Ripple & Comets come and gone

Ripple. How many times have you climbed it? Once a season? Twice a season? Three times? For the past two years? For the past five years? 10 years? If you're a southcentral ice climber it's that route that you do at least once a year. It's close, it's always in, and it's always enjoyable.

Beginning climbers run laps on top rope, long time hard men run solo laps. Experience doesn't matter; sooner or later this season you'll climb it just like you climbed it last year and the year before that. Just like you'll will climb it next year.

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the southeast rocks

There is nothing like an east coast fall. The changing leaves turn the landscape into a burst of color and the crisp nights are perfect for camping. During the day the temp hovers in the 60s and the rock bakes making it perhaps the best destination in the world for a late October rock climbing vacation.
On the other hand late fall in Alaska means freezing rain and encroaching darkness. In other words - if you have vacation time then book a plane ticket and head southeast. So across the country and into DC where my oldest brother John treated me to east coast nightlife and then into the car and 3 hours out of DC to West, by god, Virginia.

I had not climbed on the east coast for almost a decade but I had spent my late high school and college years climbing at places like Seneca, the New River and Stone Mountain. And so when my brother and I pulled up to Seneca Rocks in late afternoon my memories were flooded with images of days gone by.

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