On Friday 9/14, me, Cheryl and Ethan piled into Ethan's van for the long schlep to West Virginia. We quickly cluttered the van with gear, beer, munchies, maps - gave it that "lived-in" look. But Ethan didn't mind, he was enjoying being on a road trip with 2 wild and crazy climbing chicks and listening to raunchy girl talk for 8 hours straight.
Saturday morning, our very sweet B&B hostess provided us with good coffee and muffins with the texture of glue. Maybe we should have breakfast somewhere else tomorrow. We met up with the guys who were camping, and plotted our day.
Our first day climbing at the New River Gorge was spent at Kaymoor. Cheryl, our fearless tour guide, led us straight for the classic, "Flight of the Gumby", 5.9. It's very popular so we had to grab it while we were there early and had the place to ourselves. Steve, Cheryl, Ethan and I all led it, very nice! Pretty straightforward with one thin move on the arete. Cheryl went to lead "Springer", 5.10a (another book says 5.10b), then Steve and Ethan also took a turn. I was intimidated by the very thin move near the top and top roped it instead. What a nice quality face climb! Steve spent some time working on "Hardcore Female Thrash", 5.11c, it took a while but he eventually made it. Ethan gave the climb a try on toprope, but it beat him. Very difficult weird moves near the start, and if you fall, you can't get back on. Well, Ethan made the hard move and then fell on easier rock. Go figure! Then we wandered around the corner to do "Squirrely Adventure", 5.10a. Very nice climb with lots of variety on it, face, flakes, overhangs. Unfortunately had some loose blocks on it and a wasps nest with a couple of angry wasps standing guard. Cheryl got stung on the hip while leading it, the rest of us managed to avoid getting stung.
Afterwards we proceeded to miss our trail back to the cars and found ourselves way up the road. A friendly toothless local offered us a ride and we happily took it. The car was covered with empty Marlboro boxes, he was hacking and coughing and trying to light up a cigarette when he informed us that we'd better not try to kiss him because he's getting over pneumonia! Well, Cheryl and I were really disappointed, we had never kissed a disgusting toothless smoker with pneumonia, and she suggested maybe smoking wasn't a good idea right now. He told us about where he used to live...he was in Connecticut for a while, but he "got the bitch pregnant 3 times" and had to move back to West Virginia. It was all we could do to keep ourselves from losing it and cracking up. But he was very nice, brought us right to our car, and we parted company. A few beers later, we were on our way to get cleaned up at our B&B and met at the pizza place for dinner. Met back at the guys' campsite for a cozy campfire and beers until early-to-bed Ethan was ready to fall over.
First day, great time!
(Thanks to Ethan for his additional pictures that I added to the gallery.)