On June 28th, our group met at RockSport at 8:30 am, sorted gear, and headed over to Stewart’s Ledges for some climbing on Buck Mountain on the East shore of Lake George.
Accompanying Joel and Doc, two professional RockSport guides, were five novice climbers: Tom Schwarts, Dillon Kovacs, Alex Wakeman, Alan Spadafora and me.
At the top, we learned anchor building techniques and safety, and rappelling. Eventually we got to try some top-rope sport climbing.
RockSport: $300 for all of it … shoe, harness and chalkbag rentals, two guides and a day of climbing instruction for five newbies. Not a bad deal.
Sounds like you’re off to a great start with climbing. I really like that b&w photo above… what climb is that, it looks pretty tough. When you’re comfortable setting up your own top ropes you might enjoy the climbing at the Beer Walls, where I climbed on Friday. My next climb may be on Rogers Rock: Little Finger is a superb multi-pitch climb at an easy grade. The climb rises directly out of the water on Lake George and is best approached via canoe. I’ve climbed there many times, the last being about 2 years ago.
Wow. That looks sooooo cool. Wish I didn’t get the Willys from heights. Chapel Pond is supposed to be one of the longest vert of continuous rock in the East. We’ve watched them climb there from across the road on the first ledge ascending Giant Mtn. It’s really cool to watch. You need binoculars for this but my Sweetheart can spot them on the rock face like a Hawk with her naked eye. That girl can spot a deer in a field two ridges away as soon as you round a bend in the road.
Great stuff tBatt! Glad to see you’re having a good summer.
I’ve been climbing indoors since around October, but outdoors is definitely more scary and fun. I haven’t climbed in a while so I need to get quite a bit of finger strength back. I believe that first photo is on Crackatoa (that was the second day of climbing, I wasn’t there). My friends are over on Stewart’s Ledges again today, I skipped out because of the heat. They were talking about heading over and climbing Chapel Pond sometime soon though.
Some history….Chapel pond is a corruption of the name Chappelle. Chappelle was a guide for the British General " Gentleman Johnie Burgoyne " during the American Revolution. Chappelle guided some of Burgoyne’s forces thru that mtn pass heading to the Schroon valley on their way to their demise at Saratoga. They were defeated largely because of the leadership of Benedict Arnold. If Arnold had not later betrayed America, he would have been remembered as one of our great generals. There’s a small monument to him at the Saratoga Battlefield with no name on it because of this betrayal. The monument depicts a boot. He was wounded in the leg while fighting there.