thoughts on large groups climbing on the weekends.

At risk of getting flamed by the TR brigade, I'd like to point out that what you can do/have the right to do and what you should do to be polite are two different things.

Getting up early and grabbing a route is all well and good, but what if we got to the crag 30 seconds after your horde (who slowed us down and clogged up the approach trail)?

Sure you can camp on the route all day, but the great rock routes on beautiful days with good conditions are a finite resource, and the polite thing to do is to share that with others who aren't in your group. You might even make some friends.

The way I climb: one person leads, follower cleans. Then if nobody else wants to lead, if there are others in my party they TR the route if they want.

I was the OP and appreciate all the feed back. Unfortunately it happened once again over the Thanksgiving holiday. I kind of expected this being a dry holiday weekend but was still a little ticked. I prefer multi pitch routes and easy to moderate trad routes. Most of the time this comes with a long approach and tends to keep the crowds away. The guy I was climbing with loves single pitch sport routes in the 5.10a-5.10c range. We had plenty of climbs to choose from and decided we would just chase the sun all morning. I had one trad climb I wanted to do because of some neat features that I was not familiar with. It was an easy climb 5.7 and I figured it would be busy. We had just found the climb and noticed a group of 3 adults and 4 kids getting ready to set up on the route. I asked if I could lead it quickly since they planned on setting up a top rope and camping out for the day. I was told they would be done soon and I could do it then. No problem so we went on and enjoyed our day. About 300 yards up the trail we ran into a huge mess. Slap dab in the middle of the trail is a hammock, 4 chairs, coolers and 4 top ropes hanging. One thing it was missing was climbers. No one is around. We continue to climb and when we passed back by the big mess we notice one of the adults and some of the kids from the first climb. Not surprised that they where the ones taking up the entire section we figured they had moved on from the original climb and it was free for us. We made the walk only to find them hanging out at the base of the climb with the top rope still hanging.

Lessons learned:
Lots of people have no consideration of other climbers
Climb harder stuff
Never go on holiday weekends to popular places
Longer the approach smaller groups of people

Bring a larger, louder, and even more aggressive dog, louder boom box, and more unused top ropes to drive away the large groups. Seriously though, large groups inevitably suck for everyone else around.

Jon Powell wrote:Lessons learned: Lots of people have no consideration of other climbers

I would have said "some people," myself, but yeah. Not much you can do about them - we can complain all we want on MP, but they are not reading this.

So I would add another lesson, which you already implicitly know: always have a plan B. Sounds like you had a good day climbing, despite the annoying folks nearby.

On a positive note, the weekend before Thanksgiving I overheard an amga guide giving a single pitch instructor course telling his class not to hog routes. Then they packed up and moved from the classic route they were using for their demos to a choss pile.

Eric Chabot wrote:On a positive note, the weekend before Thanksgiving I overheard an amga guide giving a single pitch instructor course telling his class not to hog routes. Then they packed up and moved from the classic route they were using for their demos to a choss pile.

you should find out the name of the guide and promote their business

Jon,

You should have gone back to the group and pointed out the error of their ways. Seriously. If they're not on it, they haven't reserved it. Tell them to pick their poison. If they stick with the original route you asked about, pull their lines from the other location.