Back in the saddle

Alright blog fans (both of you.) I'm sure you've been waiting in eager anticipation for me to start posting again, and I'm never one to dissapoint, so here you go.

The summer at Philmont was awesome. I didn't do very much rock climbing myself, but I got to live out in the woods for another three months, and do a lot of relaxing. Didn't save as much money as I had hoped, but that's how it goes sometimes.

Now I'm back in Virginia, in Blacksburg to be exact. The van is still in Pahrump, and I'm back to climbing rocks as much as possible. We went to the New River Gorge last weekend, and I was pretty impressed. Hard to believe I lived here for four years while I was in school, and I never made the two hour trip over there. I'd put the quality of the climbing at the New up against anything - the bullet hard sandstone offers tons of unique holds, and has everything from slab to big overhangs. Sounds like a blurb from a tourist pamphlet... But seriously, the New is sick.

That's a shot of Tom on some 5.11, which he onsighted in good style, downclimbing the crux sequence twice before he figured it out.