|
|
|
|
adatesman
Sep 21, 2009, 3:52 PM
Post #1 of 5
(2029 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Jul 13, 2005
Posts: 3479
|
My wife's birthday happens to be at the very beginning of September, so we usually take advantage of the Labor Day long weekend and go away for a couple days. This year we ended up spending 6 days at Roger's Rock in NY. In a word: Fantastic. I mean, what's not to like about a 600' granite slab that requires you to canoe to the base of it?
I'm going to skip most of the typical TR stuff as we only climbed 2 days and don't have all that much to report. What I do have is good information of what to look for / expect if you're headed to Roger's Rock, so here it is...
Getting there: Beg/borrow/steal/rent a canoe. There is a poorly marked, unofficial trail which crosses a big section of private land that passes somewhat close to the top of Roger's Rock, but dear lord, is that hike unpleasant (read: there's nothing marking where you need to veer off to bushwack down to the cliff, so you're in for a real treat if you guess incorrectly). The cheapest canoe rentals I found were just up the road in Ticonderoga, but we ended up buying one locally since we found one for about the same as the week rental would have been and now have a canoe to play with. Worst case my wife gets over her canoeing thing and we sell it, thereby coming out ahead cost-wise. Best case we sell it for a profit and use that money to buy a nicer one.
Guidebook: Absolutely get the new Adirondack Rock guidebook by Lawyer/Haas. There have been a lot of routes put up since Mellor put out his Adirondack guide over a decade ago and Lawyer/Haas did a great job covering it.
Gear: The gear for Roger's Rock is somewhat dependent on how comfortable you are with being horribly run out. Except for Little Finger it's all friction slab with little in the way of protection. If you do find a placement, it's going to be small and likely marginal.
Little Finger is much different as it follows a finger crack the whole way and has oodles of protection available. A standard Gunks rack would work just fine for that, but if you're feeling old school you could also probably get away with just a double set of nuts.
For ropes you're going to want two 60m, otherwise raps are going to be a pain/impossible.
We ended up doing the first 2 pitches of Little Finger the one day, but had to bail due to a belay device malfunction. I'm still not sure what happened basically but the rope popped out of a TRE not once, but twice as I was getting ready to set out on P3 so we called it a day and went back to camp to see what the problem was. I've still not been able to reproduce it and don't see any difference between our original TRE and a 'new' one we just got, so I guess I'll just have to play with it some more before writing it off as user error. (EDIT- after a year+ of playing with it I've been unable to duplicate this issue, so am writing it off as user error. )
Anyway, we went back a couple days later and hit the left side of the slab. My wife was still rather rattled and didn't want to climb, so I just trailed the second rope and kept things to the first pitch. First up: Pitch 1 of Tone Bone Tennys. There were 2 bolts and a pitifully small amount of pro, and every time I got to one I spent a couple minutes debating whether I should continue or bail and go back to camp for beer. I don't mind being a bit run out, but run out on mostly featureless slab? Let's call this a brownpoint. BTW, the pro I found most useful was a Black Tricam and a set of Ballnuts. My WC Zeros generally wouldn't fit due to the head being too wide or the placement being too flaring, but the Ballnuts and Tricam worked great.
Next up: The Grand Game. Since Grand Game follows much the same line as Tone Bone Tennys until Tone Bone drifts off to the right, I figured I may as well traverse back left and finish it off. It's rated PG, but what the guidebook meant with "A route that has 4 bolts in 170', with some supplemental gear placements, is considered PG" didn't really sink in until I was sitting at the anchor at the top with the last possible piece of pro 45 feet below me. Mind you, the entirety of that 45 feel was devoid of anything remotely resembling a hold or a crack; it was entirely featureless slab. Another brownpoint.
Last up: Pitch 1 of The Crucible of War. The hardest of the climbs I tried, but oddly the best protected. Fun, but at that point it getting on lunchtime and the siren song of beer was singing.
Deep Water Soloing: As far as I can tell there isn't any, and it's not from lack of looking; we did 7 miles in the canoe the one day and made a point of checking out every rock face we could find. There is one line that someone had been working on at some point on the cliff on the other side of the lake from the beach (a couple holds were chalked), but it was the only line there and the 90 minute paddle for it isn't worth it. Basically the problem is that there's very little overhanging rock, so while the water may be deep you're looking at a tumbling cheesegrater slide to get to it.
Campsite Facilities: Excellent, but don't bother with the showers down by the beach. The showers up by the recycling are much, much nicer, by which I mean they're larger and actually allow you to control the water temperature. Also of note is that there's a nice sink/wash station around the side of the building there for doing dishes.
Prime Campsites: One of the things I hate about car camping is the fact that the campsites are usually all right on top of one another. While this is generally true at Roger's Rock, there are quite a few sites that aren't bad whatsoever and afford quite a bit of privacy: 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 27, 29, 32, 54, 55, 68, 74, 120, 125, 128, 145, 146, 153, 174, 175, 176, 205, 219, 225, 234, 259, 260. There may be decent sites over on the other side of the road (sites 261-301), but we didn't bother looking since we didn't see the point of being over there.
Some other thoughts on campsites:
If you have a large group, try and get sites 174, 175 and 176. Not only are they all huge and next to one another, they're also tucked away at the end of a dead end road.
Sites 259 and 260 are a quite close to the Cove Boulders and the climbing on Campground Wall and Cove wall (listed in the new Lawyer/Haas guide, but not the old Mellor guide). They're also close to the alternate canoe launch mentioned in the new guide, which cuts down the paddling needed to get to Roger's Rock. That said, if your canoe is a 100 pound beast like mine you'll be driving to wherever you launch anyway so proximity to the launch probably isn't a selling point.
Sites 120, 125 and 128 are quite close to the Campground Boulders.
Sites 74, 120, 125 and 128 looked to be quite close to where I saw kids cliff jumping.
Site 4 is practically right on the beach, which may or may not be a good thing.
While camping on the islands shown on the campground map looks quite tempting, be warned that they are actually located ~6 miles or so south near Hague, not right offshore of the campground.
Beware of Labor Day: Odd thing about being at Roger's Rock over the Labor Day weekend... The place is completely packed, but the cliffs were completely empty. One other party showed up as we were leaving the first day, one party was on the cliff the next day (we say lots of boats spectating below) and we had the cliff to ourselves 2 days later. So what's the downside? Boaters. Specifically drunk boaters. The sort that think it would be amusing to try and swamp your canoe. So if you see them around, be sure to tie your gear bag to the canoe so that it doesn't sink should you get swamped/capsized.
That's about it, so hopefully someone finds it useful...
(This post was edited by adatesman on Jun 17, 2010, 2:43 AM)
|
|
|
|
|
troutboy
Sep 21, 2009, 4:30 PM
Post #2 of 5
(2016 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Apr 25, 2003
Posts: 903
|
A,
You are SUCH an engineer  ...
Which, of course, results in readable, accurate, usable information.
Thanks for posting this.
Tim
|
|
|
|
|
adatesman
Sep 21, 2009, 7:23 PM
Post #3 of 5
(1994 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Jul 13, 2005
Posts: 3479
|
Heh, no joke. While my wife spent the week reading trashy fiction I was reading a technical manual growing crops year round in the northeast using nothing but unheated greenhouses and coldframes. 
Anyway, I almost forgot the most import part! Beer!!!
The convenience store/bait shop right in Hague had 2 decent options (Lake Placid Brewing and Guinness), but that's about it. In fact, even if you went down to Bolton Landing there wasn't much worth drinking to be found. On related note, Bolton Landing had the closest liquor/wine shop we found. The pub next door is pretty good as well, and the closest grocery store is across the street.
Anyway, if you're like me and heading up 87 you're probably best off to make a stop at the beer distributor in New Paltz. Lots of good beer to be found there and chances are it'll be cold by the time you get to camp.
Oh, and second thing- Skip the actual town of Lake George. It's basically the Jersey Shore transplanted onto a finger lake. Blech.
|
|
|
|
|
gunkiemike
Sep 23, 2009, 12:14 AM
Post #5 of 5
(1903 views)
Shortcut
Registered: Oct 1, 2002
Posts: 2266
|
I put the gear in double garbage bags, with lots of air inside, so hopefully if the boat swamps (hasn't happened YET) the gear will float rather than sink. That water is DEEP, and I imagine there'd be no easy way to retrieve a rack or rope from Davey Jones locker.
I'm a big fan of RR, but the July 4th w/e we spent there years ago was just too noisy, with loud parties into the wee hours every night, and incessant Jet Ski whine (or 400 HP powerboat roar, hard to say which is worse) from the lake. (The only worse camping I've had was at Watkins Glen. I was actually fearful for our safety from the drunks in the next site. Morale - don't camp with motorheads who bring equal amounts of beer and firewood.)
|
|
|
|
|
|
