When an earlier weekend camping trip to Coopers Rock got rained out, a few friends and I made plans to make a day trip out to West Virginia on Memorial Day. After an early start and a long drive, we made our way to the Tilted Tree Corridor where we ran into a few other climbers. Turns out, they were also from Maryland, and we had a few mutual acquaintances from The Boulder Yard in Frederick (shoutout to Rich), and we all joined up for the rest of the day.
After hitting a few of the classic problems in the area and getting used to the famous gritstone, we made our way over towards the Moby Area. While we were working on The Internet Problem, another climber made his way over and we started chatting. After some back and forth, we asked if he was a local. His response, totally nonchalant, was, "yeah, that's me on the back cover of the guide," pointing down to my book laying next to the pads. And that's how we met the local legend, Ray Weber.
Once we'd struggled on what Ray called, "the ugliest V3 in the forest," he invited us to follow him over to the Fiddle Boulder, with a great sample of problems in the V0-V4 range, plus a few harder problems. It was especially exciting to see everyone work on The Fiddle (V3), originally put up by Ray in 1996. Such great stoke all around, and huge thanks to Ray for welcoming us and showing us around. Looking forward to Gritfest in November!