New River Gorge Bridge

The first national park of the trip: New River Gorge!
What a beautiful place.
We stayed 5 nights and went bouldering every day. The area is very diverse, some boulders are in dense forest, others are right in the riverbed, some accesses are only a few minutes, others took us more than an hour just to get to a single boulder we wanted to try.
All in all it was great and quite adventurous. When I asked the Ann Arbor crew about bears in the area, they said we wouldn't see any and that we were more likely to step on a snake looking for bears! Well...turns out they were right. On our last day we went to the Meadow Top area, a beautiful boulder field next to a cliff with a dense rhododendron forest. It was early in the day and there were no hikers or other climbers around. We were struggling through the thicket when I suddenly heard a scream from Birte. "Snake! Snake! You almost stepped on it!" I froze, then slowly turned around. I still couldn't see it. Birte had stepped back a few meters. The snake seemed to have frozen as well, so I took a few more steps away. Now there was a snake between Birte and me, blocking the way. It was a copperhead, easily recognizable by its copper-colored head. Luckily I missed it by a few centimeters. Maybe I even touched it lightly. But we were lucky. It was already half grown. The babies are more dangerous because they cannot control how much venom they use when they bite. This one didn't bite, but froze, which is their way of hiding and trusting their camouflage (which is really, really good...I just couldn't see it, even though I knew it was there!) Well...we survived! Birte took a detour to get back on the trail. We went to the boulder "Egyptian Root Canal" (V5) and Birte climbed it!

There is so much to say about this place, but I will try to keep it short.
Fayetteville, the small town in the National Park, is really cute with lots of outdoor and antique shops, cafes and restaurants everywhere. It has a very nice and outdoorsy atmosphere. Most of the people here are either rock climbing or kayaking.
The campgrounds were all free and we met very nice people everywhere. At one campground, an African-American family with a huge old RV (like in the movie Little Miss Sunshine) stayed next to us. They were really funny. On the morning of my birthday (unbeknownst to them) the father was singing gospel songs at the morning campfire, using a hammer against the stone wall around the campfire as percussion. It was beautiful to hear. It reminded me of the chain gang songs of the convicts in old western movies.

My favorite boulder was Pizza Slice (V8). A perfect line along the arete of a 45° overhanging triangle block in the middle of the river! We were lucky to get there on Thursday, as we learned from a kayaker the next day. From the end of September to the end of November, the dam is open from Friday to Saturday to lower the water level of Summersville Lake. One day later, the line would have been unclimbable! Perfect timing!Read more