Dave, Emily, Chris, and I went over to climb in Rocks State Park for the first time last Sunday, the 14th. I’ve been there a couple times to hike and see the view from the king and queens seat, but climbing there is a very different experience. The rocks are very high and the walls have some really nice features.
Normally when I visit a crag, there’ll be a few climbs easily marked out from one of our guidebooks. The problem with Rocks is that it’s really big so I felt very overwhelmed. It’s really hard to know which wall you’re looking at. The bottom isn’t easily accessible and from the top it’s simply impossible to see where the good climbing is 50ft below you. I climbed down to the bottom. Emphasis on CLIMB — it wasn’t the easiest with a bunch of gear. Funny enough, Emily dropped Dave’s water bottle and the bottom split so he had to drink from the bottom. Dave stayed at the top and we yelled back and forth until we found a great beginner wall, Breakaway wall. We stuck to the right side of the climb on a route called Vertical which was rated 5.6.
Setting up anchors for the top rope was an interesting process because we were simply on a little shelf at the top of a big wall with more rocks above us. We found one great one and one decent one but when you’re used to tying your rope around a couple trees it can be freaky to trust a smaller crack or rock to support things. But hey, that’s why we have a backup rope!
After setting things up and managing to get everyone and all the gear to the bottom I tied in only to realize we setup the rope about 20 feet too far to the left of the climb we wanted to do. The choice was clear, climb and know I’ll have a big swing if I fall or scramble/climb back up the side. Either way would take some time and I knew the climb would be very reasonable so I went for the actual climb. It’s a little freaky being that high and knowing if you fall you’re going to be a little pendulum. It worked out though. At the top I fixed the ropes and everyone else got their climbs in. We didn’t have time to do more than one climb each but now that I’ve been there once I think we’ll be a bit more prepared for next time. I also want to find a couple of the bouldering problems I’ve been reading about. More pictures can be found on my picasaweb album.