New Paltz Nation - Day in Gunks

Just Another Day in the Gunks

The question I posed in two previous blogs — Why do people climb?— leads inexorably to the next, seemingly inevitable question: Why do so many people climb in the Shawangunks?

For even if you don’t rock climb, you’ve likely noticed the grimy, often grungy — usually grinning — groups of individuals milling about Main Street by dinnertime on a balmy Saturday. These could well be rock climbers, gravitating each weekend to the cliffs of the Shawangunks eight miles west in the distance, like ecstatic versions of lemmings drawn irresistibly to the sea.

In contrast to the complex answer as to why people climb, the answer as to why people climb in the Shawangunks is straightforward: the Shawangunks — affectionately nicknamed by climbers, the Gunks— are simply magical for rock climbing.

Contrary to what you might expect, it’s not their sheer height, nor sheer technical difficulty — the Gunks, at their highest, are 350 feet, and average about 200 feet. While at one point the Gunks held the world’s hardest rock climb — a testpiece by the name, Supercrack, near the venerable Mountain Mountain House — many other climbing cliffs in the past twenty years have developed far harder and more cutting edge routes.

But the Gunks are unique — maybe it’s their proximity to the wonderfully contrarian New York. In most climbing areas, climbing quality correlates to climbing difficulty. But not at the Gunks, where the routes are seemingly tailor made for a weekend recreational climber like myself — whose love for climbing far outstrips abilities or experiences, who has never jammed to the summit on 3,000 El Capitan in Yosemite, bivied on K2 in the Himalayas, and will only get up a world class climb if hoisted by crane.

So what make the Gunks so special? Climbing is characteristically strenuous — the cliffs are vertical to overhanging — yet offer unusually sharp, positive holds and rock features like corners, overhangs, and roofs. Adding to the allure is the location — high on a hillside overlooking the New Paltz countryside. The result is a happy and unusual confluence of incredibly fun and often exciting moves, in incredibly airy and exposed positions.

So you could have a pitch of climbing —known as a rope length — where you might only ascend, say, seventy-five feet of actual rock — like the first pitch of a moderate climb named, Hans’ Puss. But you find yourself edging out on one rock corner, leaning back for handholds, and moving out over another rock corner as you feel suspended over hundreds of feet of sheer air.

Then there’s what many Gunks climbers call the single most beautiful pitch of climbing in the Shawangunks: the top pitch of another moderate climb called, Cascading Crystal Kaleidoscope — nicknamed CCK. (There are roughly 1,000 climbs in the Shawangunks, each up to three pitches long. So you can do the math… and if you wonder about the name, well, yes, it was climbed during the 1960’s and the first ascensionist, Dick Williams, who formerly owned the iconic, Rock and Snow on Main Street, was indeed referring to popular substances of the time.)

CCK’s first two pitches are nothing special, at least by high Shawangunks climbing standards. Perhaps the best thing you can say about them is that they get you to a belay between pitches —the pause in climbing that occurs between rope lengths to place a safety anchor — on a nicely shaded, roomy belay ledge, always much appreciated on a hot and sticky summer afternoon.

But oh, when you reach the belay before starting the top and third pitch! There, cocooned with rock on three sides — above, behind and on your left — you gaze out on a horizontal rock seam that requires delicate footwork to move across (a traverse, in climbing verbiage).

This is the hardest portion of the route — as well as the scariest and most thrilling. Why, you might ask?

You are exposed to air on three sides — ahead, below (since the rock is undercut) and on your right. As you traverse along the seam, placing feet carefully, you feel as thought you’re stepping out further and further into air, seemingly floating. Finally, you reach a rock flake which you climb by grasping, leaning back — a move called, appropriately if not imaginatively, a “layback.”

Now you follow the rock features upwards, below a huge, menacing roof, before traversing right under its corner until where it ends. Then, finally, you allow yourself a huge grin, as you move further right and on to the summit.

With CCK’s jewel-like setting, affinity for light, and clean, elegant lines, its top pitch is extraordinarily photogenic. Never more than in the fall during foliage seasons, when the rich palate of oranges and reds on the trees below heightens its beauty.

One stunning October day in 1992, I ran into a photographer on CCK’s top belay. As was the style of the time —though I blanch to remember — I was decked out in bright pink lycra tights, color coordinated (truly, unintentionally) with bright pink fleece top. The outfit stood out sharply from the rock and air; the photographer asked whether he could take a series of photos of me. And so as I launched out for my first time on that third pitch of CCK, he happily snapped away.

For many years, while I held a corporate job in mid-town Manhattan, I kept one of the photos on my desk. Several colleagues, who spent weekends golfing, told me it gave them vertigo. One told me he averted his eyes when he dropped by.

But the photo reminded me of that day on CCK. . . The sun on the Gunks rock….the aroma of sweat mingled with chalk…the occasional clink of climbers’ carabiners and shouts of “off belay” in the distance…the hawks soaring overhead…the turkey vultures soaring below.

All in all, just another day in the Gunks.

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