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Sendless at Endless

Nov 17 2015

Catchy title, but will probably make for a rather lackluster trip report! Conditions were prime for sending…I guess my only excuse is myself! Fortunately, however, our weekend in West Virginia was still “wild and wonderful.” Saturday was spent at Snake Buttress. After warming up on Muckraker 11a, I had hoped to tick New World Order 12a, which I had started working on a few weeks ago. To be honest, heading into the weekend I’d been feeling less than confident, and with questionable motivation. The crux for me on New World Order is a big deadpoint move that requires (for me, anyway) a LOT of precision…Read the rest of this entry →

A Crag-Date in the High Country

Nov 10 2015

This past Sunday the Crag-Daddy and I got a chance to do something we hadn’t been able to do since some time in 2012 – climb outside together without kids!!! We’d been looking forward to out crag-date for months (years?), and we actually ended up having to wait even longer than anticipated. The original plan was for us to climb together sans kiddos at the Hound Ears Bouldering Competition on October 3rd…but then that, as well as the make-up day on October 4th got rained out. No worries, it was rescheduled for a month later, on November 7th…but as the…Read the rest of this entry →

Post-Halloween Tips from the Archives

Nov 02 2015

Back in the days when I actually had time to write (ie one child, who was in preschool a couple mornings a week), I loved writing seasonally appropriate posts for every holiday, Halloween included. Now that I’ve got a toddler running me ragged a lot less time, those sort of posts have gone on the backburner. Back when Baby Zu was a newborn, I threw all the blogging “rules” out the window in the hopes of keeping my sanity (it helped?!?) While writing soothes my soul, not putting pressure on myself to do it means a lot less stress – and…Read the rest of this entry →

New River Gorgeous Fall Climbing!

Oct 28 2015

It’s been 7 years since the CragDaddy and I first visited the New River Gorge (way back in the pre-kid era of our marriage.) Since then we’ve spent hundreds of weekends up there, in all seasons of the year and all kinds of weather…but NONE were as beautiful as this past weekend! The intensity of the fall color this year was absolutely breathtaking – vivid yellows, vibrant reds, and spectacular oranges. It was as if Someone, in the 5 days we’d been back in Charlotte, had taken a paintbrush to the entire landscape. Even just hiking in to Endless Wall had a…Read the rest of this entry →

Winter Footwear for Kids (from STONZ)

Oct 26 2015

A couple of months ago I was contacted by STONZwear about reviewing some of their awesome footwear for the kiddos. They said they wanted the review done by the end of October…which in many areas of the country would be easy, but was potentially problematic here in the South. While the weather can definitely get cold by then, we are more often than not still sporting short sleeves well past Halloween. So when I saw the weekend forecast a couple of weeks ago, I was psyched for the chance to try out the newest kicks for the crag-kiddos on our…Read the rest of this entry →