A Charlotte Meetup group at Hanging Rock State Park.
Here’s an exchange I find myself having surprisingly often.
Other Person: I’ve been trying to find a local hiking [slash-paddling-slash-cycling-slash-climbing-slash-other-favorite-activity-here] club but haven’t had any luck. Are there any?
Me: Have you tried Meetup?
OP: Meetup?
Yes, even today, after 12 years, 14.1 million members, 131,119 Meetup groups and 2.65 million monthly RSVPS (members indicating they plan to attend a Meetup activity) there are still people out there unfamiliar with Meetup.com. In short: Meetup is how people gather to play in the internet age. You want to go on a group hike in Charlotte, you join Outdoor Club South: Charlotte. You want to go kayaking in the Carolinas? Simply join Simply Kayaking. You want to do just about anything and you live in the Triangle? Become one of the 5,392 members of the Triangle Hiking & Outdoors Group: they’ve got 20 events currently scheduled and odds are at least one will tickle your adventure fancy.
Finding a group is easy. Go to Meetup.com, click “Find a Meetup Group,” click on your interest and how far you’re willing to drive, and options will appear. If they don’t, if there’s not a group that does what you want to do, start one.
To give you an idea of what’s out there, here’s a list of the 17 Meetup groups I belong to. Click, see what they do, where they go and who they are. Like what they’re about? Click one more time and become a member.
It’s that easy.read more
Monday — never an easy time for the outdoors enthusiast. After a weekend of adventure, returning to the humdrum work-a-day world can make one melancholy. To help ease the transition, every Monday we feature a 90 Second Escape — essentially, a 90-second video or slide show of a place you’d probably rather be: a trail, a park, a greenway, a lake … anywhere as long as it’s not under a fluorescent bulb.read more
It's always sunny at your local climbing gym (in this case, the Triangle Rock Club).
Wondering what kinks Tropical Storm Andrea may have put in your weekend plans?
Paddling. If you were planning on paddling, you might think again. With projected rainfall amounts of four inches or greater, some local rivers may be swollen to the dangerous level, especially for less experienced paddlers. Your best bet for assessing paddle conditions on specific rivers is to check with the outfitters who serve them. Find a list of 44 such outfitters, specifically those who rent canoes and kayaks, here. If you’re familiar with a specific waterway, you can check levels and flows at the U.S. Geological Survey site, here. If you need help interpreting what those numbers mean — what’s optimum, what’s safe, what’s not — you should have a copy of Paul Ferguson’s “Paddling Eastern North Carolina” for the eastern part of the state, the Benner boys’ “Carolina Whitewater: A Paddler’s Guide to the Western Carolinas” for the west.read more
Last year, Special Olympics hosted an Over The Edge fundraiser at the Wells Fargo tower in downtown Raleigh.
“We had a slot open up for Over The Edge and you were the first person I thought of to fill it.” Over the Edge — that thing where you rappel off a 12-story building?
“It’s only 11,” Chuck said. “You don’t need to give me an answer now. Take a minute to think about it.”
I wasn’t sure how to take being the “first person” thought of to go over the side of an 11-story building. “Chuck, if I take a minute to think about it I’ll say no. So I’ll say yes now.” Over The Edge is a fundraiser in which non-profits raise money by getting supporters to rappel over the side of a building. An individual can raise the minimum pledge of $1,000 to participate, or an individual can offer to go over the edge if others raise $1,000. A principal, say, or a management type whose employees would gladly ante up. The size of the drop varies. Last year, Special Olympics raised money by sending people off the 32-story Wells Fargo Capitol Center in downtown Raleigh. Saturday, we’ll be going over the edge of the 11-story Smoketree Tower in North Raleigh’s Highwoods Office Center as a fundraiser for the Occoneechee Council of the Boy Scouts of America. (Point of note: I’ll be dangling 150 feet up courtesy of Great Outdoor Provision Co., which is helping to promote the event. GOPC’s Prime Minister of Culture Chuck Millsaps is the one who envisioned me going over the edge.)
I’m not crazy about heights. I’m also not comfortable with my record of late of stepping outside my comfort zone. I realized this earlier in the week interviewing Betty Woodard, Director of Nursing Research & Evidence Based Practice at WakeMed. She and her husband had just gotten back from Belize, where they went cave tubing, scuba diving and ziplining. She mentioned an upcoming trip to Duck. I said she should checkout the tandem hang-gliding lesson at Kitty Hawk, where an ultralight tows you and an instructor to 2,000 feet, then cuts you lose; Her eyes lit up. I realized it a couple days ago when 102-year-old Dorothy Custer base-jumped off a bridge in Idaho, then grumbled that the 486-foot plummet to earth was too short. I realized it this morning at my climbing gym when I struggled with a 5.8 climb, and I’d been doing 5.9s six months ago.
I need something that will shake me loose. Stepping over the side of an 11-story building should do it.
Anyone who successfully goes over is christened an “Edger.” I’ll report back afterward and let you know if I’ve earned that distinction.read more
The people's paparazzi captures the ceremonial groundbreaking.
Five and a half years ago, a curious Joel Graybeal took an intro to climbing class at the then-new Triangle Rock Club in Morrisville.
Tonight, as one of TRC’s three managing partners, he helped break ground for an expansion that will increase the gym’s climbing space from 9,000 square feet to about 25,000 square feet, and introduce walls 50 feet high, more than twice the height of the current gym’s walls.
Graybeal and Andrew Kratz, who founded the gym with fellow ex-Marine Luis Jauregui, and club director Mike St. Laurent broke ground with the traditional syncopated shoveling of the first scoop of dirt before about 60 gym rats. The new space is expected to open in January.
The gym will feature state-of-the-art walls installed by Eldorado Climbing Walls of Boulder, Colo., which installed the walls in the current gym. In addition to the 16,000 square feet of additional climbing surface, the gym will have a cardio room for yoga, Pilates and spin classes. Kratz said the expansion area, behind the existing gym, will be surveyed next week, the concrete foundation slab will be laid in early August, the steel building should be up by the end of August and Eldorado should be able to start working its wall magic in September.
“They can do about 1,000 square feet of terrain a week,” said Kratz.
Prior to the groundbreaking, climbers checked out artists renderings of the new gym. James Olson Jr. and Charlie Brown were trying to figure out where the rendering of the bouldering area meshed with the rendering of the climbing wall while simultaneously admiring the size of the project.
“Either of you ever climb on a 50-foot indoor wall?” I asked. Twenty-four feet I can handle. But I was trying to picture being twice that high, indoors.
“It’s … intimidating,” said Olson, who’s climbed a 60-foot wall at Atlanta’s Stone Summit Rock Climbing Gym. After thinking about it a moment, he added, “and it’s exhilarating.”
We’ll get a chance to see for ourselves in January.read more
