Area 3: The Revolutionary Climbing Wall of Dead Man's Gulch Rock Climbing

The rock quality at Revolutionary Wall is highly varied and and unpredictable. Many of the home-made bolts and bolt hangers may be unsafe as well. Take extreme caution when climbing here, or consider not climbing at all.

The Revolutionary Climbing Wall is a SE facing sedimentary rock promontory located at the crotch of where Dead Man's Gulch splits into two separate gulches. The season is from October through May but summer temps here can exceed 105 F. For the months of Dec, Jan and Feb you'll want to look at the forecast and using weekdays and weekends you may be able to patch in 8 climbing days per month as the place has mild winters.

The rock types on the wall have been described in the referenced USGS map as: Hartville Formation, Divisions 2 and 3 (Pennsylvanian)--interbedded gray limestone, buff to chalky white limestone and dolomite, pink dolomite, buff aeolian sandstone, gray, red and maroon sandstones, and thin black shales. The climbing section of the cliff is composed of some 5 of these different layers with distinctive sub-gradations each of which is about 7 feet or less in height. The cliff is vertical with roof overhangs to pass over. The bulk strength of the region of climbing rock is quite sound but once in a while a hand holds will break off as there have not been many ascents here yet. When this happens the region from which the hold came off of often leaves another type of handhold so the ratings are not adversely affected. Most of the routes here are bolted liberally--not any run outs. And so you have a sport climbing GYM on the native rock.

The 19 routes here are all bolted moderate sport climbs (5.8 thru 5.11d) of 50 feet or less with no-untie-necessary belay/rap anchors. Oh, and a 5.6 for your neighbor. The routes anchors are all in a very obdurate formation just below the extensively shattered zone of rock. Most of the new loose rocks seen on the ground in the first photo are from cleaning this shattered zone of loose rock above the anchors. If you elect to set up top ropes by gaining access to the ledge above the shattered zone all the work anchors used for rap bolting were left intact. You can gain access to this ledge from the far right but most likely you'll want to rope up for the traverse under the massive sandstone roof.

Most of the wall faces SE and the climbs can be sunny early and until about 1 PM. A few of the left most routes face more easterly and get sunny a little later. As the east section of rock gets warmer pulling out of winter into Spring and while in the bright sun you'll encounter hordes of box elder bugs emerging from the cracks near ground level. If the sun goes behind a cloud they all vanish into their digs. Apparently this zone has been their winter shelter from long into the past. They cluster only briefly in the Fall, then disappear on some cold day into the rock and are gone till Spring.

The other resident bug is the wasp. They too come out in the Sun but they do not act like those pesty, aggressive fellows that they convert to in the summer. Their motion is so feeble that you can work the handholds alongside them unscathed.