Map Monday: 10/3–10/23
VT, NH, ME, MA, RI, CT, NY, NJ, DE, PA, MD, VA, WV
Hopefully the number of states listed in the subtitle explains the recent lack of blog posts. It’s been a hectic three weeks (a bit too hectic), so now that our blitz of the northeast is winding down, we are excited to spend most of our time in West Virginia/Kentucky before Thanksgiving and family time in Georgia. But anyway, last time I posted we were in Vermont, enjoying the local climbing and free place to stay. Next on the itenerary though was Rumney in New Hampshire, home to some of the best sport climbing in the northeast! We were anxious to get back on some harder lines, so after leaving Vermont and spending a quick night at a boat launch, we rolled into the AAC campground across from the crag and immediately went climbing. The rock at Rumney is called schist, and it is notoriously difficult rock to read — holds tend to be in the opposite orientation than desired, as well as difficult to spot in the rock’s wavy texture. I definitely struggled to climb well there, but Mike totally crushed, per usual. Since the weather was iffy with scattered showers most days, we decided to cut our trip short and leave for Maine a day early. While I didn’t get any good climbing photos of Rumney, the fall weather made our van and campsite incredibly cozy and picturesque.
Maine was definitely a highlight of the trip so far. We based out of the small town of Wells in the southern tip of the state, where my dad’s family has a cabin. Once there, we took advantage of a couple rainy days to get work done, as well as the luxury of a real kitchen to cook more elaborate meals and bake lots of cookies. We also spent two of our five full days in Maine at Acadia National Park climbing the famous sea cliffs, as well as the multipitch walls more inland on the island. Acadia was undoubtably one of the most unique climbing experiences we’ve had, and is a must-do for any traveling climber. There is truly no comparable experience to climbing a wall with the ocean just beneath your feet and your ears ringing from the deafening crash of waves. Oh, and the views weren’t bad either!
Now would probably be a good time to mention that one of our goals for this trip is to climb in all 49 states that we can drive to (sorry Hawaii). Up until this point, it has been fairly easy and rather enjoyable to drive circuitously between random crags all over the west and midwest, finding hidden gems in North Dakota and car-art in Nebraska. The issue with the east coast states, however, is that there are just so many of them. Yes, many are small and close together, but that doesn’t make it necessarily easy to travel between them efficiently. Plus, the logistics of driving, camping, and climbing in every state are compounded by volatile weather patterns and a general lack of free camping and public land across the northeast. These factors, plus our desire to make it to West Virginia at some point in October, led me to schedule three different days into our itinerary where we would travel through and climb in multiple states in a 24 hour period. This decision made these last two weeks of our trip both exhausting and incredibly exciting and varied.
After our wonderful 5 days in Wells and Acadia, we embarked on the first of these marathon days, leaving Maine early on the 13th and traveling down through New Hampshire, then to crags in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, and finally on to my brother’s place in Connecticut. While this stratagy for knocking states off our list was effective, it meant that we barely got a taste for the climbing that each state has to offer. In Massachusetts, we checked out the trad climbing at Crow Hill, a small rock outcropping in the middle of the state. It was a beautiful spot and definitely worth more than just a half day of climbing, but after only a couple hours we were back on the road to Rhode Island. The rock formations in RI are definitely more suited for bouldering, but we did find a cool toproping area on Mount Tom on the west side of the state. We enjoyed exploring that area and doing a few climbs in the beautiful late-afternoon light that filtered in through the surrounding trees. At nightfall, we once again hit the road, ending up in New Haven, CT to spend the weekend with my brother.
My brother is a grad student at Yale in New Haven, so while he attended a reading group on Saturday afternoon, Mike and I checked out the local climbing at West Rock State Park. West Rock is a prominent feature in the city, and is home to a decent selection of sport climbs on low-quality but interesting and enjoyable rock. We started the day on a unique bolted corner crack on slick rock, and later we both got super pumped out projecting a stiff 11c called The Tree Of Life. All and all it was an enjoyable day out, and next time we visit my brother I’m excited to revisit, as well as check out other climbing areas in Connecticut.
Next up on the itenerary was the Gunks, one of the most classic areas in the country. Located in the hills of the Catskills, the Gunks are famous for horizontal cracks, spectacular views, and sandbagged (more difficult than expected) grades. Many of the classics at the Gunks are in the 5.6–5.8 range, and are on unbelievably high-quality rock. The only downside to the area is the price: admission to the preserve that hosts the climbing is $20 per person per day! Since we are trying to live frugally on the road, and we were in a rush to keep moving south anyway, we decided to keep our visit to just two days; it was still an incredible time though! We did several of the most classic lines, and enjoyed some of the best climbing weather we’ve had on the trip.
After the Gunks we headed into New Jersey to climb before visiting some of Mike’s family in Vineland. We chose the Delaware Water Gap as our climbing destination because of it’s easy access from the highway and its nice selelction of short multipitch routes. While our climb was awesome and the views spectacular, the definite highlight was our bear sighting!! Just before I started climbing a fuzzy black bear wandered into the path about 150 feet ahead of us. After the thousands of hours I’ve spend in the backcounty in California, I could not believe I was seeing a bear next to a highway in New Jersey! Obviously we were not as interesting to him as he was to us, so he eventually wandered off and we cruised up our route. Then it was on to Vineland!
Meeting Mike’s New Jersey family was a definite highlight, but in keeping with this stage of our trip, we only had a day and a half with them before we had to head out. Leaving New Jersey was also the started of our second marathon day — first we drove into Delware and climbed at Alapocas Run State Park, then we headed through beautiful farm county to a crag called Safe Harbor in Pennsylvania, just southwest of Lancaster. Safe Harbor had a multitude of long bolted slab climbs, which was a super fun change of pace for the vertical/past-vertical climbing of most sport crags we’ve visited. Once again, we climbed at this second location until dark, then hit the road for the third time that day.
We ended up camping that night at a trailhead for the Appalachian Trail in central Maryland. The next day, we slept in a tiny bit for the first time in a while, then racked up and hiked two miles up the AT to a landmark called Annapolis Rocks. While it was Saturday and the trail was packed with hikers, there were very few other climbers who made the long walk in, so we had the routes to ourselves. Annapolis rocks has one of the most beautiful and enjoyable 5.9 crack climbs I’ve ever done, called Black Crack. The rock has many horizonal cracks and positive dikes, so the difficulty came from the overhang — it was definitely one of the most pumpy trad climbs I’ve ever done. The west-facing wall also gave us a spectacular view of the setting sun as we racked up and started our hike back to the trailhead. Then once again, we piled into the van and drove in the dark to the next state on the list.
Virginia is home to lots of great climbing, but we were ready to get to West Virginia and see our good friends Ty and Linda, as well as climb at the classic areas of Seneca Rocks and the New River Gorge. Consequently, we were only able to check out one small area in Virginia called Elizabeth Furnace. It was actually super fun; at 9am yesterday (Sunday) we arrived at the crag and we both led two fun 10b sport climbs. The rock was blocky and overhanging, so at the grade of 10b it felt like a nice morning stretch to work my way up the rock and clip bolts. By 10:30am, we were back on the road, determined to also climb at Seneca Rocks in WV with our friends that afternoon before bad weather rolled in the next day (*currently sitting in the van writing this post in said bad weather*). Getting to Seneca at 1pm, hiking into the crag, and meeting on friends on the wall made all the planning, stress, and rushing around of the previous two weeks totally worth it. There’s nothing like hanging out with great friends on the top of a multipitch, then enjoying their company and conversation over an incredible meal (thanks to master chef Linda) and wine at the end of a long day.
Today signifies a major transition in our trip from a travel focus to more of a climbing focus. We are really hoping to climb hard and push our grade over the next couple weeks at the New River Gorge, and then at Red River Gorge in Kentucky. Then, come December, we will again be refocusing our time and energy, this time on Boltline, and finally having a beta version of the app available so climbers can use it and give us feedback. We are really excited to share what we’ve been working on!
Stay tuned for an update from Red River Gorge in a couple weeks, and as always, check out our Map to see where we’ve been!
