Real-rock bouldering in Brooklyn?

I generally avoid going to Manhattan if I don't have to, but all the fun boulders I know of are in Central Park (okay, also in a few other Manhattan Parks). According to the office of parks, Brooklyn is also on top of a giant chunk of near-the-surface bedrock, though, so it's surprising to me that it wouldn't have just as many bouldering spots as Manhattan. I've fairly thoroughly explored Prospect Park, which seems the most promising, but found nothing.

Any secret info on boulders in Brooklyn? I might also be interested in stuff in Queens, depending on where.

I haven't been able to craft a search engine query that doesn't turn up exclusively results about the Brooklyn Boulders rock gym.

When I wrote the original Manhattan bouldering guide — http://www.beta-boy.com/nycboulderingguide/ — I was living in Brooklyn and made several forays into Prospect Park hoping to find some good rock.  But like you and others I came up empty.  It is a shame b/c Prospect is wonderful and so is Brooklyn.

Unfortunately, all the natural climbing opportunities in NYC start with Central Park and then areas north of the park such as Morningside, Ft Tryon, Inwood and several others.  This is due simply to the geography of Manhattan.  The flatter land on the south end of the island was ideal for development but starting around 60th street the terrain got more rugged and swampy.  This was the main reason for the creation of Central Park.  I’m also guessing it paid at least some reason in the creation of many of the northern Manhattan parks — given how rocky and rugged they are — especially one like Ft Tryon.

When I was writing the first guide — some climbers were starting to explore places like Inwood Park.  My first trips there reveal enormous potential.  I also came across Morningside one day and immediately saw spied a number of short but quality problems.  Problem was back in 1986 — bouldering was a full decade away from enjoying its rebirth as a super popular part of the sport.  There were no crash pads.  Your crew was the one friend you could convince to go to some trash-filled park in a very sketchy neighborhood.  Bouldering was not an end to itself.  There were no indoor gyms and climbers were just trying to get in shape for weekend trips to the Gunks.

When the bouldering revolution finally arrived, I had already moved to LA.  Fortunately, Gaz Leah took up the mantle and developed many of the newer northern areas.  Many places I had walked through and thought — “maybe someday!”

So in the end — NYC bouldering is feast or famine.  Famine in Brooklyn and anything south of Central Park.  But a decent feast of possibilities as one travels north from 59th street.

***Note: One of the best parks for bouldering development is Inwood Park — however due to the discovery of Native American caves and markings the folks in charge of Inwood have created an unofficial, de facto climbing ban there.  Unfortunately the City Climbers Club no longer exists.  It used to have a great relationship with the Parks and Rec Dept and CP Conservancy and got Central Park designated as a place where bouldering was officially an accepted activity.  If it were still around there’s a good chance climbers could have negotiated an agreement suitable for both sides that would have protected historic/archeological sites and allowed climbing at other areas.

Is the scarcity of Brooklyn bouldering due to the fact that Long Island consists almost entirely Pleistocene deposits without any exposure of bedrock?

PRRose wrote:

Is the scarcity of Brooklyn bouldering due to the fact that Long Island consists almost entirely Pleistocene deposits without any exposure of bedrock?

I'm not sure of the answer to this, but I will say that Long Island is not entirely devoid of bouldering: there are some boulders, just not climbable ones in Brookly (that I know of).

There's actually even some non-climbable boulders in Brooklyn--if you go to Mount Prospect Park (a small park which oddly borders on the Northeast of Prospect Park) there's a boulder there which is just short enough to discourage even a very contrived sit start.

Highland Park and Bangladesh Park look like their trees might hide boulders from Google Maps, but I never made it out there. If Forest Park has boulders, they don't seem to show up in the 10,000+ pictures on Google Maps.

Brooklyn native here, I've been climbing a long time and never come across any climbable boulders anywhere in the borough. From what I understand the entirety of Long Island is the "terminal moraine" of the ice sheet that covered north america during the last ice age. Basically it's a big pile of debris that the glaciers pushed in front of it as it advanced and left behind when it melted back. There isn't any exposed bedrock anywhere that I am aware of, though there are a few random glacial erratic boulders here and there on Long Island. 

I will say that I have had a lot of fun climbing trees in Brooklyn, in prospect park in particular. London plane trees can be very fun to climb, the first branches are often ten or fifteen feet up, and the trunks are often just featured enough to make for an interesting "boulder problem" up to the first branch (higher than that you get a binary of branches close together enough to make further progress trivially or so far apart as to be way too hard for free soloing) . Smaller trees which you can reach some of the way around often play as kind of a layback, while bigger trees you can't reach around become much harder tests of compression sloper skills and slab style smearing footwork. A couple months ago I found a really fun jump start problem.

There's smattering of buildering opportunities around the park as well.

DM me if you are interested, I can share a few of my favorite trees.

PRRose wrote:

Is the scarcity of Brooklyn bouldering due to the fact that Long Island consists almost entirely Pleistocene deposits without any exposure of bedrock?

Yes.  It’s a giant sandbar formed between two glacial moraines.  

There are some hilly areas in Queens and geological surveys show harder rock closer to the surface in those areas.  But I have not seen rock outcroppings in LI, BK and Queens.