Rock Climbing at Breakneck 4/24/22

From left: Dhruv, Cara, Chris, Cat, Andres, Russel, and Jay after a solid day of climbing.

On Sunday 4/24, we had our first officer-led outdoor trip of the season!

We took advantage of the capricious Pittsburgh weather last weekend and headed out to Breakneck for some sport climbing in relatively hot and sunny weather under the leadership of Cat. Our group had a good mix of an all-things-outdoors-expert (Cat), kid crusher (Russell), people who had climbed outside before (Andres, Dhruv, and Jay), and people climbing outside for the first time (Chris and Cara).

Andres shrugs off the heat

We got to Breakneck nice and early and were welcomed by an empty parking lot (thank you SWPACC!), and hiked up to the Main Wall. In a sign of things to come the rest of the day, some of us tagged along with Cat as she set up a couple top rope anchors and talked us through the steps and safety precautions for doing so. This was followed by a quick discussion/refresher/tutorial about belay devices and belaying. Most of us started our day with a climb up ye olde Southwest PA classic Eclipse (5.6), while Jay and Russell worked either Nemosis (5.8) or Fool’s Gold (5.9) – still not sure which one we set up. We made some new friends at the crag, including a very friendly dog named Enzo.

Jay working Gas on the Fire (5.12a)

Cat led (ha!) some of us through a mock lead session on Eclipse, and Russell was very enthusiastic to Grab Your Balls (5.9). I mean he very enthusiastically led the climb to set up that top rope. Grab Your Balls was also a personal favourite of Cara (she climbed it twice!) and Dhruv. Russell went on to find new friends to climb 11s and 12s with not before he lead Mosquito (5.10b). Mosquito had a few initial goes on it by Chris, Jay and Andres, and then we moved on to Cannabis Rock for an on-ground tutorial on cleaning bolted anchors by Cat, easy leads by Andres and Dhruv, followed by quite a lot of climbing by everyone on Don’t PAT the Tree (5.6), Cannabis (5.5), and Touch of Green (5.5). We ended our day with Dhruv climbing and cleaning Mosquito and hiked back to the parking lot.

Cat belays Dhruv on Moqsuito (5.10b).

This time we were greeted by Cara’s CR-V with a dead battery because the lights were left on in the morning. Cat and Cara jumped the car, we took a group photo, and headed back to Pittsburgh via a quick Sheetz stop.

All in all, everyone had tons of fun on their first day climbing outside this season and we’re all sure to be back at this crag or the next!

- Dhruv Saxena, Andres Garcia, and Cat Pavlov

Mt. Rainier Day Trip 8/15/21

If you are lucky enough to ever visit Washington State, there are not one, but three amazing national parks within around a two hour drive of downtown Seattle: Olympic, North Cascades, and Rainier. For those of us who live there, we are constantly spoiled with opportunities to get outside. One evening, a good friend of mine texted and asked if I wanted to get out of the city for a day, and less than 12 hours later we were getting in my car and making the trip up to Mt. Rainier National Park.

Leaving at 7am, the journey from my door in suburban Seattle to the Sunrise Visitor Center took us 2 hours and 20 minutes. Sunrise is on the SE side of the mountain, which is the face you can’t see from Seattle, so it’s a fun location for locals who are used to the iconic glaciers on the NW face. If you are planning on doing this trip, make sure to buy your national park pass ahead of time online to speed up getting through the gate. Beware- parking lots at the two main Visitor Centers, Paradise and Sunrise, fill up before 10am on busy summer weekends. We went on a Sunday and surprisingly the line at the gate and the parking lot were relatively chill.

Hoping for some brisk exercise and good views, but not up for being ground into a pulp, we opted for the First Burroughs Mountain Loop, a scenic hike which takes you about as close you can be to the mountain without actually being on it. We originally opted to take the shortest option- only hiking to the First Burrough Mountain- just over 5 miles round trip. The trail continues on along the ridgeline to Second and Third Burroughs mountain, and enticed by the views, ended up continuing on an extra mile to the second peak. We were well rewarded with amazing views and perfect weather.

The hardest part of the trail, aside from the lung-straining 7800ft maximum altitude, was the last mile of the loop trail, which was a quad-burning, unending, moderately sloped slog back up to the parking lot from a small valley, which after 6 miles hurt way more than it should have.

After about 5 hours of hiking, we chilled at the ranger station for a little bit, then made the descent back down the hairpin turns on Sunrise Road and back to Seattle. About an hour into the drive when we reaching sea level again, we both got pretty splitting headaches from the altitude difference but it was totally worth it for an awesome day outside. We reached home around 5:30pm, making this an extremely comfortable day trip. If you were more ambitious (or faster) than us you could accomplish a lot of hiking up there in a day!

Full info on our hike can be found here:

https://www.wta.org/go-hiking/hikes/burroughs-mountain

Hope to see everyone outside in PGH this semester!

- Madeline Cotton, CMUX President

Ohiopyle Camping 4/24/21

I wanted to try out camping this semester and worked a bit with Cat in organizing my first trip. I ended up going with one of my residents Gabriel who had some prior experience with camping. Things definitely would not have gone as smoothly if Gabriel was not there to yell at me.

On Saturday morning, I picked up the zipcar and drove towards Ohiopyle after making a brief pit stop at Geagle. Upon reaching the park, we got some food from Paddlers Pizza and got ready to hike. We began with just exploring the falls and walking the Ferncliff trails. Afterwards we went towards Cucumber Falls and along the Meadow Run Trail. We were planning to try out the natural rock water slides but the water seemed far too cold and fast for it to not injure one of us. 

Camping at the Kentuck Campgrounds was actually my favorite part of the trip. We set up tents as it just began to rain and prepared some food. Neither of us had change so we ended up buying $20 worth of firewood and started a fire which we huddled around for quite some time. I think my clothes still smell a bit of smoke from that.

After roasting smores, making hot cocoa, and watching The Blair Witch Project, we headed off to bed. My sleeping bag got slightly damp so it ended up being a very cold night. The next morning, we packed up camp and left pretty early to campus. Overall, the trip was very enjoyable and look forward to trips like this in the future!

-Brian Zhang

Day Hike in Frick Park 10/25/20

We’re so lucky to have such awesome city parks right in our backyard! Four Explorers (myself, Alby Penney, Aaron Tan, and Brian Zhang) took advantage of the lovely fall weather and went to see the leaves in Frick Park. The trees were bursting with color and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the chance to trade homework for fresh air.

Happy Trails!

- Cat Pavlov

Allegheny National Forest Backpacking 10/17-10/18

After several members had to cancel at the last minute, the trip was attended only by me and my roommate, Ethan. We did a one-night backpacking trip at Morrison Campground in Allegheny National Forest. We followed the Rimrock Trail Loop counterclockwise (which, according to some hikers we met going clockwise, was the best direction). We traveled 6.5 miles on the first day and 3.8 on the second day, both over pretty easy and reasonably flat terrain. The fall colors were magnificent, as we had hoped, and our distance from cities combined with a clear sky led to some phenomenal stargazing over the reservoir. The night was cold but stayed above freezing, which was lucky for us as we huddled for warmth wearing all our layers in our sleeping bags. (Note to self: bring hand warmers next time.) After arriving back at the trailhead on Sunday, we took a short drive to the Rimrock Overlook for a spectacular view of the forest in its autumn glory.

Hope to hike with you all in the future.

-Max Sprigg-Dudley