Just SEND it, CRUSHER MCGHEE!!!

Pitch 3 of the Rostrum
The Rostrum from the approach. 1300 feet of perfect crack climbing

Another goal for this summer is to climb the Nose again

This is my current "proj. O' tha week"- Just Send It 5.13b

I just turned 31 (ouch!). Lateley, it's dawned on me that I'm not getting any younger and that some of my goals in life (at least athletic goals) are only going to get harder to accomplish the longer I wait to achieve them. Because of this reasoning I've been fairly focused and dedicated to really pushing myself at climbing this fall. This spring I really pushed myself on the bike working up to a 100 mile mountain bike race. I saw first hand how my hard work paid off when I easily finished the race and beat out many other, more experienced, "lifers" in the race. With that mentality, I've been really trying to bump up my climbing ability into the 5.13 range. That means projecting climbs that at first seem nearly impossible to even reach the top, let alone reach the top without falling for a clean ascent. Then as you work the moves, find suitable rests, develop certain strategies and little tricks to make the movements of the climb easier, you eventually get to the point that you can climb from bottom to top without falling on fairly desperate(for me at least) terrain. With that said, my new "proj o' tha week" is a climb at Fern Buttress called Just Send It, a 5.13b sport climb that climbs super technical and is about as powerful a climb as I've ever been on. It's real close to my trad line, Portley Gent's Route, that I completed this Fall. I one-hung Just Send it twice yesterday so now its just a matter of time before I tame the beast and on to the next line but there is something magical about the process of learning movements on hard lines that I'm getting more and more addicted to. Hopefully all of this hard work will pay off this summer when I head to Yosemite for a 3 week climbing trip. One of my goals (for a long time) has been to free climb the Rostrum, a 11c 12 pitch route in Yosemite.

TICKING PROJECTS, HOME IMPROVEMENT, SOLOING, AND TRYING TO KEEP MY COOL !!

The past few weeks have been BUSY to say the least. We moved into our new house and had the endless amount of errands associated with moving into a new home. Everything from setting up internet and TV; to pricing home insurance; to getting the odds and ends to make living more comfortable. On top of that, we were slammed by the Fayette County school system to jump through all the hoops of getting all of our paper work in, take our drug tests, get our transcripts sent, etc. At the same time I've been trying to do some of the more simpler tasks around our house that I can do before it gets cold. One day I put up storm windows on the many windows all over our house. A few days were spent cleaning out our crawl space under the house to lay down a vapor barrier. Tracy's dad and I fixed the sump pump and insulated some of our water pipes.

As if that wasn't enough, I've been taking full advantage of the fall season trying to climb as much as possible. I've been slowly ticking away at some of my projects here at the New River Gorge but the MORE I CLIMB, THE MORE PROJECTS I ACCUMULATE. So far this fall (ok, here comes the chest pounding, egocentric-driven bragging) I've climbed Portley Gentlemen's Route (12c trad), Skull Fuck (12c), Shang (12d), Made in the Shade (12c/d), Dining at the Altar (12a), Pettifogger (12c), Thunderstruck (12b), Finders Keepers (12b/c), Go Cat Go (12b), Reallignment (10d trad), Preffered Dynamics (11d mixed), Butterbeans (10a trad), and a good two-dozen other routes that I can't seem to recall right now. Oh and I SOLOED THE DADDY, a 400 foot route in Linville Gorge that looks amazing from the rim of the ampitheatre and doesn't disappoint when climbing it. It has crack climbing, slab, face climbing, and even a small overhang on it. It was awesome. Bachar would have been proud.

We went to Bridge day and froze our ass watching people jump off the bridge while eating our Pork BBQ sandwiches. I drank alot of beer.

I'll try to get photos from Tracy to post.
Until then.