Manchester Wall Rock Climbing

From Rick Dejarnette's article for Riverside Outfitters:

"The Manchester Wall is the principal remain of the Richmond and Petersburg Railroad Bridge, which was chartered in 1836 and constructed of granite quarried from rock in and around Richmond. The bridge was intentionally burned down during the evacuation of Richmond in 1865. While rebuilt in 1866, it burned down again in 1882 after sparks from a passing locomotive ignited the supporting timbers, leaving only the granite abutment and pillars intact. This confirmed the foresight of a Richmond newspaper circulated between 1862-1865, which wrote, “The whole structure was designed with…a just regard to strength and durability. [The] piers of imperishable granite will remain as proud monuments.”

For over 100 years, the pillars and abutment stood as a quiet vestige to Richmond’s history, with regards to both wartime and industrial strategy, for no additional efforts were made to reconstruct the bridge after the second burning.

Then, something unlikely happened. In the 1980’s a small group of people categorically considered on the social fringe – rock climbers – realized a new vision for the wall, namely, to create a climbing haven within Richmond’s urban core. They cleaned the wall and pillars and carefully added hardware in increments up the wall to protect fellow climbers against ground falls."

Full Article

A standard rack is a set of 6-8 quickdraws, maybe 2 alpine draws, a set of smaller nuts, and a single rack of cams from BD .0-#1. There are maybe one or two routes where you can fit in a BD #2, but it's never critical. Manchester eats up finger size gear.

There is a free PDF guide that was published for this area by Michael Greeby available here.