Winterfest!!!

As winter weather continues to make a presence in Boone, Mountain Alliance is preparing for Winterfest, which takes place January 27-30, 2011 in Blowing Rock. Winterfest is an annual event that includes concerts, games, an ice carving competition, a polar plunge, a silent auction, and many more fun activities. Mountain Alliance students and staff will be participating in the polar plunge to help raise money for Mountain Alliance. In addition, all of the proceeds from the silent auction and raffle will go directly to Mountain Alliance!

All of the money raised from the silent auction and raffle will help provide service and adventure trips for youth in the community. The silent auction takes place this Saturday, January 29 from 9a.m. to 5p.m. in the Blowing Rock School cafeteria. The prize pick up will be later that evening. The Blowing Rock School is located on Morris Street, just off of Main Street in downtown Blowing Rock.

The silent auction will feature items donated by area retailers. With a wide selection of items, there is something for everyone. Some highlighted items to bid on include tickets to the Appalachian Summer Festival, stays at local inns and resorts, family pool and fitness memberships, fly fishing trips, tickets to Biltmore Estates, guided rafting and canoe trips, a number of cleaning services, tickets to the 2012 Winter Feast and Chili Cook off, spa and therapy treatments, and a number of other gifts and services.

Make sure to come out and support Mountain Alliance at the silent auction, and polar plunge for the brave ones out there, this Saturday, January 29.

Fall 2010 Highlights

This fall at Mountain Alliance has been packed full of service and adventure trips. We kicked the year off in August by helping out at the annual Big Sale at Appalachian State University. We have also continued working with Hospitality House by taking students there once a month to cook for residents. This trip is always a favorite for students to work on their culinary skills while helping out local residents. Other service trips this fall included the New River Big Sweep, setting up and taking down the Valle Country Fair, volunteering at local races and climbing events, and helping build mountain biking trails at Rocky Knob Park.


Rocky Knob park is going to be a great resource in the future to Mountain Alliance. When completed, the trails will range from beginner to advance and will be a great local option to take students mountain biking. Currently this semester students have performed over 400 hours of service on trips offered by Mountain Alliance. We have 2 service trips left before Christmas to Mary's House on December 6 and to the Hospitality House on December 13 after school.


With great weather this fall many students from Watauga High School spent their time outside on Mountain Alliance adventure trips. We had a schedule packed full of hiking, climbing, biking, and backpacking trips.


We were able to offer 3 different overnight backpacking trips this fall to students. We were also able to take a series of trips to the climbing wall at Footsloggers where students developed climbing, belaying, and safety skills. Other climbing trips included going to Table Rock and Holloway Mountain. Biking trips offered this fall ranged from biking around Boone to trips to Virginia for the Virginia Creeper trail. We were also able to take trips North Wilkesboro to bike the Overmountain Victory Trail.


With winter quickly approaching, caving season is just around the corner and we are looking forward to offering students a full schedule of trips for the spring.

Youth Service Day

Watauga High School students are thinking globally and serving locally!

The 3rd Annual Watauga County Youth Service Day (YSD) is scheduled for Saturday, April 24th from 9-5pm, organized by Mountain Alliance Student Leadership Committee. This event is held to correspond with Global Youth Service Day, which is the largest community service event in the world! The Goals of Youth Service Day are to mobilize youth to identify and address needs of their community through service, support youth on their life-long path of service and civic engagement and educate the public, the media, and policy makers about the year round contributions the youth in Watauga County are currently involved in.

All Watauga county youth are invited to volunteer their time and service to local businesses and community members throughout the county. Students will meet at Watauga High School at 8:30am where they will sign in and be assigned to a service group and site. The specific locations of the service sites will remain a secret until the morning of the event! Students, accompanied by a Mountain Alliance staff member, will then be shuttled to individual service sites throughout the county. Students will work on a variety of unique projects and snacks will also be provided.

After a satisfying day of hard work, students will be reunited at Watauga High School where they will celebrate the accomplishments of the day, enjoy a delicious meal and jam to live music. This will conclude the festivities of the 2010 Watauga County Youth Service Day, and parents are welcome to pick up their students at the High School anytime between 4-5pm.

Come out and enjoy an action packed day of service! Registration is easy and 2010 YSD Registration forms are now available in the Mountain Alliance office and Watauga High School’s main office. Registration forms must be filled out, signed by a legal guardian and returned. Only students who pre-register will receive a Watauga County Youth Service Day t-shirt. Do not miss out on this exciting community event! For more information about Mountain Alliance, or details about Youth Service Day, please contact the Mountain Alliance office at 828-263-0383.

Climbing Wall Take-Down

The Mountain Alliance Climbing Wall was built at Watauga High School for the club's use and is the first structure of its kind in North Carolina. This summer, as many people know, Watauga High School will be moving to a new location and tearing down its old building. As posted earlier, Appalachian State University's alpine tower was moved to the site of the new high school for the use and benefit of Mountain Alliance. The alpine tower thus gives us an opportunity to recycle the climbing holds on our current climbing wall. On Saturday, February 20th, The Mountain Alliance staff and several of its student members got together to disassemble the climbing wall...
...and then load all of the leftover wood into Gus, Mountain Alliance's trusty bus. Once all of the wood is collected, Mountain Alliance is planning on selling the wood to benefit the organization.

However, this job couldn't be finished in one afternoon! Despite the hard work of everyone participating,the climbing wall was not completely taken down. There will be an additional climbing wall take-down trip planned for the near future. "This seemed like such a big task at the start, but with so many great people volunteering their help, it actually was a lot of fun!"

-Allison Huckins, Mountain Alliance Staff

Staff Adventure

This past weekend the staff from Mountain Alliance got together for an adventure. We traveled to a seldom visited cave in Virginia for an afternoon of exploring. This cave required a rappel of nearly 180 feet just to get down in the cave. More difficult was working our way up the rope to get out at the end of the day. Below are some images from the event.

Pictures from inside the cave are always challenging. This one does a good job of depicting the threshold area of the cave where darkness form the cave meets light from outside.

Steve helped get us to the cave and led the way through the underground creek and narrow passages

Shelly and Audra take a break from exploring

Taking a break to figure out where we are and which way to go

Al is getting set to lower down into the cave

Marshall and Scott did a great job of setting up our system and even wrapped up those dirty ropes

Mountain Alliance's Spring Schedule!

Here is a link to the current lineup of events for Mountain Alliance's 2010 Spring Semester:
http://mountainalliance.org/students/calendar/
Check in later for updates on the current semester! We're looking forward to a great spring!

Winter in Watauga County

Since mid-December Watauga County and, more importantly, the Watauga County School System has been dealing with an onslaught of rather destructive winter weather. The ten inches of snow a few days before Christmas combined with the severe ice storm of Christmas day has severely hindered Watauga High School's (and therefore Mountain Alliance's) regular operation. However, things are starting to normalize a bit and Mountain Alliance had its spring semester kick-off last Thursday! Once things start to warm up a bit I'll be able to keep everyone up to date on Mountain Alliance's spring programs and events! Thank you for your patience!