thoughts on large groups climbing on the weekends.

I know this topic has been covered countless times but wanted to get some locals thoughts. A friend of mine climbed at Stone Depot this past Saturday. We got an early start and arrived at the first route around 9:30. We had the place to our selves so we warmed up on a 5.7 4 pitch climb. About an hour later as we got ready to wrap it up we heard a lot of loud voices and dogs barking. Shortly after a group of about 20 showed up and began setting up at the base of our climb. We had left our approach shoes and packs at the base of the climb along with our rope bag. There should have been no question that a group was on the wall. The entire group crowded the area trampling our packs and began to climb all the routes around us. As I set up for the last rapp I noticed one guy even starting to lead the route I was on. They set up 4 top ropes and set in for the day. All the routes are mulit pitch. We came down and started to pull our stuff out from the mess the group had made. They where the loudest group I had ever heard. One dog was even sniffing around my pack where I had left my food for the day. As we packed up to find a better area one of the leaders with the group says "sorry we ruined your wilderness experience" and laughed it off. What is everyone's thoughts on big groups? I know they have the same rights as we do but don't you think if they are going to teach safe climbing they should also teach good ethics?

Perfect fall day, check. Weekend, check. Easy climbing, check. Later in the day, check. Good chance you will run into a s-show. You did exactly what I do, got there early. I have climbed at Stone Depot, once. Any place you have easy bolted routes in NC they are going to get crowded on days like today. NC is not that gumby friendly, and anyplace with easy bolted routes, and multi pitch at that, you are going to run into this. To answer your question no, you cant prevent it, but you can avoid it. You beat them there, good call. Better option would be to hit areas like this on a weekday, if you can. If you cant I bet the moderates at Shortoff were wide open today. Hang up the sport draws, break out the rack, and to the more remote areas. Should you have to, maybe not, but otherwise you get what you got. Going to Stone Mountain on a weekend, get in line for the Great Arch, or walk right onto the Pulpit or Great White Way. Table Rock, join the conga line for Jim Dandy, or step up to Second Stanza. Less popular routes, slightly harder grades, and no bolts will open things up a little on perfect fall weekends like this. Climbing gyms are to thank for a lot of this. Without good mentors and such people dont know to treat the outdoors any different that their gym. I saw this at the Red last weekend. Maybe a few words said in a constructive manner will help, but I doubt it. I just seem more and more these days to try to avoid it as opposed to dealing with it. 20 people is a lot. I wonder if it was some sort of organized group (camp, college, etc). If so whoever leads it should know about it.

College outdoor programs should never have dogs with them. Being in the field myself, I would hope no outdoor professional would ever allow such a fiasco to go on. Minimizing group impact, participant-to-instructor ratios, and a whole other host of reasons should prevent any sanctioned university program from turning into that.

College outdoor clubs though....wouldn't surprise me.

Jon Powell wrote: As I set up for the last rapp I noticed one guy even starting to lead the route I was on.

I get your sentiments. I share a lot of them, particularly with the dogs, but I don't understand what is wrong with someone starting up the route you had just finished. You were rapping down (ie. finished), are they supposed to wait until you are done rapping? It might be prudent to prevent getting a rope dropped on their head, but that's their problem. It shouldn't bother you at all.

Stagg54 wrote: I get your sentiments. I share a lot of them, particularly with the dogs, but I don't understand what is wrong with someone starting up the route you had just finished. You were rapping down (ie. finished), are they supposed to wait until you are done rapping? It might be prudent to prevent getting a rope dropped on their head, but that's their problem. It shouldn't bother you at all.

I guess I was just a little agrevated with the entire situation. We where still rapp off the last pitch as they started. It would take like less than 5 minutes to let us get down.

Jon Powell wrote: I guess I was just a little agrevated with the entire situation. We where still rapp off the last pitch as they started. It would take like less than 5 minutes to let us get down.

Got it. I've been there. Some groups/people, just don't seem to even be aware that there are other people out there...

I was climbing at Jackson Falls once. Generally a beautiful place and usually uncrowded. Unfortunately the Carbondale climbing club or something like that came in with 10+ people. Coming off a route (same deal, I was rapping down as a guy was leading???) my partner and I heard someone yell "This is Great! It's just like the Gym!" Needless to say, we vacated the area as soon as we could.

I vote against loud big groups. If everyone is climbing, they aren't loud. Unfortunately, it's usually a few people climbing and ten more along for the ride. Cool, but it is a negative for my experience. Just my personal opinion. THey have as much of a right as me to be there.

Jon,

I feel your pain. However, truth is that that place has been a haven for beginner groups for a long time, and most of those routes were actually established with that in mind by Outward Bound (though that doesn't sound like an OB group).

For the record, I was down at the north side (just down hill from stone depot) on Saturday and had the whole place to myself. It's easy to get to. Check it out next time you're in the area.

Andy Nelson wrote:College outdoor programs should never have dogs with them.

Sometimes these programs will have service dogs, which is acceptable.

Jon Powell wrote:we warmed up on a 5.7 4 pitch climb. We had left our approach shoes and packs at the base of the climb along with our rope bag.

So you headed up a 4 pitch climb and left a yard sale at the base? Perhaps next time you might think about stuffing yer approach shoes and rope bag in yer pack and placing away from the base of the route so that when others show up and you get back to the base you do not find:

Jon Powell wrote:entire group crowded the area trampling our packs.

and

Jon Powell wrote:One dog was even sniffing around my pack where I had left my food for the day.

As for the rest of your post, yer whining. Unless you made a reservation to have exclusive use of the area suck it up. The crags get crowded on nice fall weekend. Be glad you got up the route before the group showed up and monopolized everything.

Allen Sanderson wrote: So you headed up a 4 pitch climb and left a yard sale at the base? Perhaps next time you might think about stuffing yer approach shoes and rope bag in yer pack and placing away from the base of the route so that when others show up and you get back to the base you do not find: and As for the rest of your post, yer whining. Unless you made a reservation to have exclusive use of the area suck it up. The crags get crowded on nice fall weekend. Be glad you got up the route before the group showed up and monopolized everything.

Actually Allen we left our packs at the base up against a tree a few feet away from the start of the climb . We stayed over night so hauling a bunch of stuff up made no sense. So no garage sale just 2 packs. I was waiting on the jerk. You get first prize tough guy.

And I agree crags get crowded on fall weekends. Jusr another reason not to bring a group of 20+

Size of the group was not the main problem, the guy leading them being a jerk was the fundamental problem.

First, I really dislike large groups, I think they almost always ruin a day of climbing for me. With that said, I never go anywhere where this might happen on a weekend day...that's mistake number 1. For a lot of people, that's how they get into climbing. OB, NOLS, college outing clubs, etc...they really are great things if they teach the proper way to exist in the outdoors at the cliff. Simply avoid these places and you'll be a lot less angry.

I'm also not going to get into dogs at the crag...because mine goes everywhere with me...and has less of an impact than any human does.

Smart move to get up early and beat the crowd. Glad you got your route in before things deteriorated. I don't think there's much else you can do in that situation, other than set a good example yourself, and if it looks like it's going to be annoying, move along to another area.

On the plus side, think what Sandrock must have been like.

Next time take your pants off and start bouldering around the group. Ask for a spot.

MJMobes wrote:Next time take your pants off and start bouldering around the group. Ask for a spot.

Best solution ever!!!

Allen Sanderson wrote: So you headed up a 4 pitch climb and left a yard sale at the base? Perhaps next time you might think about stuffing yer approach shoes and rope bag in yer pack and placing away from the base of the route so that when others show up and you get back to the base you do not find: and As for the rest of your post, yer whining. Unless you made a reservation to have exclusive use of the area suck it up. The crags get crowded on nice fall weekend. Be glad you got up the route before the group showed up and monopolized everything.

People like you crack me up. Another poor attempt to read deeply into something someone has written and making lame a$$ assumptions. As if leaving your stuff at the base of a multipitch route is something unheard of (much like large groups showing up to popular cliffs on a weekend is unheard of). Whining? What else is a forum used for other than finding/losing your shiz or asking general questions about routes?

Large groups suck and that's all there is to it. We just got back from the New River Gorge and Red River Gorge yesterday for 10 days of climbing. My friend had never been there before so of course I'm going to take him to some of the routes that I grew up climbing. Unfortunately that also happened to fall on weekends at popular spots as well.

I told him before we got to the cliff that if we didn't get up at the butt crack of dawn and hit up all the warmups we wanted to do that large groups will show up to the crag and monopolize the entire area. Of course that's exactly what happened. Large groups showed up, placed draws on every single 5.7-5.10a at the crag and left their ropes and draws up as they proceeded to wander around the crag instead of actually climbing anything. I watched people that were not part of the group that arrived later kindly ask people if they could get on the routes they were monopolizing and of course the answer is no, they had some friends that were in the parking lot 30 mins away and were on their way down so they were saving the routes for them. Talked to a couple Monday at Butchers Branch and the girl told me a very similar story about trying to jump on The Green Piece on Sunday when someone had left their rope dangling from the top and wouldn't let them jump in even though no one was on it for over 30 mins because they had some friends on the way that wanted to do it later.

My favorite line is when we walked over to Twinkie at Phantasia we asked what the queue (4 people working it) was for it only to be told they were each going to try it, and then they were all going to keep trying it as they were bumbling their way unsuccessfully up the initial slab knowing they didn't stand a chance in hell of actually sending this thing. So we left to go somewhere else as we passed by a hot pink rope just dangling unattended from Creature Feature which had no one in sight.

Luckily this doesn't happen everywhere as we pulled up to Fuzzy Undercling and the person working it kindly let us jump in to run up it real fast.

The only way I see to get around this for popular weekend areas is to get up super early if you want to hop on those easy/moderate classics and to climb harder (which sounds arrogant as hell on my part, but it's the truth). Big groups aren't going anywhere soon and harder routes never seem to be taken.

jarthur wrote: People like you crack me up. Another poor attempt to read deeply into something someone has written and making lame a$$ assumptions. As if leaving your stuff at the base of a multipitch route is something unheard of (much like large groups showing up to popular cliffs on a weekend is unheard of). Whining? What else is a forum used for other than finding/losing your shiz or asking general questions about routes? Large groups suck and that's all there is to it. We just got back from the New River Gorge and Red River Gorge yesterday for 10 days of climbing. My friend had never been there before so of course I'm going to take him to some of the routes that I grew up climbing. Unfortunately that also happened to fall on weekends at popular spots as well. I told him before we got to the cliff that if we didn't get up at the butt crack of dawn and hit up all the warmups we wanted to do that large groups will show up to the crag and monopolize the entire area. Of course that's exactly what happened. Large groups showed up, placed draws on every single 5.7-5.10a at the crag and left their ropes and draws up as they proceeded to wander around the crag instead of actually climbing anything. I watched people that were not part of the group that arrived later kindly ask people if they could get on the routes they were monopolizing and of course the answer is no, they had some friends that were in the parking lot 30 mins away and were on their way down so they were saving the routes for them. Talked to a couple Monday at Butchers Branch and the girl told me a very similar story about trying to jump on The Green Piece on Sunday when someone had left their rope dangling from the top and wouldn't let them jump in even though no one was on it for over 30 mins because they had some friends on the way that wanted to do it later. My favorite line is when we walked over to Twinkie at Phantasia we asked what the queue (4 people working it) was for it only to be told they were each going to try it, and then they were all going to keep trying it as they were bumbling their way unsuccessfully up the initial slab knowing they didn't stand a chance in hell of actually sending this thing. So we left to go somewhere else as we passed by a hot pink rope just dangling unattended from Creature Feature which had no one in sight. Luckily this doesn't happen everywhere as we pulled up to Fuzzy Undercling and the person working it kindly let us jump in to run up it real fast. The only way I see to get around this for popular weekend areas is to get up super early if you want to hop on those easy/moderate classics and to climb harder (which sounds arrogant as hell on my part, but it's the truth). Big groups aren't going anywhere soon and harder routes never seem to be taken.

This is when ropes start getting pulled regardless. Some people simply need to be aggressed. This is also why I don't go to the Red anymore.

Blake Cash wrote: This is when ropes start getting pulled regardless. Some people simply need to be aggressed. This is also why I don't go to the Red anymore.

I am totally one of those people. I go with small groups normally and we set up alot of ropes sometimes, but I have no problem with others climbing on my ropes. I have helped others finish routes that they couldn't reach the top etc.

If someone had a rope set on a route and weren't climbing it and said I couldn't climb on their rope I would just pull it and laugh at them as I ran up the wall. If they are actively climbing on it than sure let them climb. You don't have any more right to climb on the wall than they do but noone has the right to set up gear / rope on 5 routes and not climb on it for 30+ mins.

I think the worst case i saw was at moore's wall onetime. we had like 4 groups at the top trying to rap down sentinel. Some idiot started climbing it after the first 2 groups rapped and we were setting up. We eneded up waiting for him to finish the climb but instead of setting quick draws on the anchor he ran his rope through it and was planning on TRing the only rap route there for 2 kids with him. If you are going to TR the only rap route on a wall do it in the middle of the week and not on a weekend when you have a group coming down every 15mins. And use %^#$*() quick draws not the anchor, I get tired of having to rap off rings that are cut halfway through from people TRing on them.

jarthur wrote: My favorite line is when we walked over to Twinkie at Phantasia we asked what the queue (4 people working it) was for it only to be told they were each going to try it, and then they were all going to keep trying it as they were bumbling their way unsuccessfully up the initial slab knowing they didn't stand a chance in hell of actually sending this thing.

That seems like an amazing show of restraint not to call them out seeing as the slab is the "super easy" part

I'll also add that a little bit of courtesy when you are a member of the large group goes a long way:

1. Don't be loud and obnoxious

2. Offer to pull your rope to anyone who comes along and wants to lead it

3. Offer to let people TR on your rope if that's what they want to do