Safe Harbor, PA Climbing Challenge

Safe Harbor in totality (North & South) has a lot of potential due to enough variety, routes and that super convenient bike path at the base the entire length for climbing challenges. I think it is healthy to create, work for, and share worthwhile (relative) challenges amongst a community. Pushes standards, creates bonds, and can take people places they never dreamed before (regarding performance, etc.). 

If you could create a challenge specifically at Safe Harbor, what would you do? 24 hour endurance challenge? Distance challenge such as 2 or 3,000ft in a day? Classic "king line" power-endurance fest like Tommy Caldwell sending the three hardest at the Monastery in one day? Team of just two? Or, a large community gathering such as the 24 Hours of Horseshoe Hell? Car to car challenge? 

The potential for a badass challenge is there...Thank you for your time!

I like where you’re headed with this.  I don’t have any amazing ideas for a challenge, but love getting up to safe harbor.  If you’d like a potential training partner, look me up.  I have weekdays of at irregular intervals, so can usually commit the week of for a day trip.  

A few thoughts:

Safe harbor North crags are very spaced out, so mixing biking/climbing distance challenges might be interesting.  

Its my understanding that the town of safe harbor owns the cliffs and that the power company owns the road.  I don’t know if there are regulations in place that prevent overnight climbing, but I suspect night climbing will be frowned upon.  

Nathan, good idea incorporating the biking! Even though the dam can cause some challenges, attempting to incorporate kayaking in there would be rad one day. Thanks for responding dude! Haha!

I advise posting this on the Safe Harbor Facebook group. If you're going to have an event, make sure all the relevant stakeholders are on board, because an unruly event which affects landowners could harm future access efforts.

Thank you David for the advice. We're all good with access and there is no event being discussed here, just potential.

Cool man, I'm interested in going if anything materializes.

David, we will let you know as something is bound to materialize soon! So much development is happening there.  Besides a personal challenge where a buddy and I are attempting 22 5.10s in the North in one day, there is sadly nothing communally...

Dude,  if you get something for a large over night group set up,  I'm 100% in

Kyle Stapp wrote:

David, we will let you know as something is bound to materialize soon! So much development is happening there.  Besides a personal challenge where a buddy and I are attempting 22 5.10s in the North in one day, there is sadly nothing communally...

22 5.10s in a day? Why not 23 5.11s?  ; ) 

I’d love to start something similar to the 24 hours of horseshoe hell. With the potential restrictions that the park has, maybe do sunrise to sunset, then have the after party at a local campground. 

Matt, let's get this ball rolling! It'll take a lot of time to execute such a challenge properly, legally, smoothly. What restrictions do you mean? The lack of a campground on site? A sun up to sunset event would be amazing, I do think that a 24 hour event is still what should be pushed for. I vote 24 hour challenge and if that ends up being too difficult to pull off then the sun up to sunset would be perfect. 

Realistically, if there is the potential for money to be made and super positive attention to be had, the Township would (might) be willing to "bend" rules for a night (say allow people to sleep/camp on the side of the wide/flat trail, etc.) or, at least do all they can to support such an event. Just a thought. 

Restrictions are the city park is closed overnight and doesn’t allow camping. I doubt they’d open it up to camping since people would drink and they don’t have bathroom facilities for a lot of campers. I don’t think they’d make enough money off of it to change the rules but it couldn’t hurt to ask. 

As far as another campground, you could always incorporate biking into the challenge. I.e you have to start at the campground and bike to and from the climbing. Assuming a campground can be found close enough to safe harbor, I haven’t looked yet.

Are you part of the AAC, they sponsor  decent amount of events, we could pitch the idea to the Philly chapter.