Climbing Heros
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| Aerial photo of Sugar Loaf Mt. |
Rock climbing at Sugarloaf Mt. has been somewhat of a secret. Older climbers from the area know that this cliff was mentioned in one of Don Mellor earliest climbing guides. It is mentioned briefly in subsequent books but not in any detail since the cliff is on private property. Recently, this property was bought by the Nature Conservancy, and while technically climbing is still not allowed, this suggests that Sugarloaf will eventually become state land.
This is an article from Adirondack Almanac explaining further on the land acquisition and the quality of the rock at Sugarloaf.
Now, fast foreword to July 2012. I got a response to a partner search I posted on Mountain Project. A guy from New Paltz wanted to come up and do some slab climbing in the Indian Lake area. Sounded pretty cool. I had a feeling he was talking about Sugarloaf. The only reason I even knew the place existed was through another climbing friend, Mike Prince, who lives relatively close to the mountain and brought me there on a recon hike in the spring. The slab is huge! Basically it's the whole southeast face of the mountain. Maybe a half mile wide and over 600 ft tall at its highest. And it is STEEP slab. Much steeper on average than say, the popular Chapel Pond Slab, for example.
It turns out that Mike from New Paltz had been visiting the cliff once or twice a year and is the primary route developer. So our objective was this day was to add a final pitch to a previously established line called Heroes. The original first 3 pitches were led on September 11th, 2011. As we made our way up the route i noticed the rock quality was great and the pink veins of quartz running through the brown and grey stone were remarkable.
Hero's 200 ft corner
The first pitch was a bit scruffy but had an interesting set of moves none the less. The second pitch brings you into the main feature of the route, a gigantic 200 ft left facing corner with a nice bit of crack climbing and a traverse.
The second belay
This is the belay at the base of the corner. The trees are getting smaller.
Halfway up the corner on pitch three there is a ceiling that must be overcome.
Directly behind Mike is the pitch 3 ceiling.
After the ceiling nearing the top of pitch 3.
Atop pitch three we reached the previous high point. I could seee why the buck had stopped here! Another ceiling guarded the last 50 foot of cliff to the top. The problem was this. The crack leading up to the right looked to be very steep and in the 5.10plus range. The other option for the ceiling was to traverse in under the larger roof system from the left via a horizontal finger crack. This also looked hard. The majority of routes at this cliff a led in a ground up style with any protection (including hand drilled bolts or pitons) placed on lead. Making these two options less likely because one never knows the difficultly of a section until it is climbed. And yet there was a third option. Creep up the roof's left side and follow a nice looking hand crack back to the right. Not the most direct line but it look to be the easiest of the three. Mike set out on lead.
Pitch 4
The climbing look reasonable enough as Mike went up. He stood up around the left end of the roof and what looked like a nice yellow C4 hand crack turned out to be a chock stone at the bottom of a Bombay chimney that rises up and right over steep, slick, black slab. Interesting. There would be no pro for at least 20 ft as Mike under cling traversed this chimney up and right. After backing off a couple times he went for it and after a few tense moments made it to easier ground and got in some gear. He continued to the top of the route....What a lead! Now he rated this pitch 5.7 PG. After following I tend to lean more towards 5.8 PG/R. A fall from the end of the run out section would be long, swinging and over a roof. Regardless, sending it is certainly a rush!
After topping out this amazing route we set a top rope up to see just how hard the more direct variations were.
As we thought they were hard. This photo is me TR'ing the direct finish. A brutally pumpy crack. The other variation follow the horizontal finger crack on the left. This has now been led and goes at 5.9. Harder if you have big fingers.
I was totally blown away by this cliff. There are already a dozen or so routes here with potential for many many more. Eventually, I feel that Sugarloaf will become a destination cliff. But for now it enjoys only a couple parties per season. As it transitions to state land and becomes published traffic will increase I'm sure. I am psyched to get back this coming season and try another route.
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