Vermont Climbing

For those who fall in love with Vermont, it's more than just local climbing. Vermont has long granite slabs, overhanging sport routes, beautiful schist, gneiss, and granite boulders, lakeside dolostone, adventurous trad lines, and of course, world-class ice climbing. The state is one of the most geologically diverse places in the country. All in a setting that people drive hundreds of miles just to gawk at. And with many cliffs that you'll never see another person at, it's our hidden gem of New England and it's hiding in plain sight. Vermont is no longer just a central location to the neighboring rock of the Adirondacks and the White Mountains, it stands proud with its own 5-star lines as good as any in the Northeast.

Vermont has a storied history of bold first ascents and adventure climbing. The climbing and bouldering here is on state, federal, private, and LCO-owned land and while many of the access issues have been smoothed out through the tireless work of our local grassroots access group, CRAG-VT (www.cragvt.org), use care and check with locals before heading out.

So be it schist, gneiss, granite, dolostone, or ice, Vermont indeed has plenty to offer. Ranging from thuggishly steep to thin and technical, and from the bolted lines in Bolton Valley, to steep technical boulders in Smuggs, to multi-pitch adventure climbing in the Northeast Kingdom and Smugglers' Notch. The climate and topography of Vermont offers visiting climbers a chance to sample a bit of everything, so long as you have a broad sense of adventure, don't mind getting be-knighted from time to time, and regularly like climbing in the face of black flies and bushwhack-themed adversity. Once past those minor hurdles (and after you drink the Kool-Aid!), you'll, no doubt, find great pleasure in all that Vermont climbing has to offer.

Historical Note: Vermont and its climbing is on land stolen from the Abenaki, Mohawk, and Penacook indigenous people.