Category Archives: Climbing

Posts about…you guessed it – climbing! Trip reports, anecdotes, and musings about my favorite recreational pasttime.

Down and Out at Asheboro

Jan 18 2012

I apologize ahead of time for the lackluster content of this trip report…but I’ll claim the weak and injured excuse. This past Saturday marked our first trip of the season to the Asheboro boulders. I arrived psyched to explore some new problems as well as hop on some old favorites. After a quick warm-up, I hopped on Lightning Bolt Crack (V3/4), a unique finger crack that is (ordinarily) so fun that I make it a point to tick it every time I’m there. Sometimes it takes me a few tries to remember the right hand sequence, and this particular time…Read the rest of this entry →

Real Rock Tour de Charlotte

Jan 12 2012

Well, after a day at Pilot and a couple of days at Stone, we decided to round out our Holiday stay-cation by giving some dear friends from our old stomping grounds in Raleigh a tour of what our new locale had to offer, rock-wise. So last Friday we all took on Red Wall at Crowder’s Mountain. After warming up on Opinionated (5.9+), Steve and Sam explored Scramble My Feedback (5.10a), while Caleb and I tackled an unknown, obscure line that as far as I know isn’t listed in any published guide (yet…). Everybody took a lap on this one, and…Read the rest of this entry →

2012 Hit List

Jan 11 2012

Although a large part of what makes crag days special involves the amazing people I’m with and the spectacular setting we’re in, another big part of it for me is the personal satisfaction that comes from working towards and achieving goals that I’ve set for myself. Sometimes those goals revolve around specific routes, grades, and/or areas, and other times they are more vague (ie, getting better at _______ technique). Other times they are things that are personally applicable to me in my current life phase. For example, during my pregnancy I challenged myself to see how many weeks into my…Read the rest of this entry →

Guidebook Update – Stories from the Stone Age

Jan 09 2012

In between bouts of Familial Invasions, I spent the majority of Christmas Break working on the Stone Mountain section of the guidebook – confirming topos, writing descriptions, researching previous guidebooks, and of course, squeezing in as much climbing as possible. After a cloudy day at Pilot that never quite warmed up enough, I was relieved to drive into the parking lot at Stone the next day under a beautiful blue, sunny sky. Publisher Bill and I got to work on photographing routes and double-checking the lay of the land for the topos on the South Face for the first couple…Read the rest of this entry →

The Hit List for 2011 – The Year in Review

Jan 02 2012

I mentioned before Christmas that the first week in January was going to be celebrated as “Highlight Week” here at Cragmama. It seemed appropriate to kick things off with the Hit List. Some of you may remember my 2011 Hit List that I published last March, where I listed 10 goals (some very specific, some rather general) that I had my sights set on for the year. I remember at first being a bit hesitant about posting them for the world to see, since I wasn’t entirely sure that some of the objectives were even in my realm of ability.…Read the rest of this entry →

“Not all who wander are lost.” —JRR TOLKIEN