alright! Here we go! Let's start with my current sock monkey (from Waterstone), Sophie Sockmonkey! Here she is with a bowl of my homegrown popcorn. We were supposed to take a photo of her with the popped popcorn too, but I guess we forgot. Ruth loved the popcorn!

Sophie Sockmokney had a brief break dancing phase. She got pretty good.

Sophie and I chillin'

One of our first weekends in Chattanooga, we went to Rocktown, in Georgia. Our friends Dan and Zak were there, working on their guidebook to the rock climbing there. Here, Ruth and Julia (who I met once before in Joshua Tree last winter, but she lives in Charleston, WV) decided to start a band. And everyone knows the most important thing to do first (when starting a band) is take a photoshoot for your album cover. We haven't gotten any further with our band, like who will play what insturments..., but we have some good album cover photos to choose from.

Dan was taking photos for the guidebook, so Ruth and I had photoshoots. Yeah, we're kind of a big deal. :) Here's me! On 'Ripple'. You can find me in the Rocktown Guidebook too! Coming out this spring.

A different day at Rocktown. Ruth and I were watching our other roommate (we have even ANOTHER roommate too, but I don't think I have any photos of him in this post..), Ryan climb, but the photo came out so well!

Ruth had her birthday at the end of January, here's a climb she did that day.

Here's one of my proudest climbs I've ever done. It's called Helicopter, because your feet swing around a lot.

this is my favorite problem at Rocktown! No one else liked it.

Here's a new area! This place is called Mountain Brook, named after the apartment complex it is owned by. This is Donald trying a tall, scary problem called Melon Slab.

Now we've moved onto LRC. This is the place we climb most often.LRC is owned by Montlake Golf Club. It's in the woods paralleling the golf course, so every once in a while, when there's an awful golfer, you have to watch out for stray golf balls being shot into the woods. Being owned by a golf club, it naturally costs money to go there. I bought a year pass. To make it worth it, I had to go 40 times from Dec. 5th to April 5th. Yesterday was visit 43! Easy. Here's a photo from when Joe visited over winter break

Joe on Incredarete!

This was another of my really hard climbs. Harder than I've ever done before! It's a V7 called Red House.

This is Jill (a girl I met while here) doing a problem on a day so cold, they closed the golf course. The boulders actually ON the golf course are off limits, unless the golf course is closed, so sometimes people go at night, and there were some others on the fairway this day, but really the only good time to climb on the golf course is on the bouldering competition day they have once a year.

In February (or maybe late January?) Joe went with a Cincinnati school group to Horse Pens 40 in AL. Only 2 hours away for me, so I met up with him. Here he is on my favorite problem there, Spook Eye. He did better than me that trip!

I put lots of photos of me in this post, since everyone got bored with my climbing pictures of other people.

Here's the latest hard problem I did. Jerry's Kids, V7. It's the tallest hard thing I've done, so it took me a really long time to get brave and do it.

last but not least! My friend Cecylia and I took an intro to aerials class! We tried the aerial fabrics, and learned a bunch of beginner moves on the trapeze. It was so fun, that now I'm starting to think I need my OWN trapeze. But they cost upwards of $270, and to make one you need to be able to weld, and "splice rope". Sounds like too much work.

-Stella

A Winter View

This winter has been warm and sunny everywhere. Before it started, though, I decided to move to Chattanooga for the season, to stay warmer than I have been the past couple winters at the New. Which means I've had an incredibly warm winter! There have been 4 days so far with a high below 40. That's it. It's snowed a total of one night, and was all melted before I got up. It's been in the 50s and 60s a lot. Fantastic! I cut my hair short, so I'm not sure I would have survived a cold winter!

A few friends and I got an apartment together, and we have more friends over all the time. I'm vacationing from work, so I just climb almost everyday. My computer won't let me upload any pictures right now, so I'll leave you with this paragraph and try again later.

-Stella

Summer's End

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

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.