Signs the season's here

To quote Kat: "Ruthie's here, that must mean it's spring!"

Everyone's at the store in wet river gear trying to figure out how to squeeze one more run in before sunset.

Random river guides crawling out from random rocks, cracks, and crevasses.

Trainees!

I can wear Chacos without risking losing my little toe to frostbite.

Tighty-whitey sumo wrestling at the white house.

While driving to the take-out to run shuttle you get a whiff of something familiar near cucumber falls, that lovely eau d' "i don't know how to downshift so my brakes are on fire"

The state park parking lot is full and so is the street across from the Falls Market.

There's someone else to hang out at the Pub with besides my three best friends: me, myself, and I

Strange little yellow flowers growing in the muck along the bike trail.

Needless to say last weekend kicked things into gear for me. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone again this season. So if you weren't in town last weekend, well you missed out but the season's just starting so they will be plenty more opportunities to pop in for a visit and a quick loop run.

Party down at Roger's

Roger is a blog ignoramous, so he has asked me to advertise his party for him. Here are the details:

When: Saturday, March 31, at night.

Where: Roger's house.

Who: Anyone and everyone, even trainees.

Directions: According to Roger, from Ohiopyle, drive to the blinking light in normalville and "go right. About 8 miles later, you pass a school on your right. Make the right turn immediately after the school (nebo rd). Go 0.2 miles on this road and make a right onto this driveway/private road type deal. There is a line of mailboxes at the turn and a green reflective sign with white ‘150’ numerals on it. If you cross the bridge, turn around. Follow this little road back, and it turns to gravel and then to the right. Follow it up and over a tiny little creek and my house is on the left: 724 nebo rd ext."

2007 Upper Yough Release Schedule

This should be correct.
SYOTR
http://mysite.verizon.net/dmueller/pdf/uy.pdf

Dave M.

PS: Eric, I can't work Saturdays :-)

Yet another way to procrastinate...

Hey everybody!
I'm sitting in the library right now, thinking about anything that does not involve my homework, so I thought I'd do something productive and say hello! Unfortunately, I don't have any cool trips to update you guys about. Brian, however, has been out in Washington state doing nothing but snowboarding since about Christmas. Yea- I'm jealous too. I've been super busy with school and work (people need their burritos!) but I've had enough time to get my kicks vicariously through your posts. The weather is starting to warm up here, so I'm looking forward to heading up north for some fun trips. Last week there was one day where the temperature got up to 65 degrees, and it was like a beach party on campus!
I'll be back in Ohiopyle after my finals (I'm counting down the days). I'll be in town for a couple weeks then I'm heading out west for a semester with NOLS (National Outdoors Leadership School) where I'm going to get 12 credits for backpacking through the wind river range, climbing in Idaho, and paddling the Green River in Utah! I'll be on the course from June 4th to August 10th. Can't beat that huh?
This weekend was St. Patrick's day, so needless to say, I have some catching up to do on my school work! I hope everyone had a good time and did my ancestors proud! If anyone feels like traveling up to this pleasant peninsula for some great lakes and great times, come on up!
Can't wait to see you all!
<3 Sippy
(Sarah)

What up kids; it's Roger

so, where is the staff when it is dumping rain? at least there is lou-dogg and seth-dizzle always ready to fire up a brisk morning run on the top or meadow. i can't count how many times lou and i have driven to the top in the dark. can you find seth getting swallowed in swallowtail? hint, he is a bit river left of center! finally, daylight savings is here a bit early, probably the only cool thing that george bush has done because i can boat more. anyhow, about 2 weeks ago, we went on a little canaan mission, and as did the trip that went out the previous day, we were stymied by snow. too much snow to drive to the hiking trail for either red or seneca. we had a nice little blizzard on the drive down. we ended up a sweet lap of the north fork of the blackwater followed by nice run down bear creek (the one that comes into friendsville by the park).the next day saw some sweet action at 7springs with some nice boot deep snow. yesterday had some sweet action on the loop with a nice morning session with lou-dogg at 7.5 ft, and then a night capper featuring a run down to stewarton. there are some sick wave trains in there, but here's a hint, don't always take the raft lines and avoid the hole at bottle of wine.

Roger

Gear Fetch employee promo code

Hey all-
We finally took care of that detail. The 2 minute task that took us months. So here it is - your staff discount works on gearfetch as well. As you're checking out, you'll be prompted for a promo code. The very savvy, complicated code is: wvstaff07. We do know who the shoppers are and the discount will be honored for staff only. Our sincere apologies to all your buddies.

Happy Shopping!

GEAR SWAP!

We're hosting another Gear Swap. The fall event was pretty slow and people are requesting it. This is it - we won't be doing another one in the fall, it'll be an annual spring event from now on.

Sunday April 15th from 12:00 -4. Or longer if it happens to linger. It is guide training, and the wildwater team trials, so there is plenty going on for the day. Gear Swap will be held at the store.

Spread the word, bring your goods and a favorite Sunday beverage if you like.

Matt's Video Website

Hey I couldn't figure out how to post something but I wanted to add that I am working on a college portfolio of photos and video and have a video from the Upper on there.

http://evadefilms.com/

Admin Note: This post by photo Matt got buried in the "Comments" which are really hard to notice, and hence we probably shouldn't use them. Here's a refresher in posting as a guest. Click the Create a Post link in the right sidebar, and use username: wvstaff@wilderness-voyageurs.com and password: garrettst to sign in and write a blog entry. If you have your own Google account, you can email me (lou@wilderness-voyageurs.com) to be invited to post under your own name. In the meantime, let's all go check out Matt's site.

Laudadio not to be seen much this summer, again.

Hey everyone! I just wanted to share with all of you that I am playing professional women’s football in Pittsburgh this year. The Passion competes in the National Women's Football Association (NWFA), a five year old, 40-team league, headquartered in Nashville, TN. The Passion is a member of the Northern Conference and plays an 8 game regular season schedule. Two bye weeks are built into the schedule that runs from April and June each year. The season concludes with three rounds of playoffs and a championship game during June and July. The teams play according to standard NFL rules, with the following notable exceptions; TDY size football, only one foot in bounds required following a reception and no blocking below the waist down field. http://www.pittsburghpassion.com/ The whole concept is all pretty crazy! Some of the girls could bench press me at least 107 times for breakfast. All of our home games are played at Cupples Stadium on the South Side of Pittsburgh. I know all of you are familiar with tail gaiting! Our home opener is April 21st @ 7pm. If you can’t make it, check out Fox Sports or Comcast on Demand for live television coverage. Also, Fox Sports Radio will be broadcasting. Initially, I was trying out to be a Defensive Back to due my power-lifting, bone crushing tackle tactics (all taught to me on the river by Scott during training) but I opted out for Place Kicking instead. I actually kicked for my high school football team and decided it was the safest route in this business! I am the starting place kicker for extra points and field goals. Also, I have been playing a lot of guitar lately and writing my own music. Due to football, the music has been put on the back burner but I will have some acoustic shows around Pittsburgh this fall. I’m actually looking for another guitar player to accompany me at some gigs. If anyone is interested let me know! I just made a myspace music page too. www.myspace.com/cristylaudadio

I hope this finds you all well.

Ciao,

Laudadio

Rudder (aka Iyed) is doing great! He said that he is ready for his birthday next month too! He has managed to eat an entire couch and coffee table in one sitting but other than that, he is an amazing dog! Let’s have a doggy birthday bash!

Lou's Climbing Trip

Well, guys, I just got back from climbing out West, and how could I not blog about it!? We are in the process of compiling our pictures. Check out this link to see what we have so far.

No one wants to read a long trip report, so I'll make this concise. We climbed in Red Rocks, NV for 3 days and Indian Creek, Utah for 2, mostly doing one- or two-pitch routes in the 5.9 to 5.11 range. At Indian Creek we got on some crack climbs that are really world-famous (and deservedly so). At left is a picture of me pulling the roof on The Incredible Handcrack (5.10b/c), my favorite route at Indian Creek.

Back in Red Rocks, I climbed Black Orpheus (5.10a) with my friend Todd. Despite the very short crux, it was quite demanding, with a 1 1/2 hour approach, 11 pitches (including lots of 5.8, some 5.9, and plenty of runout R sections) that took 5 1/2 hours, and a 3-hour descent. Most of the pitches were between 120' and 190' feet long, but because of traversing, the route only gained a little over 1000 vertical feet. Look right for a shot of pitch 10 (5.6).

The last day we roped up for a few 50-foot boulders at San Diego's Mt Woodson, where I top-roped a sweet 5.11 finger crack.

The weather out there was insane - highs in the 70s every day. It made me wonder why people live anywhere else. As much as anything else, though, the trip made me realize that I just don't climb enough anymore. It would be great if someone on staff this year was climbing strong and wanted to really make a concerted effort to get a few decent trips in - like to Seneca, the New, and Looking Glass down in NC. Local stuff is pretty good here too, like Breakneck in Connelsville. So keep it in mind and bring your climbing gear this season.

Lou

Boatin Season is here

HEY GANG

The creeks will be running this weekend. Who is game? Top Yough? Show up at the store Saturday AM or give me a call on my cell.

Eric