Climb faster, I hear banjo music!

Well, we never got to hear a local tell Rob that he had purdy lips, but we heard more than enough hillbilly-speak to keep us entertained while we were climbing. "Git 'r dun" was the motto of the trip and we had a very friendly gas-station attendant ask if we wuz from real far away when she heard our accents. My favorite moment was in Charlie's pub, Fayetteville's only drinking establishment, when Charlie himself handed us 2 Buds each for $2 and said, "drink easy, boys - i ain't countin".

And the climbing was pretty good, too, even though there were more beers drunk on the trip than climbs climbed.

First stop: the Gunks near New Paltz, New York.











This is me getting ready for my first trad climb ever. Yikes. Actually, I didn't really get scared until I was about half way up, then I got really scared. But the different thing about trad climbing is that once you start up a climb, there's no turning back unless you want to leave a $100 piece of gear on the cliff. Or worse yet, ask a guy to finish the climb for you. So up I went.













Here's Rob leading the second pitch on Easy O. It's a Gunks 5.2 and a good example of how CRAZY the Gunks grading system is. Anywhere else in the world, this would be a 5.6 and an exciting one at that.















Hardcores that we are (tee-hee), we always found ourselves rapping down from our last climb in the dark. Though we balanced our hardcore evening climbing with very softcore mornings, waking up at 9:00 and moseying to the cliff sometime around 11:00.

Next stop: New River Gorge near Fayetteville, West Virginia

Home of the Western Hemisphere's largest arch bridge

Trying out a chimney climb at NRG. Being in a chimney is like climbing in 3D because you use holds on both/all the walls, not just the one in front of you. Very fun.

Oliver checks out some of the cool features in the rock at New River Gorge.

Last stop: Senenca Rocks in Seneca Rocks, West Viriginia.

Scared spitless at the crumbly top of Seneca Rocks. Just as I was nervously making my way back down from my little perch on the top, a 50 year-old man with a bandana around his neck and a chalk-bag around his waist wandered past us, having just finished a free-solo (ie. no ropes) of the moutain. On a much harder route than we just finished. Humbling.