Take highway 130 west of Laramie, WY for 52 miles, turn left(south, just west of MM 49) on Forest Rd 227 for 4 miles and then left on Forest Rd 225 (French Creek Road) for 8 miles. Cross the bridge on South French Creek and park on the left adjacent to the creek. The 250 Ft cliff is visible from here when looking upstream to the right side. The approach trail begins 80 ft SW of the bridge. Follow it South 100 yards on a flat and soon meet a closed logging road. Go left on this shelf/logging road for 300 yards. When below the rock face take a trail uphill south that begins at an obvious black boulder. This trail ends at the 1st story or face of a set of four.
Description
The weather forecast shown above is not very accurate for this area --far too hot. See NOAA link below and subtract 6 degrees from daily high. Cool air draining from the Medicine Bow Peak (12,000 ft) into South French Creek Canyon makes this north facing glacial canyon wall the coolest sport climbing wall in WY during the summer. Come here if you like continually difficult climbs near the level they are rated. The climbing area and trail lie entirely on public (Forest Service)land. The climbing is all Sport Climbing on near vertical and overhanging marble. All routes are north facing--cool. The season is late Spring thru Labor Day with temps 58 - 74. The climbs range from 5.4 to 5.12 and are 50 to 80 ft long.
Camping: This is Wyoming. Sleep wherever you dam-well please. The nearest FS campground is 5 miles downstream on French Creek.
Main Problem: The area seldom gets warm enough for women climbers to take off much clothing.
The 4 Stories Rock outcrop (250 ft) consists of four overhanging marble (meta dolomite) faces(each 50-60 ft.) that stack offset-wise on top of each other with sloping grassy horizontal like ledges between each face. From a frontal view looking south this rock cliff has a triangular to trapezoidal shape with each higher story or face shorter in length than the lower one. The climbs of each face or level end below the sloping grassy ledge above. Hence the name 4 Stories. All the climb tops are equipped with Ramhorn open cold shuts.
At 4 Stories an area of routes consists of the climbs on a given story. The first area presented is Story One-The Blue Marble Face. It has 28 climbs.
Dingus, It's sweet that you're revealing some secrets! Letting the cat out the bag in hopes of luring Colorado sporto hotties as you've exhausted all of your Laramie options?
We need too come down and climb there next month then ride mtbs at Gowdy.
Please find a photo sheet in each area that is a list of routes/difficulty and sometimes a topo. Most people can make this work when they arrive at the area. If you are looking for points feel free to write a route description (story) for each route and thus conform to the format you seem to expect?
By R Connors From: Salt Lake City, UT May 14, 2013
The beta sketches are great, but I'm wondering if this area is described in any local guidebook?
so far no guidebook. As of last summer the Blue Marble Wall gained 6 new routes. L to R. I do not know the names of any but ratings are as follows: 10b Woody Barmore, 12b S. Babits , 12c Griffin, 12c Griffin, 10b Barmore, & a 5.3 Nolan Babits. These routes are dispersed along the eastern half of the 1st Story.
Also Story 3 has 6 new routes. L to R with ratings: 10c Mc Gee, 11a Mc Gee, 11b/c Mc Gee, 11c/d Mc Gee, 11a/b Mc Gee, 11c/d Archer.
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