Rendezvous and beyond! Part II

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 Micah and I are thinking about getting a new camera, becuase ours is outdated and not so high quality anymore.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!

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!

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

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