (national forest) yesterday and saw a(nother) baby bear. And (again) I didn't get a picture of it (sorry Jay).

-Stella

Ahh, now that's more like it!

2010-03-24T10:28:00.000-07:00

Finally, spring has come! At least, in the Southwest.

Joshua Tree!

Key's View at JTree
the first of many wildflower pictures for Grandma!

Kelso Dunes in the Mojave Desert National Park

Some dessication cracks in a dry lakebed (there was SOME water) also in the Mojave

I can even identify this flower. It's a wild poppy!
This is Ephedra, it's more powerful than caffeine if you make it into a tea. It's starting to bloom

A Saguaro that must have been blocking the trail
a close up, cool, huh?

close up of another Saguaro

rainbow rocks!

Camping with the WOODSians! Kelsey, Sarahbeth, Lydia, and Harper from left to right. Stephanie joined us later.

this is Phoenix, believe it or not. It was greener than WV is now!
Slide Rock State Park, near Sedona, AZ. It's a natural waterslide!
Petrified Forest/Painted Desert National Park. Here's some petrified wood in the painted desert

Hopefully the weather will start being just as nice here as it was there! It is getting a lot better!!

Come visit me,
Stella

only a couple pictures

2010-02-12T13:51:00.000-08:00

Micah and I decided to chase the warmth down in North Carolina last weekend. It was warmer, and we got one nice day in, but we guessed wrong with our first destination. They had had an ice storm the day before. It made for some interesting hiking. It still snows here everyday. Today, I had to get my car out of our neighborhood to run errands and stuff. It took an hour, Micah pushing, and I broke one of my snow chains in the process. When I tried chains out on my car first, in the desert (sunny, 65 degrees), it didn't occur to me how hard it would be to put them in the snow. You have to fully lay down in the snow, the chains are cold metal, and you can't use gloves, because they require fine motor control. Damn. I'm looking forward to the desert in March!

-Stella

2010-01-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

Here's some winter pictures! Above is some ice on the Meadow River. Below is from the same day, the rock was covered in a microthin layer of ice, making it slippery. But Micah still tried, of course. The rock was so colorful!
The Meadow River on that same day. Our view while bouldering.
Micah found this dead mole. Look at how big its digging claws are! It's amazing! Also on the wildlife front, Micah saw a river otter. He said it was about 4 feet long and beautiful!
Micah bouldering a different day. I think it was just before the extremely cold stretch we just left behind. During that cold stretch, ice waterfalls formed all over the gorge, making ice climbing possible. Micah and I got to try it on one of the warmest days of the cold stretch (22 degrees!). It was hard! Even when you have spikes attached to your feet, its still hard to kick holes in the rock to stand on. It was pretty fun though, I guess. I'll never really be an ice climber, I hate the cold, but I did enjoy it. And, like the river otter, we didn't take our camera. What were we thinking?
day 1 or 2 of the staright month of at least a foot of snow on the ground. It started with these 2 feet. This particular picture is showing our glacier roof. You can see how it's sliding down the roof and curling under.
the"curling under" part meant we opened our door to icicles in our faces!

Somehow the trash can got 3 feet of snow balanced on top of it.
why I couldn't go home for Christmas as early as I planned
I'll post as we take more pictures!
-Stella

2009-11-22T06:29:00.000-08:00

Kittens and Our Winter Home

Since the last post, we have moved! We now live in a small cabin right on the edge of the gorge. We walked to Fern Buttress to climb yesterday. The cabin isn't finished (no insulation or drywall), but we have free electricity (and rent), and a small wood burning stove. We've also got a fair amount of kitchen appliances including a stove (6 burners in all, if we really want to go crazy), a grill (one propane and one charcoal), a toaster oven (2 of those too), a waffle iron, and a crockpot/oven. Sweet! The only thing we're missing is water. There is no running water, so we have to go down the road to a spring labeled "Not Potable". That scares the crap out of me, but everyone around here insists that they've been drinking water from that spring for 10 years and they've never gotten sick. But have any of them actually gotten in tested? No. I'm 80% sure drinking this water is going to be a decision I regret come 12 years and I've got mercury poisoning or something. I'm considering a water filter. On the upside, we have a bona fide outhouse with a moon cut in the door and everything.

Here are some pictures of our kittens! They're Megan's kittens now, she took both of them. Kofi is the red collared one (the girl - even though Kofi is actually a boy's name), and Mou is the blue collared one (the boy - pronounced Moe. He's named after my chinese name).

Megan found them on a cold, rainy night and wrapped them up in a towel in her tent for the night, but Mou was bored, so he left. I found him shivering on the porch at Roger's and he spent the night with us in the van.

Since then, Megan has moved on to the Red, and the kittens with her. I miss Mou (and Kofi), but I know Megan's taking good care of them. I'll visit them sometime later this winter.

See you all next time I see you! Love,
Stella

I saw a bear!

2009-10-12T18:09:00.000-07:00

Naturally, I have no photographic proof. But it was a black bear cub. We didn't see the mom, despite putting the car into park in the middle of the road and waiting. I had my camera out at that point, waiting to get a picture.

But the day wasn't a total waste. I DID get some other pictures. We took a short roadtrip to the Monogahela National Forest and a couple state parks nearby. It was beautiful! And, because it was higher elevation (we made it to 3800ft.), it was prime fall colors.

Monongahela

this is Watoga State park
Ferns at Beartown State Park. Had to include some green

The Cranberry Botanical Area. These ferns were huge and I felt like there should be dinosaurs around
A gigantic root cluster
Some wildflowers! They're actually tinted purple
Cranberry glades. Cranberries grow wild all over this bog/field
Totally unrelated, this is a climb that Micah bolted and will send soon. It looks like a ship's prow. Unfortunately this isn't the best picture to show that.
Hope everyone (Jay, maybe you're the only one reading this) is having a great season! I love you,
Stella

pictureless update

2009-07-05T20:38:00.001-07:00

hey everyone. Not much super interesting is going on around here. Just thought I'd update anyway. My sweet job is no longer my sweet job - the farmer doesn't need my help anymore. Now I'm looking for a filler job - one that will get me some money, but I'm not particularly attatched to. Hopefully that'll happen soon. I've been climbing a little more often now. The group of full-time residents at Roger's campground has increased. Now we have me, Micah, Toby, (Michael jut left today), Vince, Stephanie, Dolci, Brian on and off, Chris, Joel, and Craig. So even when Micah's working, there's still plenty of people to climb with. Not everyone gets along perfectly, but at least drama is interesing? I'm going to stick with that.

My crashpad got stolen the other weekend, I'm pretty sure. If you ever see anyone bouldering with a purple, pink, and yellow crashpad... it's probably mine.

On the upside, this week is supposed to be beautiful - sunny and 80 everyday. I hope I get to take advantage of it and have some fun!

Maybe I'll even take some pictures...
Love,
Stella

my sweet job!

2009-04-24T10:54:00.001-07:00

here's some pictures from the farm! This is Larry's house (the farm owner) with cows in front. The ones further back are Dexter cattle. They are only about 4 feet tall. The ones closer and to the left are miniature zebu cattle. They're originally from India. See the hump on the back of the black one? All zebus have that hump.

a new baby!! There are two more on the way. She's almost a week old.these are miniature horses. They were far away, so sorry about the bad picture. And unfortunately, you can't see it, but there's a full-sized goat that lives with them, and it's unnerving to see that the goat is the same size as these!
Here's some more dexter cattle and miniature donkeys behind them.
a better miniature donkey picture. There's a baby with them! That fence behind them is probably 3.5 feet or 4 feet high. All the fences are the same height - if that helps with perspective in any other pictures.
these goats (full-sized) were sniffing my fingers. There's a baby in there!
that baby horse again. She'll grow up to be 2000 pounds at least. These are the only full-sized animals on the farm (I guess except the chickens, which I don't have a picture of. Guinea fowl too). They are draft horses - which means they're bigger than any other horse I've ever seen.
some more baby goats. Springtime means babies all over the place
a mommy goat! She's friendly
2 young rams. They are called babydoll southdown sheep. Which means miniature. We just moved these guys into this stall today and the black one sat on my lap. He was the size of a toddler and so cute!
an emu! There's 2 emus on the farm. They've been there 2 years and between them, they've laid one egg. Which they accidentally crushed immediately.

a new addition to the farm! There's only 3 chickens, but soon there will be more!

all of the sheep on the farm were sheared last week, but Larry doesn't do anything with the wool, so I volunteered to take it. I have 12 fleeces. Yesterday I tried to dry them all out. It didn't work perfectly, but it helped. Soon I'll wash them all. That'll be a big task. I'll take more pictures as I do stuff with the wool.as for climbing, I've only been 3 times so far in the last two weeks. I'm always too tired after getting home from work to climb, but I'm still having a great time. I'm sure I'll get in more climbing days soon.
See you all later!
-Stella

Alpacas!

2009-04-18T18:27:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone! We're at the New. At home, I threw my winter mittens into the closet and pulled out the intertube.

When we got here it was snowing.

But it was warm today! I went to a farm near Charleston for an alpaca shearing! I didn't take any pictures, but I made a friend who's a knitter (and a Grandma). She taught me how to knit and e-mailed me the pictures she took immediately! Here they are:

I watched the lady above (I forgot her name already! That's f-ed up) spin some wool. She also taught me how to card wool (it's really hard! I suck at it!). The others are alpacas: the one with its fore-legs up on the fence, just leaning there. A baby alpaca, and a sheared alpaca. Their necks are so scrawny it's amazing they hold up their heads!

I also got a parttime job on a local farm here. I'll get some pictures soon. It's amazing!

bye for now,
-Stella

2009-03-24T11:29:00.000-07:00

here's a quick blog entry:
After Salt Lake, we went to Joe's Valley (2 hrs. south). Amber and I went to the Joe's Valley Reservoir, which was frozen.

Then we headed southwest to check out Zion, Bryce, and Capitol Reef National Parks (I bought an annual National Parks Pass - it was so easy to get our money's worth). Here's a part of Zion we didn't see before called Kolob Canyon. Amber did the obligatory overlook hike, and we hiked up a dome.

Micah and Michael in Bryce Canyon

And some petroglyphs in Capitol Reef.
and here's a play-by-play of Michael doing a boulder problem.

From here, we went to Moab, where we met up with the WOODS spring break group. You can check out those pics (as well as our traveling home pictures) on facebook.

Love you all,
Stella

the internet in Bishop is bad, but we're not in Bishop anymore!

2009-03-02T07:03:00.000-08:00

We just came to Utah for the March portion of our trip. Right now we're staying at our friend Amy's house is Salt Lake City before heading south to Joe's Valley, Moab, and Zion. Anyway, here's some pictures to catch you up from the past two months. Like last time, they're backwards. So feel free to start at the bottom and look at them from bottom to top.

I had three 4-day weekends from work, and we went somewhere each time. This most recent time we went to Joshua Tree National Park. Where Amber climbed... the bathroom?
She also did this sweet run-jump problem.
The 2nd trip we took was just Amber and I and we went on a tour of the western sierras. We stopped by Sequoia NP, Yosemite NP, and San Fransisco. Amber knows a girl who lives on a farm just outside of San Fran, so we got to see some sheep! This is Mimi. The one next to her is unnamed because he's a boy and is going to be eaten. There were goats too! One was only 2 days old.
This is not a 2-day old goat. It's a lamb!!!
We also went to the beach in San Fran. I saw my first tide pool. Here's a starfish and sea anenomes (sp?)!
and just a few more starfish...
Amber's foot with some awesome sea-shaped rocks, shells, and glass
The Yosemite part of the trip: Amber sends a V10!
and she meets John Muir and gets very forward and outright touches his beard
Yosemite Falls. We were wondering if the water turns to snow (ice?) as it falls because it seems to be landing on a snowbank...
This is not Yosemite Falls. This is in Sequoia NP - at a low elevation. I feel it's important to mention that we also saw a bobcat but didn't get any very good pictures of it, so I didn't include it. Feel free to look at Amber's facebook photos to see it.
And up at the higher elevations. We couldn't even drive all the way here. Chains were required, and we didn't have any, so we had to walk the last mile. I did finally acquire a set of chains on our last day in Bishop. Too late to use this year, but they were free.
Here's a bit warmer weather. The first weekend trip we made was to Vegas. We saw our friends Tony and Sara from the New (and Mania from Bishop!). Sara's 5 months pregnant, so that was cool to see. And we went to Red Rocks. It had just rained, so we didn't do much climbing there, but Amber and I explored the rocks and found this!
Okay, so here's January. Or, as the locals called it (though this picture doesn't show it) JUNEuary. We had a couple visitors. One was Evan. Here he is on his birthday trying to climb the Birthday Boulder! (He did it a few days later)
Also in January Amber did this. It's much more normal looking now.
Uhh... way out of order... here's a controlled burn (we think) outside of Bishop on our way to Joshua Tree.
Hmm... more JTree. Micah's doing a classic problem called Saturday Night Live (V4)
A January trip to Alabama Hills. It's an hour south of Bishop. This is a pretty famous arch that you can see through to Mt. Whitney - the highest peak in the lower 48.

but for being so famous, it's a little smaller than I expected.
A lot of movies were filmed in the Alabama Hills, apparently. Here's a random hole blasted in the rock. It looked like a sweet living quarters.
This is a picture of Rock Creek - maybe a half hour north of Bishop - but nestled right up against the Sierras to the west, so the sun goes down pretty early there. I didn't see it though. I was at work - which I wish I had some pictures of. On my last day of work, I got a pizza party! With cake, banana bread, and a present of two books!!! It was awesome!
Here's Juneuary at it's finest at the Buttermilks.
Amber and I took a day trip up to see Mono Lake. There are Tufas there. Kind of like stalagmites, they are calcium deposits.
Our other visitor in January was Amy (whose house we're at right now). This is her attempting the beautiful but scary as hell Heavenly Path.
We went to the Dreamers (another place just north of Bishop). It was a fun day.

Okay. That catches you up! I'll hopefully get a chance to post again soonish. Love you all,
Stella

2009-01-07T09:11:00.000-08:00

Well, we've been in Bishop for over a month now. I have a sweet parttime job at the local bookstore, Spellbinder Books. The rest of the time I spend exploring, grocery shopping, and climbing. At least 12 hours a day is devoted to sleeping, of course, too. Christmas was pretty fun. We adopted our neighbor, Mike, a couple days before, so if you don't recognize him in the pictures, that's who he is. We've also had two Wooster visitors so far: Matt (who came on part of the last road trip) and Evan (Amber's boyfriend). We also had Amy visit us - Micah and I met her over the summer at the New.

Anyway: here's some Christmas pictures:
backwards through the day (sorry! It takes SO long to upload pictures and move them around on this site. Just start from the bottom if you want the real experience). Anyway, here's our nightly fire:
some entertainment at the local Senior Center free Christmas dinner!
this awesome dude we saw at the Senior Center Christmas Dinner:
some more entertainment:
another awesome dude we saw at the Senior Center Christmas dinner: Mrs. Clause
Amber crochets all the time. Being at Denny's for Christmas breakfast doesn't bother her.
Our new friend/site-mate Mike (Michael) is with us at Denny's and he's hungry.
Micah and Toby having a good Christmas
Present opening time! Toby got a book!
Amber got a book!
Micah got a book!
We woke up to a white, white Christmas. And it was packing snow, so we made a snowman. The snow just doesn't roll up clean from the gravally ground here like it does in grass.
Christmas tree!
Our fire pit, covered in snow
the Christmas lights!
Our decorated yard
good morning!

See y'all later!
-Stella

Tripping Out West

2008-12-06T16:56:00.000-08:00

Dear family and friends –
It’s been a long time since I last posted and we’ve started out roadtrip! We left the New at the end of October. It’s always hard to leave the New, but of course we’ll be back next summer. We spent two good weeks in Pennsylvania (except for the night that two kids went around slashing tires and keying everyone’s cars in town including ours), and then we had a relaxing two weeks in Ohio. Micah left for the roadtrip 3 days early with Toby, and I went up to Wooster and picked up Amber and Addy. Our plan was to stop in Santa Fe to surprise Kate and then Phoenix to surprise Colin. We then had to stop in San Diego to pick up a car that Addy just inherited, then Bishop, CA would be our final destination. But things never work out as planned.
We spent our first night at a rest area in Missouri. Addy slept in the front passenger seat, and Amber and I shared a very skinny bed in the back (there are two cushions, but they’re stacked together until we can take out the only back seat we have with us).You have to sleep head to toe in order to have enough space for both people to lay on their back or stomachs. Then we stopped the next night in Dumas, Texas – about an hour north of Amarillo (where I got the last potato of the day from the Potato Factory – my favorte resturant). Addy’s cousin and her husband and 6 month old son live there. The next day we should have been on our way to visit Kate, but Micah and Toby were in Hueco Tanks Historic State Park near El Paso and I missed Micah. I convinced Amber and Addy that we should go there instead and just see Kate over Thanksgiving. So we headed to Hueco. We ot an empty tank about half way back toward Amarillo and somehow managed to ride another 20 miles before we found a gas station. Amber said “Guys, let’s never do that again”. But what happened after stopping through Roswell, NM
90 miles out of El Paso? In the middle of nowhere? It happens again. We saw a sign for a turn off that said
Dell City 20 Miles
we had to take that turn. To save gas, Amber put the car on cruise control at 55 mph, because what else can you do? It was late and dark and we were in the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately, that road seemed to be infested with not-so-smart bunnies of all sizes. We had a bunny dart out in front of the car at least once a minute. Sometimes they’d cross the road and then swerve back toward us. My poor vegetarian friends had tears streaming down their faces at the torture that was the bunny road. But Amber only hit one. On the upside, we found a gas station and made it to Hueco with no more incidents. We spent two fun days in Hueco before continuing with our main plan to surprise Colin in Phoneix. We had his address from our friend Catherine who told him she wanted to send him a letter, so we found his apartment complex – which was gated. We sat there for a minute, unsure of what to do, until a resident pulled up behind us and unlocked the gate. At any rate, Colin wasn’t home. Nor was he answering phone calls. Finally, Amber called her friend Emma and we surprised her instead. We spent the night at her house (Colin finally called me back at 11pm and said he’d see us at 6:30 the next evening –after work). But Emma had to work in the morning and couldn’t figure out keys, so we spent the morning in a coffee shop and movie theater (Twilight just came out, so we saw it), and our afternoon in a park in the middle of Phoenix. It was in the 80s and sunny. We finally saw Colin and spent the weekend there. We went bouldering/running around the next afternoon (Emma came too), then we were going to climb Sunday, but Micah called us from Joshua Tree National Park and said Toby was going to visit a friend near San Francisco so we needed to come pick him up. Since we only had 3 seats in my van, we’d have to run to San Diego to get Addy’s car first. We said goodbye to Colin and headed to San Diego, where we met Addy’s family friends who were watching the car (it was her grandma’s who passed away in September) until Addy got there. The family rented us a guest house for the night that had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a laundry room, kitchen, dining room, and living room. It was huge!! The next morning we stopped by the beach for an hour (it was my first time seeing the pacific!! – I think in Alaska it’s the Bearing Sea…) then we took the scenic route over to Joshua Tree. It involved mountains, pine forests, recreational vehicle land, an inland sea, and canyons. It was one of the most scenic drives I’ve ever been on. When we got to JTree, Toby was still there. He’d felt too bad leaving Micah alone, I guess, but he left the next morning. Amber and Addy loved JTree. So did Micah. It was a fun 2 days. Then we ran up to Red Rocks (Las Vegas) for out Thanksgiving trip with Colin and Kate. We ate Thanksgiving dinner at a Denny’s. I felt like I was in the movie “The Santa Clause”. But it was amazing. I ordered a milk shake, pancakes, eggs, toast, seasoned fries, and mashed potatoes and gravy. Everyone else ordered a similar amount of food.
That brings me up to now. I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving, and I’ll write more soon!
Love,
Stella

These pictures are all out of order and for some reason the computer thinks I'm writing links...
The beach!

Phoenix! (Emma's in the second)
Hueco!

Joshua Tree!
Roswell!

Just something...

2008-10-06T07:46:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in forever, so here's a post just so that I can have a new post. We're still at the New for almost a month yet. The summer/fall has been fantastic. I've done 3 5.12s and I'm working on two more (though I don't know if I will get either of them before time's up). We've been living at Roger's and it's been great. It only took a week after the summer crowd moved out for the fall crowd to move in. The leaves are starting to change and the colder temperatures are moving in (except today is supposed to be 85).

We're looking forward to heading out west again, but we will both have money issues soon. I'm really hoping we can even make it out to Bishop.

Anyway - that' all I have for now. It's hard to take pictures of rope climbing, so we don't have any, sorry. I love you all and I'll post again when we head out west.
-Stella

NEW post

2008-06-27T10:56:00.000-07:00

we're here at the New and looking forward to people visiting us!

here's the bad:
1/ we can't afford to stay at Roger's
2/ mosquitoes and no-see-ums

here's the good:
1/ our pimp van
2/ we found a seemingly untouched boulderfield at the Summersville dam on the Gauley. We've been putting up some FAs
3/ we made a giant rope swing at the Hole and did the Pinnacle already.
4/ there are tons of sweet people living here and we've had tons of sweet visitors!

Here's some pictures of the Gauley River boulders (when they're not under water):

that's Scurvy in the previous picture. He's 16 and strong as shit!!

I love you all, Stella

It sucks when you forget your camera...

2008-06-07T16:15:00.000-07:00

well, we forgot our camera, but our trip was so cool that I had to write SOMETHING about it.

We went down to Annapolis, MD to visit James Varn. Annapolisis pretty freaking sweet, as far as cities go. There are no high rise buildings, only the European-style streets lined with one constant building painted a different color every 70 feet or so. Shops on the first floor, housing above. And round-a-bouts. And brick streets. Also, it's on the Chesapeake Bay, and James' apartment has a Bay view. James says that the downside is that after dark (during the day everyone is sailing) the only thing to do is drink. There are a rediculous amount of bars in downtown Annapolis, all of which are within walking distance. The Bay itself is awesome. The little beach we went to only had little tiny waves, but there were a good amount of shells and polished stones on the beach. It also had that unmistakable salt water smell.

The second day of our trip, we went climbing at Earth Treks. There are 3 of them (the gyms are all huge AND they have their own hold company), but we went to the one just outside of DC. Turns out, some elder WOODSians, Matt, Sam, and Ellen only live 1.5 miles from that gym, so we had a great time visiting them too.

When we got back to PA we climbed with my friend Rachael (we were roomates) and her boyfriend.

It was a great last 3 days of seeing beautiful, new places and wonderful old friends.

I hope you are all doing well and I love you!
-Stella

I had an irrational fear of ticks...

2008-06-03T12:39:00.000-07:00

...then it became a little more rational after a bulls-eye rash became visible surrounding Micah's armpit. This is the 2nd time he's gotten Lyme Disease. Luckily, when you catch it early, it's not that hard to treat. You just have to take pills for 3 weeks (or liquid medicine, I found out, if you can't swallow pills) that make you nauseous/puke. So for $100 (doctor visit and pills with no insurance), it's no big deal... except that hopefully-not-too-often puking for the next 3 weeks.

I've gotten bitten by 2 ticks, and I'm hoping not to find a bulls-eye too.

I'm not going outside around here again... until late fall, because the bouldering here is amazing. There are lots of problems that I want to work on more. Unfortunately we have about 6 pictures from the last 2 months of living in Harrisburg, but here they are anyway (sorry Madison, I didn't get any pictures of the camp we've been working at or even anything cool. I'll keep trying)

this tree was actually in Chattanooga, but it's a sweet picture, so I'm adding it to this post

as weird as I look, that is, in fact, me. This problem was cool, but it was sharp!

this is Micah's neice Savannah and I at a playground. We look hilarious. She's screwing up her face hard-core due to the sun being directly in our eyes. Besides posing as Smoky the Bear's face, we also play Chinese Checkers at least once a day.

To get away from the ticks (this was even before we realized that Micah had a bulls-eye), we took a short trip to Cooper's Rock, WV. We met Matticus and his friends Adam and Jack. Poor Adam rolled his ankle during their initial explorations before they even climbed. But here's a couple pictures of Matt and I trying Moby Dick (V2, but I try it every time I go there. I think I will send it next time though), and Micah doing Roundhouse (I think?? V5).

On the up side of things, Micah was playing on the internet, looking at different shoe companies when he came across Acopa shoes. They are owned by the famous climber John Bacher. He also noticed that all of Acopa's sponsered athletes are from the west coast. He e-mailed the company, asking if they wanted some representation on the east coast, and John Bacher himself called Micah back. Well, 2 free pairs of Acopa shoes are in the mail headed for Micah. If he likes the shoes, you may just see a picture of Micah up on the Acopa website someday. When the shoes come, I'll let you know what he thinks of them, and then you can check them out for yourself!

Here's some climbing movies to end the post:
A different Cooper's visit
From all over the east

-Stella

A Short Video

2008-04-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

Here's a short video Micah made. It's of our last day at LRC, where I sent two projects I had tried before. It took me 4 days to get Slap Happy, and 2 days to get the second problem (but mostly juts better beta). I can't wait to find out what it is!

Hope everything's going well!
-Stella

video!

A Post for Grandma (and everyone else)

2008-04-01T18:49:00.001-07:00

Micah and I went on a hike the other day and we took some wildflower pictures. Also some other cool pictures. Here they are:

Love,
Stella

WOODS in the woods

2008-03-23T08:03:00.000-07:00

WOODS came to visit on spring break. There were at least 20 people, which can always make things a bit stressful, but I had a fantastic time! Micah, Toby, and I camped out at Foster Falls with the WOODSians, and even got a free trip to Horse Pens 40 out of the deal (not to mention some really good meals)!

Anyway, here's some pictures (none of them are mine. They are all taken from Evan and Tyler's amazing cameras, and there are SO many good ones!).

Anyway, this probably shows half the people that were there...

This first pic. is from a cool stream near the AT and a white water rafting place. I didn't go, but everyone said they had a blast!
HP40 fun!
Ambdizzle in a sea of slopers
This boulder is called the Turtle Head Boulder. I'm kissing the turtle.
A backpacking trip. The rhododendron tunnel is so cool!

Matthew is from Jamaica. For us it was warm here, but I don't think he felt as warm as the rest of us...
The dictator of WOODS - Emily! Here she is giving you a taste of her climbing style - smooth and flowing. It's always beautiful to watch her climb.
you might not be able to see it, but they're all reading

I thought I'd keep this one short, but maybe I'll add more pictures of my own later. I love you all.
-Stella

A short movie

2008-03-08T14:02:00.001-08:00

This is at the Landlord Boulders (that's what we decided to call our landlord's boulders...).

I was trying to make the music go with the movie really well. Please let me know what you think!

-Stella

A post of warm weather

2008-03-02T18:23:00.000-08:00

This last weekend was wonderful! We went down to Horse Pens 40 in Alabama for Sloperfest, which is an outdoor bouldering competition and local music festival. We didn't get any pictures, even though I brought the camera to make sure I would have pics for this post.

Micah and Toby didn't want to pay the $$ to compete, so they were just spectators (aka, they paid the normal amount for a weekend stay at HP40 and they got to hear some awesome music and catch some free stuff thrown into the crowd). I paid $45 to compete. I got about $15 back with the sweet t-shirt I got for competing, and $4 more back for the Climbing Magazine issue I got. I also got lots of stickers and some other weird stuff (like a little box of Curves for Women brand cereal).

The comp was a climb-everything-that-you-possibly-can-during-the-comp format. Every climb you did was added up into your score. I entered beginner (Horse Pens is SUPER sandbagged, which means that the hardest climbs I have done there are V2! It kind of sucks to have to enter beginner when I've been climbing for 4 years). Toby's done this comp format before, and both he and Micah advised me to just do as many problems as I could. It's better strategy to do 10 V0s than 3 V2s. Only try a problem once or twice before moving on.

I added up my score at the end, and with 32 total problems (at least tripling the amount of problems I've ever done in a day before) I had 4400 points. During the awards ceremony, I found out that I won by 2000 points! The girls in 2nd and 3rd must not have known the strategy for getting a lot of points. They each did about 10 V2s, while I did 30 V0s (well, I did some V1s and 2s also).

For my troubles, I got some crazy thin finger-tip skin, sore shoulders, and a free pair of La Sportiva shoes of my choice.

The warm weather part comes in because it was 65 and sunny Sat., 69 and sunny today, and it will be 72 and partly cloudy tomorrow. I hope it continues this way!!

Micah made a video of this weekend, but we were all so busy climbing during the comp, that this is all footage from today (Sun.). We all climbed so much this weekend, that the video is only of Toby, who was the only one out of us man enough to keep climbing today...
HP video

also, Micah made another short video a while ago with some random climbing in it. It's a good one. It includes LRC, a random creekside area that's really cool, and our landlord's awesome boulderfield. Here's a link to that one:
Cool video

Next week is Wooster's spring break, and WOODS will come down for 2 weeks. I'm so psyched! Micah's dad is coming the middle weekend of WOODS being here, and his mom is coming the weekend after. So many visitors this month! It looks like it will be a good one!

-Stella

Is this one working right?

2008-02-19T14:01:00.001-08:00

I'm just getting rid of the old post, but check out the end. There's a short movie I made and some pictures.

And here's some other things:

Toby fell off Micah's skateboard at about 20mph. This is his bruise/hematoma

Our landlord, Andy, said he had some property with rocks on it. Normally when people say that, they take you there and show you shale or something that you can't climb on. But not Andy. He's got a lot of super high quality rock. Perfect boulders to perfect 90 ft. cliffline. Here's the view from his house. His wife told us that some of their friends have seen the view and said it was the best in Chattanooga. It was really damn good!
And here's a small video we put together of the first FA done on Andy's property! It's a V3/V4 - the mantle's easier if you're short! I called it The Distance - it's not too long, but it's a lip traverse, so it doesn't go straight up. I thought it would be longer when I first looked at it.

Warmth in Chatt-town!

2008-02-14T11:24:00.001-08:00

Hey everyone! I decided to post again because I have some pictures now.Things have been going really well until just recently until we all got sick except Kirk. Hopefully he can manage to stay well! So far I've gotten off the easiest, and I keep hoping it won't get worse. Micah got the worst of it, with a peak temperature of 104 degrees! He's doing a lot better now, though, just a low grade fever and a bad cold.

Since the last time I posted, we've done a lot of climbing. I keep feeling really weak on the rock, and when we went to Leda, a sport climbing area, my concerns were justified when I fell all the way up a 5.10. On the other hand, it was fairly overhanging, and my endurance isn't what it used to be because we've been almost solely bouldering. A couple days later, a flashed a 5.10, so I'm feeling better about my climbing skillz now. We don't have any pictures of rope climbing, unfortunately, but I found a picture on the internet of a 4 star classic crack at T-Wall. It's called "goldenlocks", 5.8+. I thought it was pretty hard for a 5.8!

We did a 5.10a next to it called "Cakewalk". It was so much fun! I decided to try and be artsy while we were there, so I took some pictures of the unbelivably green grass patches that were up there. They're not spetacular pictures, but the green is a crazy contrast to the normal bland colors of February.

We also went to Rocktown for a day. I didn't get too many photos, but here's one. It's Micah on "Golden Harvest", V10. The climb was named well, because the boulder is a perfect golden color, with patches of red. It was amazing!

And last but not least, some pictures on Micah and Toby at LRC. If you can tell which are Micah and which are Toby, I'll give you a heart, made with my hands. :)

So there's the pictures! Not too many, I know. Hopefully we'll do better once we stop being sick and start climbing again.

In other news, we went to the bouldering gym here one night and had a blast climbing there. Then, we found out that the next evening there was a competition! We had been climbing the comp problems all night, but the employee said that we could climb in the comp anyway. So we showed up the next evening for the comp. It was a pretty fun comp. You paid $10. $5 went to the gym, and the other $5 went into a pot for each category (beginner M, beginner F, intermediate M/F, etc., so the more people in your category, the more $ the winner got) They divided all their problems up into categories. Green-taped problems were beginner, yellow intermediate, blue advanced, and black was open. You could only climb the problems in your category and the one directly below it (so Toby, who was in advanced, could not climb any of the green problems). The scoring system was very unique. Each hold on the problem was worth 10 pts. for green, 20 for yellow, 30 and 40 for blue and black respectively. So, if there are 5 holds on a green problem, and you fall off before hitting the top hold (you got through 4 holds), you can still count it as 40 pts. It kind of makes a natural grade curve, because the harder the problem, the less holds it has (for the most part). The other crazy rule was that if you flash the problem (get to the top first go), you get 50 pts. extra! That meant that if I flashed a really easy green problem, I could easily get more points than if I worked really hard on a difficult yellow problem. Once I figured this out, I felt pretty good about my chances at winning female intermediate.
When they tallied up the scores, they realized that there weren't enough intermediate girls to have their own category, so we were put in with the boys. Even though that happened I still won! And, because there were more people in my category than any other, I won $55! The winner of Open (the hardest category), got $20. Needless to say, I loved that comp!

I love you all!
-Stella
PS - sorry all the pictures are so weird!

life has been very laid back

2008-01-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

Hello everyone! Here's a brief overview of what's happened since PA:
1. Drove to Chatt. and spent 2 days apartment hunting. The first day led to such great un-success that we all went to bed feeling entirely hopeless (also we were under a pavilion and it was thunderstorming). The second day looked brighter when a landlord called us to report that a lady who had claimed one of his apts. still hadn't contacted him. He said that if she didn't call by 1pm today, we could have it. We went and looked at it, and it was awesome! A split level, where each level was a different room (1st floor: living room. 2nd floor: kitchen. 3rd floor: bedroom, bathroom, closet). 1pm rolled around, and the apt. (well, duplex, actually) became ours. On top of that, we met a guy from the New named Kirk, and he moved in with us, thus lowering the price of our new home. Our neighbor (other half of duplex) is cool too. He's a musician and followed the Grateful Dead for a bit.
2. we spent the first 4 days w/out water
3. As soon as we moved in, it became cold. Not as cold as OH, but highs have been in the 40s mostly, with some days in the 30s. I have been to Rocktown twice, and LRC (Little Rock City) 3 or 4 times. I've actually climbed about twice. Oh, and the gym once. Today, Micah and I are going to hike up to T-Wall to check out the cracks. I've got some projects planned for LRC, but they're all V7 and I still haven't sent a V4 there.
4. I applied to work as a stockboy in an organic foods store, but haven't heard back yet. My next plan is to apply to the TN Aquarium. It's $20 a person to see it, which I'm not paying, so hopefully I can see it for free this way.
5. We haven't taken a single picture yet. I'm not sure why.
6. We now have a library card. It was difficult to obtain, and it still costs money to borrow most items.

That's the overall story. Oh, my friend from Kendall Cliffs, Jared came to visit. He moved to CO then NC, and came down. It was really nice to see someone from OH (originally).

I love and miss you all.
-Stella
PS: HAPPY BIRTHDAY CATHERINE!!

Pennsylvania

2008-01-04T11:08:00.001-08:00

Hey all! I'm not sure if anyone's reading this anymore, but I'm going to keep updating it anyway. Now we're in PA at Micah's house. Things are really different here than they are in OH. First off, due to not being my parents, Micah's family isn't as good at cooking my favorite meals (but they still do a fantastic job). Second, there's babies around all the time! Micah's mom runs a daycare, so during the day there's 6 month olds - 5 year olds running (or, in the 6 month old's case, laying) around. It's kind of fantastic, especially when Micah wakes me up in the mornings with a baby to play with. :) There's a lot more hiking and climbing around here, so we're outside a lot (except the past couple days have been too cold for me, so Micah and Toby have gone out without me).

As for hiking, I've already been on the AT tons of times! We hiked up to Hawk Rock - a sweet overlook - and that was on the AT, then we met up with Tony D - who I first met in Flagstaff, but he's here visiting - at a climbing area. Toby showed me a cool boulder problem that had a huge white paint splotch on it. It didn't take me to long to realize we were on the AT again! And, of course, the AT goes right through Micah's town, so we drive on the AT almost everyday.

Micah's stepmom took some Hawk Rock pictures of us, but we don't have them yet.

The climbing here is pretty amazing. Obviously you can see more by visiting chetroy.com, but here's some pics we took in the last week:
Isn't this rock cool? And there's so many different kinds of rock! Besides this conglomerate, there's Gniess, Schist, Diabase (technically granite-like, but doesn't climb anything like granite. Also, note that 3 or 4 places around Harrisburg are Diabase, as well as a place in NJ. Those are the only two known outcroppings of it in the climbing world), sandstone, just plain white quartz like you see in people's yards, except big enough to climb on, and tons of rock that no one knows what kind of rock it is!Micah's toproping! Ahaha! Make sure to laugh at him when you see him. Sorry the picture's sideways! But this is still Boxcar Rocks, the conglomerate rock.
This is Savannah. She's Micah's niece. She's a freaking cool 5 year old. She came out to climb with us that day. It was cool, because she made up and sent her own boulder problem. I sent it too. I put my foot on top, and stepped up. It's nice to be so much taller than someone. This rock, we think, was gneiss with quartz veins running through it. Cool!

Okay, that's all for now. We'll hopfully be leaving within a week for Chattanooga! Wish us luck finding an apartment!
Love,
Stella

life in... Ohio?

2007-12-22T17:07:00.000-08:00

Hello friends, family, and friends of my family!
Since the last post, I've been in Ohio. It's not very exciting here, but it was nice to come home and be able to sleep indoors again! Micah and I visited Wooster, also. It was really nice to see all my friends from school again. We even got taken out for dinner and breakfast while we were there (not to mention tons of stolen food from the cafeteria)!
After being at home again for a while (and watching at least one movie a day due to boredom), we decided to face the cold and head down to good ol' West Virginee. We spent 5 days there (the temps only breaking 50 one day, and the low being 16 one night), and despite the cold, had a great time. It was great to see Roger, the campground host, again, and all the guys from the Pies & Pints kitchen, and we did some fantastic bouldering. Unfortunately, this was a spur of the moment post, so I'm not using the computer with the pictures or video on it, but Micah already posted them at www.chetroy.com/home/blog.html. The video's really just a trailer for our full video that we'll make later when we add more footage in early January.

Peace out homies. I love you all!
-Stella!

Hueco!

2007-12-11T09:59:00.000-08:00

These previous pictures are of the miracle we saw. If you look close enough, you can see the beams of light converging onto the location of the miracle.

Next are some of the extremely few Hueco pictures we took. The first is on the Donkey Show boulder of East Mountain.

The second is this V9 in the Maze on the East Spur. No, I didn't send, but I could get my fingers to go way further back in these holds than most people can.

Here's the beta on Hueco for anyone that's interested:
Only 170 (I think) people are let into the park each day. North Mountain is the only place you can go without a guide, but it's HUGE, so it's not too bad. I think a total of 70 people can be on North Mountain at one time. East Mountain, West Mountain, and East Spur require guides. You can take a free tour with volunteer guides offered by the park, or a $20-a-person tour offered by the campground (Hueco Rock Ranch). 10 tours can be out per day (100 people). Depending on the time of year, it can be super easy or impossible to get into the park without waking up at 5:30am each day. When we were there, it was super easy. One way to ensure you get into the park, is to make reservations at least 3 months in advance. You pay the park money for these reservations, then get the money back each day you show up for your reservation. As far as I know, you can reserve volunteer and commercial tours too, but we never did that.
Reason to pay for commercial tours instead of just doing volunteer tours: both are good, but the commercial tourguides know where everything is, and the easiest way to get you there, whereas a volunteer tourguide may not. **don't forget that it's customary to tip your tourguide**

Okay, Micah put up our sweet Hueco video, so go to Chetroy.com to see it. It's one of my favorite movies so far.

I love you all!
-Stella

after Joe's

2007-11-28T21:24:00.000-08:00

well, here's some pictures:

those were of Indian Creek. The last picture doesn't look real, but the green ball was just an airsoft pellet that was hanging out there. The things are everywhere!

These were a bunch from Arches National Park. We did the sweet hike that almost all the arches were in, than a small hike to see Delicate Arch from afar.

We saw lots of wildflowers too!

Then it was off to Bryce Canyon National Park - the scenery was amazing!:

Zion National Park came next. It was so out of place in the desert with all it's trees and water (Ross, I think even YOU'd like it. Also, some of these geology pictures were taken with Sophie in mind):

After Zion, Red Rocks, NV is still cool, but not nearly as beautiful (in other words, we didn't take very many pictures). Micah wasn't looking forward to going there, but soon he was asking to stay longer! We were there over Thanksgiving and we got to meet some awesome people! Danny Rider (has been putting up FAs in Red Rocks for 25 years) and Aaron (hie daughter's boyfriend) were bouldering the day before Thanksgiving near us. When they found out we'd been on the road for 3 months, they invited us right over for Thanksgiving dinner the next night!! It was amazing to have good, homecooked food for the holiday. Anyway, here's some Red Rocks pictures:

And the drive down to Hueco: Also, we saw some beams of light (like sunlight breaking through clouds) coming from the ground (to the east... in the evening). My guess is that Jesus was reborn at that spot. We forgot to add the picture to the computer, but it probably didn't look like much anyway.

Well, this is our last stop: Hueco. We'll be home within 10 days! But the adventure isn't over yet. We've got some visiting to do in Columbus, Wooster, Cleveland, Central Pennsylvania, the New, then onto Chattanooga for the winter. Spring break with WOODS, then a climbing tour of the Northwest USA next summer! I'll try to write again soon!
I love you all,
Stella
PS: Micah made an awesome movie of Red Rocks and our quick trip to Oak Flat (bouldering area at Queen Creek and home of the old Phoenix Bouldering Comp. You'll be happy to note that nothing got stolen out of our car, even though I have had previous problems with the area).

You can find the movie at chetroy.com in the blog section. Also, I added a permanent link to chetroy.com so you can always find it.

A couple videos

2007-11-21T11:42:00.000-08:00

I can't add pictures right now, because it will take forever and we can't spend anymore time inside on this beautiful day. Right now we are in Red Rocks, but we've been all through Southern Utah since my last post. I'll write another post with pictures soonish.

First off, I made a movie of Joe's. Micah doesn't like it, but I had a fantastic time making it. Here it is for your enjoyment:
(click for video)

Straight from Joe's we went here (I made my own movie. It's very shaky due to bad camera skills):
(click for video)

Peace out, homies.
-Stella

Joe's Valley!

2007-11-13T10:17:00.000-08:00

So Joe's Valley, UT.

It's sandstone here, which is really nice because I know how to climb on sandstone! With other rock types (not sandstone) the small feet that you'd think you can stand on are all super slippery. It's nice to have not-so-slippery feet. I'm not as scared to try to use them.

Apparently I have a certain type of climbing that I'm good at (that sentence end was for you, Ross). There are two boulders right across the street from eachother near our campsite. We went to the one we saw in our guide and I made it up the V0-. The V0 was too hard! All the V3s there were pretty crazy hard too. I was so frustrated, but then we went across the street to the other boulder, and apparently it's much more my style. Out of the 10 problems we saw on the boulder, I sent 6 of them that day. We later read that two of them were V3s. I flashed one of them, and the crux move for me on the other was a move that I accidentally added before the climb was supposed to start. So I guess I did an extended version of the problem that was harder? By the end of the trip I did all the problems on the boulder but one. A V7. I can do it from a stand start, but the first move, going from sitting to where I can do it is too hard. Here's a photo of me attempting, but failing:

The scenery here is pretty nice:

especially the rocks. They are all different colors:

This rock is actually an airsoft pellet. They are all over the country:

I got too excited with the camera and took these (I'm throwing the metal horns in the first one, but you can't quite see them):

This problem is really famous, in fact, we have a mock set of holds at the gym to re-create it. It's called Black Lung - V13. Micah did not actually send it:

This one is called Trent's Mom. Unfortunately, Micah tried really hard, but didn't do Trent's Mom:

This problem that Micah's looking at is called Marble Cake. Any guesses why?:

The Rail is a super classic Joe's problem. It's only V2 (supposedly), but just look at the surroundings! Beautiful:

Most of you already know that Micah and I put up some first ascents!!! I'm so excited about it! They should be in the next guidebook to Joe's Valley. Micah's were Gorilla Liberation - V8ish and Treeble People - V5ish. Mine were The Dreaded WOODSian - V1ish and The Om and the Avatar - V6ish.

I feel like most people maybe misunderstood The Dreaded Woodsian. It has a double meaning. One meaning is me (because I always said I'd name my first FA Stella and that's close enough). The other meaning is because where there's one Woodsian, there's usually at least 15 more close behind. Thus, to other climbers (like, for instance, in the Black Corridor in Red Rocks), we are dreaded. Get it? Anyway, here's a picture of me doing The Om and the Avatar:

The bouldering guide to Joe's is actually a bouldering guide to all of Utah. We finally broke down and bought it, only to find that another famous area was under 30 minutes away! A couple days later we took a day trip to Triassic. All the pictures are of Micah because I like the camera more than he does, I guess. Basically, it looks the same as the Joe's rock, but there are no pines and the boulders are super concentrated, which is sweet! Not much hiking:

When we got back from Triassic, we had a visitor! Here's a picture of him on a hike with Micah:

Here's a picture from the front:

It was Nate-Dogg! He had just finished his job in Colorado, and was only about 2 hrs. from us, so he stopped by for a visit.

We also made a long video for Joe's. It shows a lot more climbing than the pictures do. Hopefully you won't get too bored!
(click for video)
for some reason it isn't working. I'll update it again in a few days and try to make it work. Maybe it will mysteriously start working in the meantime. Good luck!

I hope everyone is doing well! Don't forget to check out chetroy.com for Micah's blog. Leave lots of comments!
-Stella

Pictures!

2007-10-29T09:51:00.000-07:00

So the Yo-sem-ite. Here's some pictures:
It snowed:

There was a snowy, steaming lake of sweetness ( this was very close to Toulomne Meadows and Lukens Lake, yep. Lukens lake. Didn't get a picture, sorry):

We found Toby there, like I said before. I also forgot to mention that we saw Noah and Siemay! And Keita (who teaches you how to fall correctly on how to slackline, if you've seen it). But this is a picture of Toby:

I make weird faces while climbing. These are at the Awhanee boulders. That's by the Awhanee Hotel. Stop 3 on the bus route:

Micah almost sent the most famous boulder problem in the world: Midnight Lightning. It's a V8, but the hardest V8 ever?? The crux in mantling the top way up there. Here's basically how it goes:

A beautiful 5.8 handcrack near Yosemite Falls (stop 6):

Matticus did a V5!:

Bishop is stiff. I finally decided that. When Chris Sharma sent The Mandala, he said it was the hardest problem he'd ever done. He said that if he were going to rate it, he'd call it V16. But he said he wasn't going to rate it. Now, it has been rated at V12. Granted, Dave Graham found a hidden microcrimp that Chris missed, and then he sent it twice in a row, but the guide book says that if you do it the original way Chris Sharma did it, it's hard. About a V13.

... which means that I didn't send anything over a V1. In my defense, I wanted to send something hard, so I really only tried V4 and harder, like:

Iron Man Traverse V4

Action Figure V6

Matt and Micah had no problems doing highballs in Bishop. Here's some pictures of the crazy boys:

It freaking snowed in Bishop too! 200 days of sunshine, 90 of partly cloudy and it snowed AND rained on us while we were here!

Matt projected a sweet V4 called Weekender and a V5 called Serengeti. By the time we left he was SO close to sending both of them.

Micah was happy and sad in the Happies (one of the areas in Bishop. There's also the Sads):

We tried this hard V3 called Solarium that was pretty cool, but we left it unsent:

We are way into rock stacking now. I think these are both's works of Matticus:

Speaking of Matticus, this is what happens when he gets ahold of the camera:

We went to Convict Lake. It was way cool. I built a sand castle on the beach, the aspens were yellow, or white, or white and regular tree - mixed.

Owen's River Gorge:

Next it was on to Salt Lake City. We climbed at Little Cottonwood Canyon and stayed with Matt's Aunt, Uncle, and cousins. We took his cousin Conner climbing one day. They had lots of pets: 2 dogs, 2 cats, 5 chickens, a goose, a turtle, and a full on 80lb tortoise!

It was really cool there, but freezing as soon as the sun went behind the mountains.

Lizards!

The sad part about Salt Lake City is that Matticus left us. Here is a sweet Matticus tribute video that I made! You'll love it.
(click for video)
So now we've moved on to Joe's Valley. It's further south in Utah, so hopefully it will be warmer. Okay, I love you all and I hope you're all doing well!
-Stella

parting shot:

no pictures!

2007-10-06T12:38:00.004-07:00

The internet here in Bishop, CA sucks. We can't upload pictures and it took me an hour just to sign into the blog and start writing. A lot has happened since the last post, of course. We moved on from Flagstaff to Yosemite. We were there for just over a week. We came in from the east, which meant we drove through the Sierras. It was beautiful. I will make another post of photos sometime later. Yosemite was cool too. We bouldered and climbed cracks. The bouldering was slippery and I wasn't super motivated by it. The cracks were awesome. We only did 5.8 cracks (with one exception - a 5.9). I led one, but I didn't bring the right size gear (everything's trad) for the top, so I had to finish it 15 ft. from the top. Oh well. It was an amazingly fun climb. Micah and I tried to do a multipitch climb while we were there (because Yosemite is all about climbs over 1 pitch - some up to 30 pitches). We left camp at about 10am. We waited in line at the bottom of the crag until at least noon. We finished the first 3 pitches by 4pm. I couldn't believe how long it took! The first pitch was 5.9 and the rest of the limb was 5.8. Micah had to say "watch me!" while he was climbing twice, which leads me to believe that the climb was harder than 5.8. The top of the 3rd pitch had no ledge - which means Micah built an anchor and we hung from it in our harnesses, leaning against the rock. It's very uncomfortable. When we got there, there was another climbing party below us who decided they'd pass us. So we hung there as the first guy climbed passed us and set up his own hanging belay right above us. Then we hung there while his partner climbed up past us. Then we had to sit there until both guys climbed the next pitch too (or else we'd cross ropes and get tangled and have to share the next belay station anchor). Then Micah finally got to start climbing (I hung there still, belaying him). Micah got to the top, and the other guys were still there! They both tried the next pitch, but thought it was too hard. At this point it was at least 6:30pm. I was still hanging in my harness. I was only wearing a tanktop. The days are hot, but the nights are cold. It was getting dark and cold. After waiting for awhile, Micah and the other two guys decided to bail off the climb. After they fixed their anchor above me, they finally starting rappelling down one by one to the station was still hanging at. After all 3 of them came down, and Micah went down the next rappell, I FINALLY was able to rappell down to the ledge below. At that point I think it was 7pm. After 3 long rappells, we were able to hike out back to the cars and drive back to camp. It was pitch black by that time, and freezing! I don't think I will try a multipitch climb again for a long time.

On the upside, we met Toby in Yosemite! For those of you who dn't know Toby, he's Micah's brother. He went home after Yosemite, but he may fly back out and roadtrip with us later on in the trip.

Now we are in Bishop. It is just east and a little south of Yosemite. On the other side of the Sierras (which we had to cross over again). We've been here for a while (I have no idea how long - I can't keep track of the days anymore). The climbing here is world class bouldering and it's awesome! There's 2 different kinds of rocks - round, tall, granite boulders, and shorter, more featured Tuff (volcanic rock - like Queen Creek in Phoenix) boulders. Also, in this internet cafe 2 days ago, we were just sitting at a table and I looked up and I saw this guy putting sugar (or something) in his coffee. I looked at his face before he turned away, and I recognized him! It was none other than Chris Sharma. I freaked out a little bit to Micah and Matt. So far we haven't had any other sightings of, arguably, the best rock climber in the world. Wow. Also, in Yosemite, we watched this new movie called King Lines. It's all about Chris Sharma and it's one of the best climbing movies I've seen. I'd highly recommend buying and/or watching it.

Okay, I've got to go now. We've wasted a lot of this beautiful day and we'd like to get some climbing in. We're making lots of short videos. I can't wait to share them!

-Stella!

good and bad in Flagstaff

2007-09-22T11:21:00.001-07:00

Hey dudes! First off, I didn't realize you had to make an account to make comments, but I finally realized it and fixed it. Now anyone can comment. Flagstaff has been an interesting time. Here's the good stuff:

1. The climbing is crazy cool. We're staying at this place called Priest Draw. It's limestone and it makes tons of completely horizontal roofs.

this is a horizontal roof 30ish feet in the air. It's high enough to be 5.13 trad instead of a boulder problem.

2.The scenery here is also beautiful. We took some side trips. One was to the Grand Canyon, where we got to go on a short hike out to a pinnacle. No one else was there. The other was to Sunset Crater Volcano and some sweet Indian Ruins. Tomorrow we'll do the drive through Oak Creek Canyon down to Sedona (one of the most beautiful drives I've ever done).
these are at the Draw. The sunset with a storm cloud and the high alt. meadow

an elk and some ancient lava flows

ancient volcanoes and indian ruins

the GC! We went with Micah's friends Tony and Courtney. They had a girl from France visiting named Luna. I told her that our names put together make a famous picture book.

3. Matt is here! He was turned into a lizard thing, but he got better!

The bad stuff about Flag is 1. the roadsigns are very confusing. The are non-existent or right next to the turn (so you'd have to slam on the brakes in order to just miss the turn and cause a massive traffic pile-up). 2. there are thieves here. We got our car broken into (luckily not causing any damage to the car). Our iPods were stolen along with my CDs and Camelbak (which had credit card, all my money, drivers license, etc.). Missing my license and music are the biggest bummers. Please feel free to e-mail me any music you think is necessary (Stella.the.Giant@gmail.com is best, but smascari@wooster.edu works too). It has been a big pain in the ass, but things are slowly getting taken care of.

To finish off this entry, here's a picture of New Mexico (if you zoom in, the mountain has sweet patterns on it):

I love and miss you all!
-Stella

Across the Country

2007-09-15T13:45:00.000-07:00

!!!

Lots of driving

A Shit ton has happened since I last posted. Here's some pictures in a couple divisions: Nature and Climbing.

Climbing:
Little Rock City, TN

The Wave, V6

??
Horse Pens 40, AL

Centipede, V4 (hard)

Bum Boy, V3 (didn't send yet)

Nature:

sweet purple berries!

these are out of order, but this is Palo Duro Canyon, Amarillo, TXOklahoma

Goats on Horseshoe Canyon Ranch, AR. They were really close to us.
Horseshoe Canyon Ranch

The Ozarks, ARMom - these next two are for you. This is a picture of flint inside chalk, I think?? They talk about it in the Clan of the Cave Bear books. I was really excited to find it this way.

This is what nature does to you (don't worry, I'm since showered and changed clothes):

Another video! This one's way badass:
(Click here to see the video!)

Right now we're in Flagstaff, AZ. I'll add pictures from New Mexico and Arizona in my next post. We're picking up Matt tonight, I'm excited!

Also, if'n ya'll want to see more pictures, try the likes of this website: www.chetroy.com. I reckon it's Micah's blog site.

I love you all and I hope you're all doing well!

Stella

Chattanooga

2007-09-07T12:06:00.000-07:00

So I've never done this whole blogging thing before, but I think it's the easiest way to keep everyone updated with what I'm doing. Also I think I can add some sweet photos too... as soon as I figure out how.

Right now Micah and I are in the Jasper Public Library. That's Jasper, Tennessee. We spent last weekend at the New with a whole bunch of WOODS folk (like, 20 WOODS folk + some elders). It was really awesome to have so many people that I love together there. We stayed an extra couple days at the New with Tyler, who helped us out like whoa by letting us use some leftover food stamps from his Alaska job. And by some leftover food stamps, I mean somewhere around $130 of food stamps. It was the best going away gift ever.

We managed to pack the car with enough extra room for Matt (and/or any additional 3rd person), then we took off for Chattanooga. It seems so far that we have gotten really lucky with the weather. A couple guys we saw the first day said "good timing! The weather just broke!" Which, after Katherine Bell's warning of the extreme heat in the south, was a huge relief. We are staying at Foster Falls State Park. I've been here before - freshman year WOODS spring break. it's really cool to be here again. There are a lot of random memories that it's bringing back. There are some differences though, here's Foster Falls from spring, '04:
Here it is (different angle because I was too lazy to walk all the way down to the base) now:

The first full day we had here, we decided to climb at Foster Falls. It's sport climbing, and, apparently, known for it's really hard sport climbs. I wanted to get back on the only climb I remember doing 4 years ago - a 5.8+ that I was extremely proud to say that I almost flashed. But I fell at the top because it was hard. But when Micah and I tried to get on it, we were surrounded by bees. There are a lot of bees at Foster Falls. Instead we did a couple 5.9s.

The next day we went to Little Rock City... well, we also had an adventure in Chattanooga in search of a new stove, since ours has a major leak in it and is really scary. But Little Rock City is badass. It's a boulderfield owned by a golf course. It lines one side of the golf course (on the other sides of the boulderfield are a cliffline, woods, and a crazy canyon maze system - which we'll explore soon). You're not allowed to let the golfers see you, so that gets rid of a lot of boulders, but there are SO many boulders packed into this area, that it doesn't even matter. A lot of boulders look Horse Pens-ish, and every problem I did (or attempted) was really cool. After a rest day today, I think we'll have to go back tomorrow.

Here's some climbing pictures of me and Micah:Also we made a movie, but you have to turn your head or computer sideways to watch it. We don't have the video camera yet, but we'll make some cooler videos when we do:

In a couple days, we'll go down to Rocktown, Georgia, and then Horse Pens40, Alabama. I'll try to take more/better pictures for the next post. I love you and miss you all!

-Stella