June 17th - 19th, 2011

Seneca Rocks, WV

Felix, Michael, and Erica went to Seneca for a weekend of multipitch trad climbing. We met up with other Pittsburgh climbers and split up into two teams. The weather looked threatening Saturday but cooperated in the end. Michael did Gunsight to South Peak (a classic!), the first pitch of Le Gourmet, and Front C. Felix and Erica tagged the summit twice, the first time climbing Skyline Traverse to West Pole, and the second time climbing the classic Soler.

It rained all Saturday night, and Sunday morning things were quite wet. A constant light drizzle prevented anything from drying, but we grouped back together and braved it anyways, figuring the Southern Pillar would provide an easier opportunity to bail if (when) the weather moved in. After going up Climbing Punishment, we were ready to set up topropes when the weather *really* kicked in, soaking us in a matter of minutes. A late lunch on the front porch finished off a great weekend of climbing.

-F. Duvallet

May 27th - 30th, 2011

New River Gorge, WV

Memorial day weekend is always a good opportunity to climb at those far-away crags, but this time we decided to stick closer to home and spend some time at the New. We checked out new crags we hadn't been to before and climbed classic lines at ones we'd visited plenty of times before. Monday was spent climbing at Summersville lake, and when the weather *really* got hot we dipped in the lake to cool off.

-F. Duvallet

October 31st, 2010

McConnells Mill, PA

Two of us went to McConnells Mill for rock climbing. In addition to having fun climbing in the cold, we practiced setting up top rope anchors, rappelling, and belaying from above the climb. All went well for us. The new locking biners made it easier to set up climbs. However, we did encounter some other climbers who lacked the equipment and skills to safely climb. Unfortunately, our attempts to convince them of this failed.

-M. Tschantz

September 19th, 2010

McConnells Mill, PA

Ten of us went to McConnells Mill for rock climbing. The trip focused on teaching safe belaying and harness use. We discussed equipment, belaying, anchoring the belayer, tying in, lowering, climbing commands, and hazards. The lesson went well, but the climbing was hard for beginners due to wet conditions.

-M. Tschantz

April 10th, 2010

Cooper's Rock, PA

Left the storeroom at 10am and Returned at 6pm.
12 people in three cars and probably half of those had never been climbing.
Beautiful weather, climbed all day, everything went without a hitch.

-F. Kleshchev

September 13th, 2009

September 12th, 2009

September 6th - 7th, 2008

New River Gorge

After a very fun week of five days of work jammed into four because of the labor day getting out of Pittsburgh for Saturday and Sunday is just what we all needed. Fedya, Maryanna, Lisa, and I met Saturday morning to head down to the New. We packed up the car and three hours later we arrived at Summersville Lake to do some sport climbing. We started off and got a good number of climbs in before the weather started to get very ominous. We moved our stuff under a large roof and decided to go for a swim in the lake. We got lucky and the weather never really rolled in and we kept climbing until it got dark and got back to car by headlamp.

The next morning, after some fun around the campfire with a green laser pointer we headed out to Tattoo Wall at Bubba City. After a little bit of trouble finding the climbing area we got there to find quite a crowd of people, but there were plenty of routes to go around. Everyone got to tire themselves out. Then came the worst part of any trip, the part where we head back to Pittsburgh.

-M. Schnall

August 29th - September 1st, 2008

Red River Gorge

One week of school down, but not quite swamped with work yet and there is a three day weekend so staying in Pittsburgh would be a crime. Kentucky here we come! We headed out on Friday night around 5pm, when we arrived and Miguel's it was more crowed then any of us had ever seen it. I felt very lucky just to find a parking space and a spot to put my tent.

The next morning when we woke up with the entire crowd I was a little bit worried that everything would be swamped, but when we headed out to Sunbeam Buttress in Muir Valley we did not see another person all day. We were able to get lots of good climbs in. The highlight of the day was at the Solarium wall were Tibo started projecting on a thin overhanging route called Mirage. We finished ourselves off at the great wall and then headed in for some extremely yummy Miguel's pizza.

The next day we headed over to roadside in the morning we planned on just doing a couple routes there and then heading back to Muir to finish up some projects from the previous day. However the allure of long overhanging jug hauls was too much. I managed to send pulling pockets after 3 attempt, Wes and I both crawled and hung our way of Return of Chris Synder, and Tibo hiked Up Yonder in his usual smooth style. When we finally made it to Muir we met up with Maryanna, Eric and Fedya who had head out earlier. We ran down pretty much every single route at Johnny Wall.

That night we went back ordered more pizza. Over dinner that night a couple important facts were learned. One English is the one language were Pineapples are not called Ananas, and two talking about MatLab and doing riddles over dinner at a climbers campground causes comments like, "You must be the CMU table."

For our last day we went back to Muir Valley again to wrap of the some projects. Maryanna put down a very impressive on-sight on Plate Techtonics and Tibo hopped back on Mirage to give it a redpoint go. At the end I don't think anyone really wanted to leave, but class awaits and the beautiful sandstone of the RRG gorge will be there for next time.

-M. Schnall

August 31st, 2008

McConnell's Mills State Park

Mathew Mooty, Ameya Kanitkar, Tamar Melman, Brendan Ryan, and I departed for hiking at McConnells Mill State Park at noon on Sunday. Amy and Lux also set off for the park to do some climbing. After the hour drive, we began the hike at the mill under a sunny blue sky with a temperature in the low 80s. After hiking along the Gorge Trail for a few hours, we stopped for lunch on a large rock next to Slippery Rock Creek. Before heading back, we took advantage of a nice section of the creek to skip some rocks and discuss the merits of rock skipping as a competitive sport. At the end of the hike we ran into Lux and Amy, back from climbing. Back at the mill we watched some kayakers fool around above the waterfall before returning to Pittsburgh.

-E. Goldblum

August 24th, 2008

Summer was coming to an end. So we took advantage of the lack of excuses and went out to Coopers Rock. We made it out around ten with three cars and more crash bad then have ever come on a single explores club trip. We arrived and headed over to tilted tree area. We can into a nice sized crowd from Pitt at the crag, but for the first time in recent memory CMU outnumbered them. Everyone got in plenty of good sends. Tibo threw down on Twist-Dah-Hick, and Amy topped out her first outdoor problems.

-M. Schnall