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Browns Bay

Minnesota > MN/Canada Border Areas

Description

Directly south of Emerald wall is Browns Bay. Midway down Browns bay on the east side is a crag that has the potential for about 12 routes. There has been some development there and exist a couple of good lines, including a nice 10a trad climb. There are a couple of routes listed that we toproped also.

Getting There

If you are boating up from Crane lake, continue past Canadian customs and go through King Williams narrows. After passing through King Williams Narrows head North West down Grassy Bay. Continue down Grassy bay until the bay opens up toward the end. At that point stay south and enter Browns Bay. After getting into Browns bay, you will see a cliff on the East side in a little bay. It has an obvious 6' roof that can be seen from the lake.

Routes from Left to Right

5.10a 6a 18 VI+ 18 E1 5a
 1
● Monocular Vision
Trad, Alpine
5.12- 7a+ 25 VIII+ 25 E5 6a
 0
● Unknown 1
TR, Alpine
5.11+ 7a 24 VIII 24 E4 6a
 0
● Unknown 2
TR, Alpine
Route Name Location Star Rating Difficulty Date
● Monocular Vision
 1
5.10a 6a 18 VI+ 18 E1 5a Trad, Alpine
● Unknown 1
 0
5.12- 7a+ 25 VIII+ 25 E5 6a TR, Alpine
● Unknown 2
 0
5.11+ 7a 24 VIII 24 E4 6a TR, Alpine

Photos [Hide ALL Photos]

Nice boulder on the top of the browns bay wall
[Hide Photo] Nice boulder on the top of the browns bay wall
More browns bay wall
[Hide Photo] More browns bay wall
Main Browns bay cliff. Monocular Vision is all the way up the cliff to the right.
[Hide Photo] Main Browns bay cliff. Monocular Vision is all the way up the cliff to the right.

Comments [Hide ALL Comments]

jfischer
[Hide Comment] This is a great area as well. In 1998 I kayaked there with all my climbing gear and made some attempts. Oct 11, 2007
Kurtz
Fort Collins, CO
[Hide Comment] A really pretty crag and relatively clean for the area. We wanted to TR the left side. The first issue was getting to the top of the cliff. We tied our boat way left of the cliff and bushwhacked up. The next issue was keeping the rope out of the water. The heavier person (me) retreated to the boat (small aluminum houseboat tender) and positioned it near the line. The lighter person (daughter) rappelled off with the rope in stirrups. The water was too shallow to get directly underneath so I had to haul her in. Getting the climber started on the rock was challenging too. We tried a line on the left past the gi-normous spiders that live there and then tried a line to the right which was harder than we were (5.10+?). We never made it to the top but we had fun. Some wild screaming pendulums since the only routes seemed to traverse away from the anchor.

Brown's Bay Boat Belay Beta:
  • Bail all water out of the boat first.
  • Keep rope away from gas, batteries, fishing gear, oars...basically everything.
  • Do not belay directly below climber because of falling lichen, dirt, rocks and spiders.
  • Wear a helmet.
  • Do not piss off the spiders!
Route possibility
Aug 15, 2015
jeffengel
[Hide Comment] That is great! pretty cool stuff there. I TR'ed that as well, hard to do because of the roof. we would access the top on the far right side Aug 16, 2015