Thacher State Park; review and questions

Went to JBT climbing area for the first time over the weekend.  I do most of my climbing in the Gunks but a group of 8 from my gym wanted to get a weekend trip together, most of them having mostly limited outdoor experience.  Unfortunately we had a bit of rain around 530pm Saturday which left the routes pretty wet for Sunday.  But we had fun and Im glad to have another sport climbing option in the region (where I am in NJ our choices are basically Safe Harbor and Birdsboro).

I thought it was pretty well bolted, some run outs here and there but the bolts were where you needed them.  One question I have is about the type of limestone and how its going to effect the routes moving forward.  There was A LOT of small loose rock raining down most routes.  Mostly trying to toe-in on a chip.  but some routes (Mutt, 10a comes to mind) where the lower crux is a compression move on somewhat thin flakes.  

Will this limestone eventually get to a harder layer and stop chipping away so much? I can easily see the grades change depending on how much of this rock gets pulled off.

My other major questions is regarding development on the other side of the cave. I thought while the routes were shorter, the rock quality was a little better in the Hailes Cliff area.  When standing over in the Horseshoe North area and looking across the valley over towards Hailes cliff, there seemed to be a lot of interesting features and the rock is south facing, a bit more exposed and therefore likely to dry out much quicker.

Are there plans to develop what I assume would be Hailes Cliff North?

Thanks.

​Nice review.  Looks like Hailes Cliff North is private property and off limits to climbing.

Thatcher Overview​​​

I can't answer any of your questions but I have one of my own to add. Does anyone know what the traverse route in the cave goes at? It's fairly new and isn't in the book, nor could I find it on the proj. We got on it while it was dripping wet so it was hard to gauge the difficulty considering the feet get thin near the middle.

Gunks App has the traverse at 9+.  It was soaking wet when we were there too but it had also rained pretty good the night before.

Nice, thanks JRZane it wasn't up when I looked. Looking forward to going again.

yeah me too, we did a couple lines that would be much better dry. 

I just noticed that Puckered and Tuckered, next door to Mutt, is now almost a whole number grade harder than it was when I went last year. That might answer your question about grades changing.