Pouring over the New River guidebook, I stumbled across a guy cutting feet on juggy holds over the water and thought "Damn, that would be sick to get on, but I'm sure it's too hard." Turns out, that is a 5.7 called Wendy's Jugs. So, to Summersville we will go. The forecast didn't look great for climbing: 39 and rainy Friday and 33 and snowy Saturday... But Sunday was supposed to be 60 and sunny. With the cold camping experience at Table Rock still lingering in Sara's mind, we booked a cabin for this trip.
Friday was indeed terrible weather for our drive in, raining the entire 4 hours. Saturday morning we awoke to a snow covered cabin, but figured we'd still scope out the area and see what she held. Mostly snow covered rock. The approach to Whippoorwill was covered, it was freezing, and I didn't have a lot of hope for this trip. The cabin at least provided a cozy place for board games and hot tub beers to keep us from going crazy.
We didn't hold our breath getting up Sunday morning, starting later than usual and making a big breakfast since temps were under 30. Arriving to the wall (per usual based on the conditions) we were the only car. We had our bearings since we spent some time stumbling around in the snow the day before, so we shot up Aimee's Jugs with the rock inducing numbness pretty immediately upon touching it. By the time Sara rapped down, a funny thing happened, the sun broke thru the clouds and we started feeling a foreign sensation: warmth.
We climbed Wendy's Jugs then the unnamed trad route next to it that shares the anchor, then moved to the other side of the wall. The movement on Bongo and Cowboy in the Dirt was phenomenal. This was probably the first time we've been climbing outside the red and I've giggled so much moving over the rock. Our formula for the day was Chris lead, Sara clean, warm up the hands the move on to the next.
With the consistent wet and cold environment leading up to Sunday we were thrilled to have gotten 6 routes in Sunday before heading home. The other benefit of the preceding terrible weather, was we had the entire crag on a sunny Sunday to ourselves. Looking forward to returning to Summersville, we'll just be keeping our fingers crossed we have similar crowds (or lack there of) next time.
