New River Rendezvous '11

About this time every year, Lindsay and I head to the New River Gorge for the annual New River Rendezvous to teach a few clinics and promote Fox Mountain Guides. The enjoyment for us really comes in meeting up with old friends as well as making a few new ones! I think we sometimes spend more time chatting with friends from NC than we ever do when we are in Brevard.

While we did get some good food, I was lucky enough to pick up some food poisoning – nothing that could keep me down – just felt like really bad altitude illness without the ability to go any lower to get better. 

We put on two different clinics this year, an advanced rescue clinic as well as a beginning climbers clinic. Both went really well, and folks were psyched afterwards! 

It was also the Access Fund’s 20th birthday, so people were way hyped-up about that and carried that energy throughout the festival. Here are some more photos of friends and the festivities!

Easton Hat Trick

The super-light Easton Hat Trick is a great tent for one to three people looking for a light, strong, and reliable shelter in many different environments. I just got done using this shelter in the extreme conditions on Mt. Whitney. The first night in the tent we had 70 mph gusts of wind and blowing snow. At one point, a tent pole bent down and hit my head as I was laying there. In the morning when I awoke, every single piece of the tent was intact! Other tents on the mountain were rendered useless – not the Hat Trick.

One of the cool things about the Hat Trick is the pole system. Easton calls this the “air lock” system. I was a bit skeptical at first sight, but after using these poles, I am a believer. One thing you won’t be skeptical about will be the weight of the poles. They are SUPER light! This keeps the entire tent weight well below 7 lbs. This is really light for a three-person tent.

The only downside I found was that Easton calls this an all-season tent. While the tent did do a great job holding its ground in the high wind, the mesh inner let snow blow into the tent. The mesh provides for great ventilation, but hard to call this a complete “all season” shelter.

If you are looking for a high-end, super-light shelter that is reliable, I would suggest throwing a Hat Trick in your pack. You might not even know it is there!

Easton Hat Trick Link

AAC Rescue Course and Climbing Day

As the Ambassador for the American Alpine Club in the Western Mountains of North Carolina, I set up a few events every year for the local members. One of them is a free rescue course at Fox Mountain Guides. This year we had fourteen AAC members and four Fox Mountain Guides attend this event. We started out the day with some coffee and donuts and then quickly moved into looking at ways to keep our climbing systems quick and efficient to keep ourselves out of trouble. We also looked at the gear museum that FMG has on hand with old bolds and broken gear.

After lunch, we went to Looking Glass and folks split up practicing rescue techniques as well as getting some climbing in. Check out the photo gallery here: AAC Photos.

The Warriors Way

Arno Ilgner is quite the legend in southeastern rock climbing. He has been putting up “hard man” routes since the early 80’s. He has also delved into mental training and wrote the book “The Rock Warriors Way,” followed by “Espresso Lessons” about a year ago. Now Arno travels the country teaching the way of the warrior in his clinics.

Arno always smiling!

I was fortunate enough to take this training with my fellow employees of Fox Mountain Guides. The training made me realize I am not very present in the moment when I am climbing.  I was already familiar with and had practiced most of the teachings and techniques Arno advocates in his clinics. The problem with guiding is that we rush through climbing to get the rope up. This tends to spill over into our recreational climbing as we are always reinforcing this hurried movement into our brains. Arno says this is a more intuitive approach, and focusing on a more analytical way of climbing will balance out our movement. Stopping and thinking during climbs was hard for some of the guides and made typical “cruiser” terrain somewhat difficult at first. Once you learn to rest when you rest, and climb when you climb, you start to feel more like a warrior on the rock.

Check out Arno’s site here: http://warriorsway.com/

Training the Special Forces

Training the Special Forces is a great privilege. These men are super dialed and pick up on any thing we teach them. We take them from never being in a climbing system to leading multi-pitch climbs in just a matter of days. From blasting up trails to holding their fear back on the runout leads, these guys are incredibly smart and well-conditioned machines. The group that I just worked with last week was nice enough to let us take a few shots during their training.

Technical Rescue Training

At Fox Mountain Guides, we do a lot of continuing education and training for our guides to stay on top of what is out there in the climbing world. Technical rescue is something we hopefully never have to use but need to be very proficient with……. just in case. I do find myself employing these techniques when guiding to make my clients’ experience better as well as during high angle operations with the Brevard Rescue team. Nonetheless, revisiting these systems is always good and discussing with peers ways to do things better seems to keep us at the forefront of our industry.

We use the AMGA “45 minute drill” as our scenario. This scenario is a technical challenge that guides must complete to pass their AMGA Rock Instructor and AMGA Rock Guide exams. They don’t really reflect actual situations one might encounter, and they are not inteded to. The drill is designed to be complex, stressful, and contrived to evaluate how a guide might deal with an even more stressful emergency. It consists of escaping belays, raising and lowering systems, rappelling and counter balancing descending techniques, as well as improvised ascending and load-releasable weight transfers. This scenario brings out various solutions to many different problems, which allows for great discussion among scholarly guides.

Mammut Extreme Hybrid Pant

I must admit that I was a little skeptical when I received the Extreme Hybrid pant in the mail. They seemed slightly bulky, and I wasn’t so sure about the suspenders.

Boy was I surprised! I put these pants on when I got to base camp, and they didn’t come off until we got back!!! They are super comfortable with their half soft shell/half hard shell design, while still providing great wind protection. When you are hauling huge loads, you can open the massive side vents to cool yourself off. The large crampon protectors came in handy when we were post-holeing up to our waists in the snow drifts.

I would have to say that my only complaint would be that if you were not smart about which layer you put your suspenders over you would have some difficulty doing the number 2. I will be wearing these pants on big mountains in the future!

Training for Ice

After coming back from Aconcagua and losing 20 lbs, I have found myself terribly out of ice climbing shape. I didn’t have the weight to lose, so most if it had to be muscle. I have been hitting the gym daily as well as going to Crossfit Brevard. John (Crossfit Brevard Owner) has been a huge help in keeping my fitness at a good level and is inspiring to work with. Hopefully this training will pay off in the Mixed Climbing Comp in North Conway, NH in a few weeks!

Bouldering at Rumbling Bald

Since the warm weather moved back in, ice climbing was out for the day, so I headed up to Rumbling Bald with Aaron and Brandon and met some other folks to wrestle a few pebbles. Rumbling Bald has world class bouldering packed into a fairly small area. The Carolina Climbers Coalition has purchased a tract of land to help secure access in this area, but it is still a concern. I enjoy bouldering here as the landings are fairly tame and boulder problems are only feet from other classic problems.

Choss Mountain, NC

Jeremy Devine on WI4

Choss Mountain is a great little crag off of NC 221 near Linville Caverns. The ice here is really nice, but the rock faces Southwest so it does get late-day sun. If it is cold,  this could be one of the best ice climbing crags in the Carolinas. Some unformed pillars above some great mixed terrain.