Cathedral Ledge, the forgotten cliff?

Cathedral is my favorite crag in NH hands down but rumney is an hour closer to me so i tend to get there more often... I do plan to be back up there a lot this fall though...

Same trend can be found elsewhere and at a single crag. I usually climb at Farley in western mass. The area has both high quality sport and trad lines in all grades. The sport routes get 80% of the traffic while all but a few of the trad lines remain chalk free. Works for me. I like to manage gear and not crowds.

yeah Peter, i find the same deal at the Red River Gorge and Smith Rock which is why i bring a rack :)

on the original thread though, i wonder what will happen over time as the major boom of gym bred noobies mature as climbers... will they branch out... Will they decide that trad is rad and flood those cliffs too? I was once a hard-line boulderer dead set against any roped climbing, haha... then sport crept in, then trad, now i aid climb... Will this be the trend?

That's cool Lee, I've found myself going the opposite direction, well sort of. Aid climbing really made me a climber, then trad. I really pigeon holed myself for a long time wasting breath poo-pooing sport climbing and bouldering. Though still a gear slut, climbing bolted routes and bouldering a lot more has improved my climbing and made me a much more well rounded climber. I look back and feel stupid for literally avoiding rumney for a few years. Oh well, live and learn.

Adam Catalano wrote:I blame it on the recession. Kids can only afford quick draws and not a full rack of gear. Seriously though, I think it is just a shift in climbing style of the younger climbers. Rumney looks much more like the gym they are used to than Cathedral. I brought a kid out a few weeks ago and there was ONE perfect hand jam to pull through the crux and he couldn't do it. He laid it back and scummed his hip up the wall. Although the moves can be harder, Rumney is easier. That's all.

I think its still plenty popular, but most people don't have trad racks. The required skill(trad techniques not climbing) and investment to climb at cathederal keep alot of people away. The accesibility of sport will make it more popular that trad in most places.

Also, school is starting back up, so alot of younger people aren't out climbing as much. That's why I haven't been there.

Evan

It's nice to have (or play with) a huge rack, but it isn't really necessary. For a few hundred bucks you can get a rack of hexes/nuts/and maybe a couple cams. I don't buy the expense factor. And being a student is the best time to climb, I look back to college and the amazing amount of time that I devoted to nothing and how much more climbing I should have done. I think that people like convienence and difficulty w/o fear. Like a few people mentioned above, you show up to some popular areas and the trad lines are empty.

Even if cathedral is dead this time of year it really doesnt matter that much, if you climb 5.10 solid you can find new stuff to do, its just usually all the same routes (thin air,bombardment,funhouse,3birches,refuse,the sigons...etc.) of moderate grade that tend to log jam in the summer and fall. Anybody ever try "last temptation"?......

Yeah. I agree with you, for the most part, nhclimber. Cost was not so much an issue for me. I was introduced to climbing through trad at the Gunks, and so I saved up and bought myself a full rack. I loved climbing, but knew from the start that, as Matt Segal put it in Sharp End, that pushing your limits hard, above gear, is "way more rockin'..."

David Aguasca wrote:Yeah. I agree with you, for the most part, nhclimber. Cost was not so much an issue for me. I was introduced to climbing through trad at the Gunks, and so I saved up and bought myself a full rack. I loved climbing, but knew from the start that, as Matt Segal put it in Sharp End, that pushing your limits hard, above gear, is "way more rockin'..."

Thought the term Matt used was "Bitchen" Kind of Chongo-esque. And so true

E thatcher wrote: Thought the term Matt used was "Bitchen" Kind of Chongo-esque. And so true

I think you are right. The feeling is there, anyway.

The south buttress at whitehorse is the forgotten cliff. :( It has such great classics too like the last unicorn and science friction...

...South Buttress of...what? Never heard of it. I mean, I heard that place was torn down and they built a strip mall there. No, wait, the ground opened up under that place and it all fell into the center of the Earth. Yeah, it's gone. No more awesome climbing there. It's a shame, really.

ShakeNBake wrote:. But we'll see if I can find a partner for today! Anyone?!

Seems to be a nice day out. Your best bet may be to show up at the cliff and wait. May be a little slow being a weekday, but a lot of locals show up looking for partners.

Both are two hours from me, but still being relatively new to the climbing on the East Coast, it is easier for me to find climbing partners at Rumney. Most people who climb, know how to sport climb. That doesn't hold for trad climbing.

climberKJ wrote:Both are two hours from me, but still being relatively new to the climbing on the East Coast, it is easier for me to find climbing partners at Rumney. Most people who climb, know how to sport climb. That doesn't hold for trad climbing.

Right, Im talking about showing up and looking for a partner though. Not finding one on line. Something I love about Cathedral is climbing with three different people u've never met before on a nice saturday. People just don't show up at Rumney looking for partners, there isn't that kind of scene there.

It's nice that Cathedral provides that scene, I wasn't sure.

But not being a local, I would rather be certain I have a climbing partner for the day. For Rumney, it's not too difficult to get people to commit, which is why I haven't frequented Cathedral much.

... just another reason it may not be so crowded.

Are you kidding? When I was living in NY I used to drive there to get away from the crowds of the GUnks. I haven't climbed Cathedral for about 8 yrs since moving to CO. I went back in August and I have never seen it that crowded! Thin Air Face had people crawling all over it. Pooh, Funhouse, it was hard to find an empty spot and we were up there for 4 days. Let me know when it's empty. I'll come back!!!
Guess it's a matter of perspective.

Whitehorse was a completely different story. My bro and left to go climb the nice long slabs cause there was no one there.

Harold Lampasso wrote:Are you kidding? When I was living in NY I used to drive there to get away from the crowds of the GUnks. I haven't climbed Cathedral for about 8 yrs since moving to CO. I went back in August and I have never seen it that crowded! Thin Air Face had people crawling all over it. Pooh, Funhouse, it was hard to find an empty spot and we were up there for 4 days. Let me know when it's empty. I'll come back!!! Guess it's a matter of perspective. Whitehorse was a completely different story. My bro and left to go climb the nice long slabs cause there was no one there.

Exactally, for some reason people seem to head to Cathedral because it has nicer rock...? Idk the rock at whithorse is still good and it has longer classics. Cathderal is nice, but whitehorse is also nice too and it doesn't see enough traffic. Last weekend I went up to do The Last Unicorn and only one other group was on the wall the entire time. They said that they were suprised we were over here and that they were shocked we saw a large group at cathedral.

this topic is pretty open to interpretation. I have climbed and lived in New Hammy for over 10 years and if its a nice saturday there are climbers everywhere, including routes you may not see get done as frequently as others. Its pretty much like anything else, you show up on a week day and there are guided parties on the trade routes but everything right of standard route to the north end is a ghost town. As for White horse its pretty vacant regardless past the slabs with the occasional party on the ethereal butress. You may see some traffic on inferno or hotter/cold day but there are sooooooo many routes over there that never get done its pretty astonishing.

me and a friend ran up sliding board the other day from about 10am to 11:30am and saw no one at all... then around noon over to Bombardment to The Book to the Prow Finish... still saw zero climbers... Then to the north end for the early evening and still no one.... the strange part? there was chalk everywhere even on some of the less popular pitches... weird... who put it there?