Rock Climbing in Eastern Ontario
Steph and I just took a trip to the Adirondacks. The weather didn’t cooperate for a rock climbing, and everything was pretty soaked through. Instead we hiked around, went gear shopping, and enjoyed Lake Placid. The moral of the story is always have a backup plan. If you like a good breakfast, check out Pan Dolce, or Big Mountain Creperie/Deli.
That being said, here are a few pictures from the trip.
That’s all for now.
If you have done any rock climbing at a gym or with any organization, you will have heard the use of climbing commands. While this may seem like rules for the sake of rules, these are safety checks and they serve a purpose.
Any time you are rock climbing, safety needs to be your number one concern. Sometimes, especially when we begin climbing a lot, we tend to gloss over some of the simpler points of safety checks, just so that we can get our butts off the ground faster and get back to onsighting. Unfortunately, even though we do the same thing over and over and over, it doesn’t mean that we will become less and less likely of not doing it wrong. Instead, it means that statistically, we will screw up somewhere along the line just by the sheer volume of the number of times that we climb.
Let me put it this way. If you are a completely new climber, and maybe you are just checking things out, not really sure if you are going to take this up as a sport. Lets say that you make an error in your “setup” (more on this later), at a rate of about 20%. As you climb, because you are new, you will likely be self conscious and ask your partner to check out your gear. Lets say that you climb 20 times in a season, which gives you four errors that could be life threatening in the course of your season. Now, because you are a paranoid new climber, these get caught by your partner, and everything is good.
Now lets look at the experienced climber. If you are a lucky skunk, you will get out climbing 200 times in a season, whether that is at the local crag, bouldering, at the local gym, wherever. Because of your great breadth of experience, you are able to whittle your rate of error down to 1%. This feels great for you, but it means that you are still exposing yourself to potentially two life threatening errors every season. I know this doesn’t seem like much, but this is making an assumption that you will only be climbing once per outing. If you are doing a lot of sport lines perhaps, say five in a day, then that means in a season you are potentially going to encounter 10 life threatening errors in a season.
So why is this important? Obviously these numbers are not hard facts, they are meant to make a point. Don’t buy it, well here is some real data.
The American Alpine Club does statistics on rock climbing and mountaineering accidents every year. They are in the middle of digitizing their catalogs, but here is some data from 2005. There were 111 climbing accidents reported in the United States, and 19 in Canada, totaling people involved at 176 and 41 respectively. Of those the number of fatalities ring in at 34 in the United States and 7 in Canada. Since 1951, there have been 1394 rock climbing deaths recorded in the US, and 292 in Canada. In terms of injuries, about four times that in both places.
Now, translate that into what we were talking about before. Safety checks before leaving the ground. It is clear that accidents can happen with rock climbing. Often when we spend enough time climbing, we get sloppy. The safety checks ensure that we have our knots tied, our buckles backed up, and our lockers locked. This applies to us whether we’ve been climbing for a few hours, or a few decades. Especially use them late in the afternoon, when most accidents happen.
Happy Climbing.
I realized a little while after I posted the Adirondacks trip report that I talked a lot about the trip and not a lot about the rock climbing. As such I’ll be drawing on a couple of trips that I’ve done for this post, so that we can get a more comprehensive view of the area.
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Beer Walls
This was the first crag we visited, mostly because it has such a huge number of climbs there. You can climb anything from short cracks to long two pitch faces. There is a very decent spread of grades, ranging from 5.3 to 5.12 and beyond. A personal favorite that I climbed last year was Afternoon Delight (5.6), which was one of my first trad leads. I have to say, this climb is a gem, getting a lot of sun in a relatively shaded area, it has plenty of spots for protection. Also at the beer walls was my first trad lead ever, 3.2 (5.4). This is a beautiful, short crack with no need for foot jamming, there are little ledges all the way, so no toe crunching.
King Wall
This rock is truly a site to behold. One of the more difficult spots to find in the Chapel Pond Slab area, there is no pull out, you merely find a trail near the beginning of a guard rail. Pretty soon you are hiking a creek bed up some pretty full on terrain. Whatever you do, don’t leave the creek bed. I tried to cut up away towards what looked like some promising rock, but it just got ugly. The creek bed follows all the way up the gulley until it plateaus out, and then you see this bad boy looming 350 feet above you. The first time I saw it, the clouds covered the top.
This is one of the spots you can find some dry climbing on a wet day in this area, but only if you are ready to climb 5.11 (and hard at that), or 5.12. If the weather is good, the easiest thing to be had around here is Prince, a 5.7, which has a wonderful rappel after 3 pitches, or apparently a nasty walk off after 4 pitches. The catch is, if you want to rappel, you need two ropes. I cannot speak to the walk off, because I took the rappel. This does hold a few bolted lines, but there are quite a few spinners, so bring the trad rack anyways.
Spankey’s Area
This has the best sport routes in the pass, and by best I mean virtually only. This is the only place I have found that has a bolted route under 5.11, and it goes down to 5.7. Most of the bolted routes here all angle up and left, so watch that your rope ends to come to far off the ground as a result of the traverse. I ended up leaving a quickdraw on a technical 5.10c here, so whoever was lucky enough to find it, congratulations. I guess I was either too tired or too lazy to climb up the class 4 scramble for the rappel down.
Roaring Brook Falls
One of the places you will see a lot of tourists, you can see the falls from the highway. What most people don’t know about is the great campsite that is nestled just on the other side of the creek. Every time I’ve stayed there, we haven’t seen a soul, though I’m sure it gets more use in the summer. A great spot if you love falling asleep to the sound of running water, and it does get some sun in the morning. It even has a commode. So much for wilderness!
Climbing the falls is a fun prospect when it is drier, because the water tends to spray 15 feet on either side of the falls. Considering that the route takes you across the falls, wet rock is definitely in your future if you attempt this in the spring. I must say though, I would almost rather take on the wet rock than the alternate route, labelled ‘cedars corners.’ I love the first half of the 500 foot climb, but the last half was slagging through brush and dead logs on 60 degree slope. The guidebook also labels there being two hidden bolts that are driven down, at about the halfway point. They were smashed by fallen rock years ago. For your own sake, please don’t even think about using them.
Chapel Pond Slab
Saving the best for last, this 850 foot monster is a wonderful experience. All relatively low grade climbing, the only thing I heard people say when I asked about it was the massive run-outs. While it is true that there are some spots with scant protection, you plug it where you find it, and things work out alright. Heck, some people just free solo this slab for the heck of it! (That’s climbing without a rope) This was the highest I have every rock climbed before, and I am just itching to get back. The walk down was very decent, we took the north exit, which had a little rappel that I think we could have avoided, but it was a scant 30 feet and there was a rappel station in good repair there. There is also marked camping at the base of the slab, but I don’t know how comfortable I would feel pitching a tent under it, just in case something comes rolling down. We were watching ice skitter down the slope while we were climbing, and 850 feet is a long way for it to pick up momentum.
So How Do I Get There
Lat Long: 44.141397, -73.747340
Its a beautiful drive. If anybody has been there and cares to share their stories, drop a comment, or post on the facebook page.
That’s all for now.
Recently Joe and I went rock climbing down in the Chapel Pond Pass area, where we had the following multi-pitch itinerary: Prince, 5.7, 340 feet, Bob’s Knob Standard, 5.3, 840 feet, Regular Route, 5.5, 775 feet, and Weisner Route, 5.6, 335 feet.
Here is what actually happened. We started off with Prince. Since it was the first multi-pitch we had ever done, it made sense to try something with fixed belay anchors. Unfortunately we found that at each of the stations, at least one of the bolts was a spinner. So we were jumping in with both feet. The climb went well, cold by the end and a good rappel.
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Things continued to go a little odd. We jumped onto Chapel Pond Slab the next day, firing up Bob’s Knob Standard to give us something light. That went well until we got past the 2nd pitch. We realized that we flew by the second belay standard for Bob’s Knob Standard, placing us smack onto the belay station for the Regular Route. At this point we decided that we might as well just go with it, and we finished up on the rest of the Regular Route. Fantastic climb, great experience getting 800 feet off the deck.
The next day we were on our way out of our campsite, which happens to be right beside Roaring Brook Falls. At this point, we had already done the climb we were planning for the day, the Upper Washbowl was closed due to peregrine falcon nesting, so it seemed like a decent idea to try firing up the route on Roaring Brook Falls.
The first half was great, the second half was a bushwhack. There was a great pool of water about halfway up, but then the normal route was pretty wet due to the time of year, so we did an alternate. Which was a bushwhack. Gross. I’d love to come back when it was drier so that we could do the normal route.
Anyways, here is some video highlights from the trip.
This is going to be the beginning of a long series. As part of my mission to introduce as many people to the sport of rock climbing as I can, I have decided to write this series that will take someone who has never rock climbed before in their life, and give them the tools to go out and do it.
I cannot make you into a professional rock climber overnight. I also know that a lot of people have different goals in mind. If you have requests for content, please email me at admin@rockclimbingonsight.com with your suggestions.
Before continuing any further, please read the Disclaimer. All of the information contained in this series is given with the purpose of providing a resource, but this cannot, nor does it intend to replace face to face teaching. There will be many concepts and skills given here that are good, and fall within what is known as “industry standard”, but as the saying goes, there is more than one way to skin a cat. If you encounter something different in your travels, please keep an open mind, because you just might learn something that I didn’t tell you.
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Lets Get To It
If there is one thing that I cannot recommend enough, is that the best way to learn how to rock climb, or learn how to rock climb better, is to go rock climbing. If you have never had the experience of rock climbing, I would definitely suggest going to an indoor climbing gym near you, paying a little money to try out the sport. If you are unsure how to find a climbing gym there is a global listing of indoor climbing gyms at indoorclimbing.com.
Chances are however, that if you are reading this blog, you may have had an experience with indoor wall climbing before, and you want to know more. A good starting point, and something you can practice at home without ever leaving the ground, is knots. I understand that there are an absolute ton of knots out there, and this will not be exhaustive. This will however, give you enough knowledge to get you off the ground.
Figure Eight
This is one of the most used knots in climbing, and perhaps one that you have already encountered. Most commonly, it is used to secure a rope to a climber’s harness to catch their fall. While it has other applications, the point is to keep things simple for now.
One thing to check when you are tying a figure eight is to make sure that the two strands don’t cross when you are doing the follow through. This is called making the knot “well dressed”, and in addition to making the knot easier to identify, it also makes it easier to untie after it has been weighted.
Fisherman’s
The purpose of this knot in this context is to create a backup knot, after the figure eight has been tied so that the end of the rope has no chance of slipping. This can also be used to join to pieces of rope together, but for now we are going to keep things simple.
Harness
If you are at the point where you are considering buying your own harness, I have covered that in another post, which can be found here. Please go and read that now if you would like. For actually putting your harness on, here are some things to consider.
First and foremost what I tell people when putting on a harness is to look for a logo. This is the easiest way for you to tell if you have the harness right side up. For most seat style harnesses that you are likely to encounter at a beginner level, you step through the large waist loop, and put a leg into either leg loop (much like putting on shorts). Please remove anything from your pockets before tightening the straps, as they can cause uncomfortable pressure points, and possible break your iPhone if you take a fall. The waist loop will sit above your hips, such that the top of your belay loop (that’s the big loop on the front of the harness) is in line with your belly button.
A good way for you to tell if your harness is on tight enough is if you take three fingers, and stick them in beside your hip and turn them sideways. If they come out scrunched, then the harness is on tight enough. For your leg loops, they should feel like you are sliding your hands into pockets.
Some typical problems that happen are when your leg loops or belay rappel loop get twisted and or the harness is too loose. Often the best way to fix this is to take the harness off completely, and fix the the loops without it on.
After you’ve got your harness on, there are a few things to think about when threading the rope through. The front loop is called the belay rappel loop, and while it may seem like a great place to tie in the rope, but it is actually the two loops that the belay rappel loop run through. I’ve been asked many times by new climbers whether threading the rope up or down is better. While there are many things that are very particular about rock climbing, this one really doesn’t matter.
After the rope has been threaded through, having already tied the first part of the figure eight (prior to the follow-through), you can finish up by completing the follow through and then finally, the fishermans.
Once you’ve got this all put together, you are ready to go. I hope this has been helpful.
