Rib Mountain

How big is the park, or how much climbing is there?

Pete,

It's decent sized, and there is about a weekend's worth of climbing there. Definitely worth checking out sometime. Bring a crash pad and some buddies you'll have a blast.

The bouldering is very good at Rib Mt. I lived in Stevens Point for four years and developed a lot of climbing there with friends from Wausau and Madison. There is an un-official guidebook that was done about 6 years ago, but since then many of the longstanding projects have been added.
Much of the obvious established problems are around the overlook tower, but hike around and look for some of the off-path areas.
Note: Many problems are high-ball so bring a few pads and have spotters.

Remo-

I also lived in SP a few years ago (circa 1998-2003) and did a fair amount of climbing at RM during that time? Any chance I know you? As for the "guidebook" I remember when some people were working on putting one together, but I never saw a finished product. I would certainly be interested in seeing it sometime...

James,
Yeah, we may have crossed paths in Point. I worked at the climbing wall around that time. Matt Zingraff finished the guidebook about 6 years ago. Original copies are hard to come by, I don't even have one. He is still making copies for anyone interested. But the best guide is Seth Carlson, he lives in Wausau and is climbing there all the time.

Can anyone help me get in touch with the dudes that wrote the guidebook for rib mountain? I live in antigo and work in wausau and it would be killer to have someone to boulder with.

Korbyn you can e-mail at stinkybeta@yahoo.com and we can hook up and I will show you around. I also have a couple of copies of the guidebook. The guidebook is a little out of date but is a good reference.

I'm starting to add problems to Rib mountain. I just want people to be aware that all the grades given are not set in stone. We have always felt that the grades take away from the climbing there. Mountain Project makes you give a grade for a problem, so I did. From my experiences climbing with the people who developed the area this is how we have always felt.

Remo, could you post some pictures, it would help a ton to identify routes.

Hey Travis, I am in the process of putting pic of the problems up.

Seth, I may be going up to Rib sometime this weekend, think anyone will be willing to show me around the place?

I will be around all weekend, give me a call 715-432-1117 and will get after it.

Remo-

Thanks for puttting the photos up, keep them coming...

Thank Seth C. for the pics. Seth keep them coming!

For anyone interested, we are holding a Boulder Bash at the park Nov. 3rd and 4th, 2007. It's not a competition just a bouldering party. All are welcome!

The fall 2007 boulder bash was a huge success. Possibly the largest bouldering party in Wisconsin. We had over 40 climbers make it out for a weekend of great weather and fun sends. Thanks to all who came out and made this a great weekend. Look for postings on another bash in the spring.

All of us from LAX just wanted to give a thanks to everyone for the spots, catches, hoots, and cookies. We had a blast at the bash!

Perhaps LAX could hold a sport climbing bash at Grandads Bluff in the spring, after all we have the highest density of sport climbing in the state......

That Boulder Bash looked like a great time. It's nice to see a bunch of psyched people out having fun and supporting each other. I think you guys make a good point: boulderers and sport climbers should have their own get-togethers, just like ice climbers have their "Ice Fests." Your pictures are great too.

That was the most people I have ever had at my house! What a great time.

My brothers and I (and a few of our high school friends) used to climb at Rib Mountain from the early to mid-1980s -- we grew up in Wausau. It's neat to see the area is finally getting regular visits from climbers. We had the place to ourselves back then; never saw another climber in all the years we frequented the area, though in later years we heard rumors from climbers at Devils Lake that now and again someone would wander around the hillside and boulder a bit. I suspect a lot of the lines we did were FAs.

We climbed all over the mountain, including the old quarry on the west side (private property; my first climbing route was done here at age 10 or so around 1977 on the 100-foot 5.0 slab, with an older neighbor who had a yachting rope and my older brother). We did a fair amount of bouldering, some top roping when the rocks were high enough, a few very scary aid routes (using homemade aluminum heads, hooks, etc.), and even groveling in the snow during the winter to practice alpine climbing.

It's hard to tell from the pictures on this site exactly what we did, though some are very obvious. The Headstone Area, for example (which we called Sliding Rock, because that's what the park service calls it): Left Crack, Right Crack, Over the Top -- all of these were done before I graduated from high school (1985). The V-system for rating boulder problems was still yet to come. If memory serves me, we used to rate Right Crack 5.9, Left Crack was 5.10, and Over the Top was 5.11. We had our own names for our favorite problems, and Over the Top was certainly the hardest route we were able to do (I top roped that one, and may not have completed it until I was a freshman in college, which would have been 1986, though that may have been the year I returned to it and bouldered it without a rope? It was a long time ago, and I'm not sure I did that one sans top rope). Most of the problems/top ropes we did were in the 5.6 - 5.9 range.

I'll post a couple of old pictures in the Headstone Area.

Hey Bernard, thanks for posting your beta on what you guys did and called certain problems. You were way ahead of our time up at the park. I changed some names and added you guys as the FA's. Looks like the V-scale translated well with your 5. scale ratings, very cool.

Hi Remo - I've looked through many of the problems listed here, and see a few more I'm certain we did, though my guess is that most of the boulder problems we established were so easy that they wouldn't merit a listing. For example, the picture of Dough Arete in the Headstone Area: I'm 95% sure the leaning crack on the right was one of our routes (we called it Offwidth), and I'd be 100% sure if you told me that around the corner (that is, left from the edge of the photo, toward Headstone/Sliding Rock) there is a lovely little hand crack (with a 6-inch overhang?). That hand crack was one of our favorites -- surprised it isn't listed here, but maybe that's because it's so easy (we called it Mother, and rated it 5.8).

The picture of No Reservations shows a route we did; I think it's listed as The Mantle Problem -- goes up the obvious corner to the right, with a jam in the serrated flake at the top. Don't recall our name for that one. I believe there was a little squiggly seam right of the corner (just out of the photo of No Reservations) that we may have completed, and I know we did a mantle problem to the left of No Reservations that climbed up to a small shelf just around the corner from Right Crack, and then to the top (easy, but scary because of the long fall potential -- scary for a few high school kids who were learning to climb, in any case).

Northern Lookout Point (I think we called that Sunset Point?) was a favorite area for us -- we top roped a number of lines (and later returned to solo the easier ones). I think we did the Frankenstein face (though I can't tell from the description of the route "Frankenstein" where it goes -- we may have climbed through that blob of rock half way up the face that forms a 1-foot overhang). I know we used to solo the low-5th class chimney left of Frankenstein whenever we were out there. We had a few routes that went up the face above the easy ramp, and a route or two on the face around the corner (one of them starting with the arete/prow below the left edge of the ramp).

One of my buddies and I actually started cataloguing our routes senior year in high school and wrote a little guide for the area (in a notebook), but I can't locate it. I do have a set of notes I scribbled when I last climbed at Rib Mtn: I was home for my 15th high school reunion in 2000, and did all the classic routes on our circuit. Lots of fun memories...

Don't feel compelled to change the names of the routes for my sake -- whatever the current crew at Rib Mtn chooses to use for names is OK by me. I noticed that Seth Carlson wrote a guide to the area: Seth, are you out there? I'd love to see your guide if you still have copies (and I'll send an email shortly).

Finally, I noticed that the FA listed for Over the Top is "Mason?" Is that Mason Werner? For some strange reason I have his email (from UWSP; apparently he was a student there at the time) scrawled on my notes from that 2000 trip to Wisconsin, and I can't recall whether I actually ran into him, or got his email from some folks I ran into down at Petenwell Rocks near Necedah (another one of my old WI climbing haunts). I was supposed to contact him to share info on the climbs at Rib Mtn, but never got around to doing it.

Hope the Rib Mtn bouldering bash was successful (looks like it took place this weekend) -- if I didn't live 1100 miles away in CO, I would have shown up to see all the new climbs you guys have put up.

You LaX sport climbers should just pick a date and location to camp/fest, then spread the word. Make the whole thing a "pot luck" burrito fest where everyone brings one ingredient to build burritos (tortillas, beans, salsa, veggies...). One gambler can buy a keg and sell cups. Another can make and sell souvenir T-shirts.

Make it an annual tradition.

Call it the "Bean Fest"...