Castine Climbing

All the rocks are west facing giving you lovely afternoon sun and beautiful sunsets over Penobscot Bay. When the wind is up though it'll howl all the way up the bay and cut right to the bone. During spring tides the bottom of the cliffs are underwater.

The rock is generally poor and hard to access, so it is climbed primarily by bored locals from the town or Maine Maritime Academy, located in Castine.

There is a short 40' cliff close to the backshore that has a beautiful polished smooth face, but the rest of the cliffs are clustered around Dyce's Head, at the tip of the peninsula. They can be accessed either by parking at Dyce's Head then following a trail past the lighthouse through the woods down to the water and cutting right (to the north) or by walking around from the beach known as the backshore. A large section of the penibsula is a preserve known as "Witherle Woods" and a few trails lead through the woods to the tops of some of some of the cliffs.

In the summer there are several local restaurants open, but in the off season the only place to buy beer is the local bar "the reef" (now out of business for serving alcohol to minors). Drunk midshipmen will make it an experience.

The Maritime Academy has a climbing wall that is open to students and the public, monday-thursday from 430pm to 9pm, and local climbers there can give you some good beta on the current rock conditions and local secrets.

PS. The area does have a lot of potential for interesting boulder problems and a easy to moderate top rope routes

P.P.S. Looking back after being a few years gone, Dyce's Head is for the desperate and deranged only. The cliffs are 90% chossy crap and falling down. There's a fun traverse around the whole cliff to walk at low tide, but the climbing is pretty bad. Just pack it up the road to Clifton to get some real climbing in.

It is beautiful here tho.