April 26th - 27th, 2012

New River Gorge, WV

Almost every Explorer’s Club officer (including two rookies) came 4/26 to the New River Gorge for a great weekend of whitewater rafting, camping, and rock climbing. On Saturday morning we split the nine of us officers into two rafts. One was guided by ex-Pittsburgher Don who had to yell at Jack, Fan, and Thatcher for synchronously paddling backwards upon hearing the command “Forward hard!” in a class IV rapid. The other raft was guided by the highly offensive Scott-E-O who unbiasedly made insensitive jokes about people of a wide range of nationalities (including that of our very own Felix Devullet), sexual orientations, and disabilities. The officers in this boat spent most of their time, when not braving dangerous rapids, finding a happy balance between uncomfortable forced laughter and uncomfortable silence.

As evening approached we arrived at the campground where Nate joined us. Around the campfire, we exchanged stories, ate s’mores, and rested up for a day of climbing on Sunday.

On the cliffs right above the water that we had rafted through the day before, we tackled routes of a wide range of difficulty levels. We climbed all day, and even setup a slackline! A nut was lodged and stuck into a rock, and only Grandmaster Felix could remove it after many painstaking attempts. The weather was splitter as was the company.

Boat 1:

Felix Devullet
Ben Towne
Jack Michalak
Fan Yang
Thatcher Montgomery

Boat 2:

Matt Golub
Matt Barnes
Noah Fatsi
Gabe Vegh-Gaynor

Late-Comers:
Nate Brooks

-N. Fatsi