Climbing Near Barre, Vermont

Easy climb of stacked granite blocks. 5.4. Pretty dry through late spring to fall. 4 sport anchors up to 2 top anchors. Can climb up side to make TR accessible. Granite makes for a chilly/cool climb depending on season. Directly off main trail. Easy to see Park at Barre town forest parking. Lots of disc golf activity. View map at parking lot and find Grand lookout. About 10 minute walk to Art Wall. Cross the main road to Grand lookout trail. The wall is easily seen and directly to the right of the main trail.

Home to several of the best ice climbing venues in the lower 48. Vermont ice is as pure, steep, and remote as any.Smugglers' Notch, Lake Willoughby, and several other small, high-quality areas offer steep, continuously sustained, ice flows and mixed climbing rom 50 to 500 feet in length. Approaches can vary from drive-up cragging (Bolton Quarry) to hour-long slogs (Smugglers' Notch and Snake Mountain) up steep, snowy slopes. Regardless, Vermont has it in abundance during the winter months.At a glance:Bear Notch: Off the beaten path but without a miserable hike. WI4/4+ single pitch climbing.Lake Willoughby: If you want to cut your teeth on WI5. Welcome to the jungle. Home to New England's first WI6.Smuggler's Notch: Everything from WIfun to WI5 with tons of obscure, hard mixed routes to offer.Bristol Cliffs: Excellent two-pitch WI3/4 with a second hidden wall of WI5. Parking can be tricky.Snake Mountain: The mysterious mixed climbing haven of New England. Routes here as hard as M13 have been established.Bolton: Accessible toproping at the quarry as well as random multipitch strewn throughout the valley.Wiliamstown/Brookfield: Easy roadside multipitch in a quiet setting. Depending on where you want to visit, directions can be simple or quite complex. It is best to reference the specific area you want to visit, and/or buy one of the old guidebooks if you can find one.

For those who fall in love with Vermont, it's more than just local climbing. Vermont has long granite slabs, overhanging sport routes, beautiful schist and granite boulders, lakeside limestone, adventurous trad lines, and of course, world-class ice climbing. All in a setting that people drive hundreds of miles just to gawk at. And with many cliffs that you will never see another person at, it's our hidden gem of New England and it's hiding in plain sight. Vermont is no longer just a central location to the neighboring rock of the Adirondacks and the White Mountains, it stands proud with its own 5-star lines as good as any in the Northeast.Vermont has a storied history of bold first ascents and adventure climbing. The climbing and bouldering here is on state, private, and LCO-owned land and while many of the access issues have been smoothed out through the tireless work of our local grassroots access group, CRAG-VT (www.cragvt.org), use care and check with locals before heading out.So be it schist, granite, limestone, or ice, Vermont indeed has plenty to offer. Ranging from thuggishly steep to thin and technical, and from the bolted lines in Bolton Valley, to multi-pitch adventure climbing in the Northeast Kingdom and Smugglers' Notch. The climate and topography of Vermont offers visiting climbers a chance to sample a bit of everything, so long as you have a broad sense of adventure, don't mind getting be-knighted from time to time, and regularly like climbing in the face of black flies and bushwhack-themed adversity. Once past those minor hurdles (and after you drink the Kool-Aid!), you will, no doubt, find great pleasure in all that Vermont climbing has to offer.Historical Note: Vermont and its climbing is on land stolen from the Abenaki, Mohawk, and Penacook indigenous people. Because our climbing is quite spread out, please refer to the area index for the best directions to the location you want to visit. Northern Vermont * Bolton* Ethan Allen Boulders* Groton* Honey Hollow Bouldering* Lone Rock* Marshfield Ledge* Mount Hor* Pisgah Crag* Prospect Rock* Smugglers Notch* Vermont's Lonely Gems* Wheeler Mountain* Winooski Cut* Wolf Run Boulders Central Vermont * Abbey Pond Bouldering* Catamount Boulders* Chaffee Falls - CURRENTLY CLOSED* Chittenden Bouldering* Deer Leap* DEKD Killington* Eagle Hollow* Lake Dunmore/Falls of Lana* Riverside Walls* Roxbury* Sunny Valley* Vermont's Lonely Gems Southern Vermont * Bromley Forest* Creature Rock Boulders* Jamaica* Vermont's Lonely Gems