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!

Little Lost Cove

Students traveled to Little Lost Cove for a weekend-long climbing excursion. The area boasts many beautiful rock faces, the perfect place to teach students some real-rock climbing skills. When students first arrived at the campsite, they worked with the staff to set up a base camp and were taught different knot-tying techniques as well as how to successfully put up a tent. The first evening was spent in lighthearted fun, with the students making dinner and playing games all evening before getting some much needed rest.

When students woke up the next morning, it was time for some climbing! For some students, it was their first experience with climbing on real rock and everyone had an amazing time getting to the beautiful view at the top of the cliffs.

Disc Golf

Last week students went on a marvelously creative adventure to Mtn. City, TN where they participated in a somewhat newfangled sport known as disc golf. While disc golf has similar rules as contemporary golf, it played with very different materials. The students had a lot of fun learning the unorthodox rules of the game, and even though they often lost discs in the wet grass, the consensus was that the day was a huge success!

Personal Outdoor Discovery Series

This semester, Mountain Alliance has started new programs called the Personal Outdoor Discovery Series (or PODS). These are geared to students who have an interest in an in depth learning of different outdoor skills and activities. PODS are a five week commitment, in which a student goes on one trip a week pertaining to their specific interest. At the end of each Personal Outdoor Discovery Series there is an two day weekend trip in which all the students participating have a chance to utilize and practice their newly taught skills. We have 5 PODS going out this semester; a climbing POD, two backpacking POD's, a mountain biking POD, and an outdoor photography POD. We will keep you updated with separate blogs going out for each trip of all the PODS.

This is a picture from the Climbing POD's second trip to Footsloggers, Boone's local climbing wall.