As I lay defeated and victim to my own folly

Hello to all of my loyal followers that likely can be enumerated by counting fingers. It has been a few months since my last update, so I thought it prudent to make yet another erratic installment in the recounting of the life of me. And so, here it goes...

It has been a fun filled winter here in North Carolina. I have gotten settled in at my day job which affords me the funds to get out and climb on the weekends with little worry as to the cost of essentials such as food and gas. Adjusting to the Monday through Friday lifestyle has been a story of the three t's as I like to put it. Troublesome. Tiresome. Tedious.

All in all, though, whenever I am able to separate myself from the immediate and truly examine my circumstances, I find I have very little to complain about. Though I am not currently living the vagabond climbing waif lifestyle I have come to find a sort of solace in, things could be infinitely worse for me. I go to work, at the brewery, and play with beer all week. When I come home, I usually climb in my basement for a couple of hours. Though my wages are relatively meager, they are more than sufficient given the lifestyle I have come to enjoy. And on the weekend, I get to sample some amazing Southern Stone.

In short, while I am currently grounded in one spot and not able to live the semi-nomadic life for now, I still get to climb as much as I can handle and enjoy great beer. Worse lives have been lived.

I have spent a majority of my time climbing at Pilot Mountain this last winter. I managed to find/clean/tick off a good portion of problems there. The conclusion that I have come to make is that despite the lack of quantity of rock there, the quality is very high. In addition to bouldering at Pilot, I have been lucky enough to get out to Boone, LRC, and the Rumbling Bald. The bouldering in the Southeast impresses me a little more each time I go out and get on new problems. I have been so psyched going into all of these areas new to me knowing that there are so many ticks to be had.

As aforementioned, to supplement my meager allowance of weekend climbing, I took it upon myself to build a climbing wall in my basement. It is a standard 8' by 12' wall, but I built it on something close to a 52 degree overhang. It was difficult to adjust to the angle at first, but now I think I am beginning to see some concrete gains from the steep angle. Additionally, the wall has been painted pastel purple, so it has that going for it.

Motivation has definitely ebbed and flowed as climbing has been a bit of a solo effort here. I have been lucky enough to be able to spend some time climbing with friends and have met some truly welcoming people at the crag, but I have yet to meet anyone local to climb with. There have been a lot of hours logged training and climbing by myself. In a way it is kind of nice because it adds a different element to the equation and almost makes the world around you quiet and still when you are in the moment, but I do miss climbing and working problems with people on a regular basis. It seems as if there are climbers from everywhere in North Carolina except Winston-Salem...bummer. But, so it goes.

I spent this weekend climbing at the boulders at Moore's Wall. I went up on Saturday not really expecting much after my somewhat disappointing trip up to the area's satellite boulder field of Two Mile. Two Mile was really cool, but, as the name serves to infer, it is two miles uphill to get there and, much like Pilot, while the quality of the climbing was high, the quantity was lacking. And so it was with an open mind that I hiked up to where I thought some boulders might be from doing a bit of research only to find myself overwhelmed with the both the quantity and quality of rock. The boulders at Moore's can hold there own with any area in the Southeast insomuch as I have seen. Yesterday was the common solo effort of wandering around and climbing what looked good, but today I was lucky enough to run into a girl that has been climbing there for several years and her friend who were down for the day. They were nice enough to play tour guide and give me the lay of the land.

The bouldering there is simply impeccable and I cannot wait to get back out there as soon as I can. I feel so silly for having written the area off as unworthy of exploring all Winter due to one experience in snow ridden weather when if I only had the mind to give it a second chance, I could have been climbing on amazing local stone all Winter. But, so it goes. Since I was not climbing there, I climbed other places. Had I discovered how good the rock was there, who is to say whether or not I would have felt so pressed to search elsewhere.

Either way, I feel that as the weather heats up, the season is likely to be drawing near its close; so I feel charged with the duty as a local climber to represent for Winston and climb there as much as I can while I still can. While I feel regret for missing the season, I feel so much relief in finally finding great bouldering that is less than an hour away. Be sure of one thing, I will redress my missteps of the the past few months by logging as much time and ticking as many boulder problems as I can at Moore's before the Summertime woes come and dash all hopes of good conditions.

But, before any of that, Bishop. I will be returning to Bishop soon. I am flying out to San Diego to visit my Grandfather and celebrate his birthday with him next week. While there, I intend to take an excursion up to the boulderer's paradise and tick off a little unfinished business. I have a small handful of problems I really want to do, and a laundry list of others that I would like to do, so time will be my enemy. All I can do is keep an open mind, try hard, hope for good conditions, and have fun. And so it will be.

That is all for now. Thanks for reading. Now go climb.