The Youngers and their men­tors had a great trip to the Ket­tles of Steele’s Creek on May 15 and 16. Every­one played hard, like river otters in the freez­ing cold water, for hours, until their teeth were chat­ter­ing hard!

We wore PFDs and hel­mets at all times to be safe on the slick rocks. Every­one did well with the 1.5-mile approach hike. We camped along Gin­ger­cake Creek on Sat­ur­day night and the next day hiked to the sum­mit of Hawks­bill Moun­tain, which was really cool.

Thanks to the men­tors who helped out.

We had an absolutely per­fect canoe/​camping trip this past week­end. We camped beside the Broad River Fri­day night and com­pleted 27 miles of the Broad River Expe­di­tion to raise money for colon can­cer research.

The river was beau­ti­ful. It was clear, swift, “wilder­nessy” and fun. Every­one had an incred­i­ble time run­ning lots of mel­low Class 2 rapids.

We will have a one-​​day, 27-​​mile, make-​​up day on Sun­day, April 25 for those who couldn’t make it this past week­end, but you must let us know by Tues­day night.

Thanks to TAASC grad­u­ates T.J. Weller and Thomas McCombs for run­ning the shut­tle for us!

We left the gym on Mon­day, April 5, with 22 TAASC folks in the bus and drove to Watauga Lake in Tennessee.

Around 2 p.m. we began hik­ing in really hot weather up a steep hill to gain a ridge­line that was 16 miles long! For the next two days we plod­ded along in the heat ‘til we reached the mon­u­ment and gravesite for Uncle Nick Grind­staff who died in 1924 and accord­ing to the marker, “lived alone, suf­fered alone, and died alone.”

On Thurs­day the weather changed to a cold, windy, hard-​​at-​​times rain. Over 14 years of AT trips in April the weather con­tin­ues to always throw us a chal­lenge. In 2000, we had to abort five miles into the trip due to a freak snow­storm that dumped four inches. The cold, chal­leng­ing weather on Thurs­day really drove the point home of the impor­tance that ALL TAASC mem­bers must do at least one trip per month for the expe­ri­ence and train­ing to deal with seri­ous sit­u­a­tions such as the weather we had this year. Peo­ple were get­ting cold, wet and tired after nine miles of hik­ing that day (and a total of 31 miles over four days), so we grabbed the first camp­site we could find and got every­one in the tents and into warm, dry sleep­ing bags.

The next morn­ing, Fri­day, was our last day and every­one was eager to reach Dam­as­cus, VA our final des­ti­na­tion. We chugged along the remain­ing five miles that morn­ing and ran smack into Mike and Karen Ayotte at the edge of town. Karen had baked fresh cook­ies for all and you’ve never seen cook­ies con­sumed so fast. We hiked on into town with visions of pizza and “real food” on our minds.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to all the kids who com­pleted the 40 mile trip and espe­cially four amaz­ing Younger mem­bers who did a truly awe­some job of han­dling this tough chal­lenge in good style: Zach Ayotte, Con­nor Brazin­ski, Luke Carlisle and Spencer Mem­mel. Thanks to Molly Franklin for plan­ning the trip and being the over­all leader and to all the other kids who served as daily leaders.

We had an incred­i­ble week­end of expe­ri­ences! Here’s a sum­mary: on Fri­day after­noon we had a really cool tour of Appalachian State University’s Out­door Pro­grams. I think it made a big impres­sion on a lot of our TAASC kids. Some of them are now seri­ously con­sid­er­ing ASU as a poten­tial col­lege
to attend.

After that we ate sup­per at Black Cats, then on to the Banff Film Fes­ti­val. Banff con­tin­ues to be a real high­light of the year for all the TAASC kids.

We finally arrived at Cedar Rock Camp­ground around mid­night. At 7:30 a.m. Sat­ur­day we drove over to Stone Moun­tain State Park and began the approach hike to the sum­mit at 8:30 a.m. It was a tough one-​​hour hike because only six kids showed up to help with the Rappel-​​a-​​thon and we had to hump in 150 lbs. of ropes (4,000’), rig­ging gear and our per­sonal equip­ment. But every­one did great with no com­plaints. We rigged our brand new 1,000’ ropes in record time. Usu­ally it takes hours, but this crew com­pleted the task by 10:30 a.m.!

We only had two Rappel-​​a-​​thon guests (Bon­nie Wil­son and Sheila) so it didn’t take too long to get them down the moun­tain and hike back up.

At 2 p.m., 17 staff and kids from the Asheville TAASC pro­gram arrived. Our kids taught them how to descend and ascend 400 feet and at the end of the day, three of their 10 year-​​old girls got to do the 1,000’ rap­pel. It was a real high­light of their life and they were very appre­cia­tive and thank­ful for the oppor­tu­nity. The three girls were best friends since age three and had joined TAASC together two years ago.

Our newest mem­ber, Will Dun­can did great on his first TAASC trip, as did two broth­ers from Char­lotte, Austin (age 16) and Davis (12). They are mov­ing to Mor­gan­ton soon and are very excited about join­ing TAASC. They got to do the 1,000’ rap­pel also.

We pulled up and coiled all the ropes at the end of the day, then went to our favorite local restau­rant, Mazzini’s, to cel­e­brate the day. Since the weather fore­cast was for 90% rain on Sun­day, we decided to head on back to Mor­gan­ton and arrived at the gym at 10:30 p.m.

Thanks to all the kids who helped out with the Rappel-​​a-​​thon. They really worked hard and did a great job of teach­ing oth­ers, mon­i­tor­ing safety and hump­ing loads of gear!

Thanks to Bon­nie and Sheila for hav­ing the courage to brave the 1,000’ rap­pel and raise money for TAASC.

Thanks to Mike and Karen Ayotte and Mor­gan­ton Fed­eral Sav­ings and Loan for their gen­er­ous con­tri­bu­tion, which allowed us to pur­chase 4,000 feet of new rope to make the Rappel-​​a-​​thon much eas­ier to man­age (no knot passes).

And thanks to all the other par­ents and kids who raised money for the Rappel-​​a-​​thon, but weren’t able to attend.

Accord­ing to pledge reports and funds received, it appears that we raised about $2,000 for TAASC this year. Not bad in tough, eco­nomic times. Last year we raised about $5,000. Our bud­get con­tin­ues to run in the red, so please help us recruit new members.

This will help a lot towards the pur­chase of canoe and kayak pad­dles that we des­per­ately need. Thanks to Greg Franklin for arrang­ing a gen­er­ous deal.

We had the per­fect spring back­pack week­end trip. On Fri­day night we were star gaz­ing off The Pin­na­cle (across from Short­off Moun­tain at the south­ern end of the gorge); then we hiked to a nice camp­site on Yel­low Fork. On Sat­ur­day we back­packed fur­ther towards Dobson’s Knob. Some of the gang were able to get in a bit of climb­ing at a new area called “Black Fork.” Sun­day we woke up at 7:30 a.m., back­packed back to the bus and made it to Wendy’s around noon. It was a great trip to get every­one think­ing about the annual Appalachian Trail trip.

We had an incred­i­ble snow camp­ing trip this past week­end! We snow shoed into the Roar­ing Creek Val­ley Fri­day night, pitched camp on 12”+ snow and finally crawled into our warm bags at 1 a.m.!

The goal of the trip was to be com­fort­able and warm at ALL times and every­one did an out­stand­ing job of doing so. Every­one learned a lot about the art of cold weather camp­ing. Every­one wore our Mouse Boots, so we didn’t have to ever worry about cold toes or frost­bite even though the nights were
down to 20 degrees F.

On Sat­ur­day some folks played on Jacob’s snow­board and Jo and Will built a Quincy snow shel­ter (like an igloo). We had snow saws and snow shov­els. Alyssa pulled Mike’s Mt. McKin­ley expe­di­tion sled, which kept the weight off her bad shoulder.

In the after­noon we snow shoed up to the sum­mit of Lit­tle Hump Moun­tain which was even more of a win­ter won­der­land with 360-​​degree views.

After sup­per Sat­ur­day night we lay (lie lay lain!!!) (lay laid laid!!!) out on our foam pads and watched the stars for hours.

On Sun­day we broke camp and snow shoed 1.5 miles back to the bus and were back to the gym by 1:30 p.m.

All in all it was a mag­i­cal snow jour­ney. Every­one had a ball and stayed com­fort­able at all times and are eager to fur­ther develop their win­ter moun­taineer­ing skills!

We had a great time at Stone Moun­tain on Sat­ur­day. A large group of Youngers turned out with a hand­ful of Old­ers to help. Molly Franklin, Heather Duffy and Will Wil­son did an out­stand­ing job of guid­ing the Youngers through some excit­ing rope-​​work experiences.

The Youngers trav­eled down a 350-​​foot rope with two prusiks, trans­ferred to another 350 and climbed back up Stone Moun­tain. It was a great taste of the expo­sure of the 930-​​foot rap­pel. Some of the Younger mem­bers prusiked all the way down to the mys­te­ri­ous “goat hole” at 530 feet from the top. Mys­te­ri­ous because for decades the locals won­dered where the wild goats would dis­ap­pear into on the face of Stone Moun­tain. It was a depres­sion, often con­tain­ing some cool pools of water, where the goats would go to get a drink.

We had an incred­i­ble four-​​day climb­ing trip in Linville Gorge that began at my cabin Wednes­day night and fin­ished at Sit­ting Bear Rock Sunday afternoon.

Every­one who went learned a lot of new skills and all agreed that we would’ve liked to have kept the trip going for four or five more days. There was so much more left to do. We climbed at Table Rock on Thurs­day after­noon and a newly devel­oped area named “The Pirate’s Wall” on Fri­day and Saturday.

Rachel Gage, Ehrin Irvin and Zachary Lesch-​​Huie (Orig­i­nal TAASCS mem­bers from 1996) joined us on Saturday.

Our kids had the unique oppor­tu­nity to climb new routes and even work on first ascents!

The first, offi­cial climb­ing trip for the new gen­er­a­tion of Youngers was a hoot, literally!

The Saturday/​Sunday trip arrived at my cabin on the edge of Linville Gorge where the Men­tors and Trip Lead­ers taught the Youngers how to select and pitch camp in the woods. Then Nina gave a wildlife talk that included saw whet owls, barred owls, a great horned owl, fly­ing squir­rels and a bobcat.

The rest of the day was spent on a long, four-​​hour loop hike in the gorge that included an old, moonshiner’s still, a bear wal­low­ing hole and lots of other inter­est­ing things. After cook­ing din­ner it was dark and pretty cold, so every­one turned in early.

After break­fast on Sun­day we hiked to Amelia’s Cave (the site where Amelia Clark spent her three-​​day solo). Then back to the gym and a hilar­i­ous and very wet bus wash­ing. It was a great trip and every­one is look­ing for­ward to the next one in Novem­ber. Big thanks to the trip lead­ers and men­tors for a good job!