The New

The last week we've been in The New (river gorge). We arrived for "Bridge Day", where they close traffic on the 800' bridge and let people Base Jump off it for the day. Pretty impressive stuff to watch, looking from above it was hard to judge the distance to the ground, and it was quite worrying at times watching the people that pulled really late. One guy jumped in a wheel chair, apparently he was in the wheel chair due to a previous base jumping accident, properly mental!
Some of Kims friends form DC and Baltimore came over to hang out for a few days, it has been a great few days of social climbing, camp fire beer drinking, and another van "curry night".

The weather has been quite strange, for the last week its been between 70 and 80 everyday and almost too hot to climb in the sun. Pretty weird to complain about it being too hot at the end of October, although it sure beats rain!

Kim enjoying the unseasonal teperatures on Orange Ozwald 10b

Kim attempting Psycho Wrangler 12a

Bouldering at Hawks Nest Dam

We are now heading south to Chattanooga as its now forecasting snow, quite a change in 2 days!!

Set Off/Arrival/The Red

So we set off finally, a few days later than we hoped. 8 States later we were in Kentucky at The Red, the journey took 3 days and for the most part was uneventful.
The exception to this was when we stopped for the night to find we had no power to the back of the van (this just after we'd spent $600 on new batteries and wiring). Kim managed to locate a guy who was (kind of) an autoelectrician (he probably fixes more lawnmowers than RVs) along our route. It turned out that we'd simply sucked the batteries dry running the fridge on 12 volt (the guy who installed the batteries had told me turn off the charge to it occasionally as driving for 3 days could overcharge the batteries). Apparently we had sucked them so dry that there wasn't enough charge to power the system so it could recharge form the alternator, some kinda weird electronic chicken and egg scenario. All it took was to hook up to his mains electric for half an hour and we were good. The guy didn't charge us anything for his time, just told us to point out to others that despite being from Kentucky he had teeth, shoes and a brain!

Any way on to The Red and climbing and all that good stuff. We've been here over a week now and its just amazingly beautiful right now. The leaves are changing and everywhere is awash with color, reds and oranges and golds in all manner of shades.

Colors on show at The Red

  The climbing here is fantastic long golden overhanging faces covered in pockets. Did I mention that the routes are long? Kim and I are definitely feeling the lack of climbing this summer, endurance seems at an all time low for both of us, and anything even remotely long is kicking our collective asses regardless of the grade. Still to quote some Swedish guy in the movie " Hard Grit", "Its hard to be angry when the climbing is so good!", the only difference being that in the movie he then climbs his project, while we continue to flail on ours!

 

Fantastic pockets on golden rock, 3 images of Kim on the classic "King Me" 11b

We're heading to The New now for a few days to meet up with some of Kims old friends, looking forward to some technical (less pumpy) climbing, before returning back to The Red.

That's what we came for (not falling backwards off the top obviously)

1st curry cooked in The Whale, Chicken Dopiaza, a proud moment! 

The Mission

The Mission (starting 1st week of October 2012) is to drive from Portland OR, most of the way across the country, 2599 miles!!


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First up the Sport climbing meccas of the New and Red River Gorges

The New

The Red

After spending October sport climbing, its time for some bouldering. The classic venues of Horsepens 40 and Little Rock City AKA Stone Fort are up.

Horsepens

Stone Fort

With bouldering at the Lilly boulders, and some more sport climbing at the Obed also on the list

The Lilly Boulders

The Obed

These 3 areas are reasonably close together, luckily as the south east is not famous for its stable weather. Hopefully we will discover other areas along the way



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A = The new
B = The Red
C = The Lilly Boulders/The Obed
D = Horsepens
E = Stone Fort

As winter sets in and the weather gets worse, its time to head further south and back west. Roof climbing at its best in the winter sunshine, 1366 miles later its Hueco Tanks, Texas.

The Tanks

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The Total Route 4503 miles! Time to find out how good our marriage is!





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The Whale

Name - The Whale

DOB - Sometime/1995

Interests - Travel, Camping, Swimming
Favorite Food - Krill
Favorite Drink - Gasoline
Favorite Color - Blue

Meet the Whale, a 1995 Dodge Ram 3500, looks like a whale, drives like a whale, it must be a whale....!

Adopt a Whale

I was originally looking around some car lots to see how much used Sprinter vans were selling for. Whilst driving down one street loaded with used car lots, I saw the what I thought was a Whale in the corner of my eye. I decided to stop and investigate further, had this whale been mistreated, and how much would it cost to adopt?
The Whale didn't seem to have been mistreated, and was in much better physical shape than I expected for a Whale of this age. The Whale seemed very lonely living in a used car lot with nobody to play with, so after consulting Kim, I decided to adopt (for the fee of $10,000).
The Whale seemed happy!

So we had a Whale, the Whale had a 2 burner stove, fridge, microwave, air con, propane heater, sink with hot and cold running water and an external shower. All we needed now was a Mission......

The Whale

The Kitchen

The Bed

The Whales favorite color is blue