The Near Trapps Rock Climbing

We've subdivided the cliff into for areas: two areas before the closure (see below), and two areas after it. The two areas before the closure are split by the giant hanging right-facing corner of Gelsa. The closure is marked by land ownership signs: and the obvious orange right-facing corner mid-cliff that is Eenie Meenie. The two areas after the closure are divided at Harvest Moon, a striking hand crack on the right side of The White Pillar block.

Within these areas, learn to recognize the following routes as visual anchors (copies of the pictures are in this section, below) and they will help you to find the routes around them. Each of these routes has a picture in the description, and is used in other route descriptions as navigational anchors.

Disneyland. In this first section of the cliff, routes are densely packed. Many routes start in corners and aretes, and a trick to finding them is to look backwards over your shoulder. This area of the cliff is popular, so there are often people here to help you find what you're looking for.
Birdland marks the end of the 'gym' of dense routes - after Birdland, routes are a bit more spread out and sometimes harder to spot.
Up Yours is a striking right-leaning crack and ramp.
Catnip's right-facing corners and the crack of Coyote Crack are just after the closure and easy to spot. Routes are less dense around here.
Easter Time Too is a very obvious right-leaning hand and finger crack that you'll need to climb. It has a dozen or so routes near it.
Animal Farm (not entered yet) is a huge, orange corner ~300 feet left of Easter Time, on the left side of an ampitheatre. Routes around here are very spread out.
The White Pillar is an unmistakeable detached block ~100' high with a beautiful hand crack on its right side.
King of P, a very easy lightning crack (fissure), marks the left side of the Williams Wall, which has a density of moderate slabby routes.
Void Where Inhibited's left-facing corner and the deceptively easy-looking crack of Void Where Prohibited are on the front face of the Void block, a 100' high block, at the Far End of the Nears.

A private party who owns a short section of the Nears cliff has closed his land to climbers for geopolitical reasons. This means for routes from the beginning of the Nears to Eenie Meenie or Moe, you'll approach as usual, from a trail heading towards the rock between the steel bridge and the Overlook lot.

For routes past the closure or Moe, you'll need to slingshot around the cliff. Walk south on the carriage road from the steel bridge, then turn left at the second trailhead -- the Millbrook Ridge Trail (blue markers). In about 15 minutes, you'll come to an intersection where blue markers meet red markers, and a new, orange-blazed/staked trail heads east and down a slope, depositing you right at the Far End of the Nears.

This overall approach takes about the same time to approach the far end of the cliff than it does to hike all along the bottom of the Nears.

Summary of the issue and history from Rich Goldstone's post to a Facebook group: There are five parcels underneath the Near Trapps that abut the cliff, which means the cliff face is part of those parcels, and the trail at the base crosses private land.  In fact, the deeds tend to say "to the highest point of land" and that means that portions of the Millbrook Ridge trail are (or at least were) also on private land.  By and large, the land owners haven't cared about climbers walking below the cliff or climbing on it.

The gully between the Nears and Bayards that people go down is also private.  The South "wall" of that gully (on the right of descenders) is on another parcel from the gully,  and that wall has been posted for quite a while.  The owner of that parcel sold it pretty recently.

So the reality is that climbers traverse quite a bit of private property when they climb on the Nears, and this is true whether or not they circumnavigate and descend.  But as I said, so far the landowners haven't found climbers to be a problem.  

Except, really, for one.  A land owner got into a dispute with the Preserve and became very anti-Preserve.  As part of a program to pressure the Preserve, he persuaded one of the owners of a parcel that abuts the cliffs to post their property.  I don't know their reasoning or politics.  I could be wrong, but I suspect that the parcel owners themselves have never even been up to the part of their property that is at the base of the cliffs, and that the aggrieved individual, after getting permission, did all the posting himself.  Although there are quite a few contiguous private parcels that climbers could in principle be banned from, that one strip is all that is posted.

I think the situation is pretty clear from the attached map from the Ulster County Parcel Viewer.  Preserve lands are cross-hatched, and the posted parcel is outlined with an orange dotted line.  As you can see, the posted parcel is not the Clif Haus parcel, which is the one two down with the big pond.

One message is that we climb on these lands at the discretion of the owners, and that things could be far worse.  As at Millbrook, it would be a really good idea to keep all noise to a minimum, and most especially refrain from loud vulgarities.  The cliff acts as a reflector and the sound carries to the homes and establishments below.  Don't give them a reason to rethink their laissez-faire attitudes!

PS: I haven't posted the names of either the "aggrieved individual" or the parcel owners who have posted their land.  This information is a matter of public record, but I see no purpose and some potential harm in identifying them here.  I hope that if anyone comments or makes corrections to this post they will leave any individual names off.