Camden Climbing Trip

View from Barrett’s Cove cliff

Let me begin by explaining the overall plan for the weekend. Friday night we were to head down to Camden and camp at the State Park campground, costing about $10. Saturday was climbing in Camden (with beautiful weather of course), while spending the night in Acadia after a beautiful rain free drive up to Mount Desert Island. Sunday would be the grand finale, three climbers climbing for their first time in Picturesque Acadia National Park, with the waves crashing just below us on a beautiful sunny day.

This did not progress as planned in full, but it was still a great weekend with some good laughs and some great climbing.

Lauren and I brought our friend Tracy along on this trip, whose attainable dream was to climb the beautiful sea cliffs of Acadia. Neither Tracy nor Lauren had climbed in Camden before so I was looking forward to playing tour guide at our first stop. As planned we cruised down to Camden on Friday night to carve out our little piece of home for the night and set up camp. We were quick to meet the stern face of the park ranger who only said “you don’t have a RESERVATION!?” when inquiring about accommodations for the night.  Needless to say this led to our rejection from this location. We then drove 10 miles or so north to another campsite, where we were offered a tentsite at a reasonable price. Although this was not the camping the three of us were used to (everyone was camped in a circle around a pond), but we got a good nights sleep all the same (with working bathrooms and all)!

With a fairly early wake-up (for the weekend) we were ready to hit the cliffs! Naturally I guided our team to one of two places that I had been to previously to get a good warm up before exploring some new territory. The first place we decided to go was Barrett’s Cove cliff which is an impressive wall that can be seen approaching on Route 52. Not only does this cliff have some great multi-pitches right in the center (which I can’t wait to get to some day), but there are some shorter moderate routes off to the left side as well and this is where we headed. I took the girls to a nice slab that offers a few 5.6-7 climbs with accessible anchors so I could go set up top rope. The route of choice here was a slight combination of Young Stud (5.6), and Old Spice (5.6). These routes both offer some superb slab climbing with some very thoughtful footwork, pinchy holds, and an old rusty piton towards the top of the route! Everyone loves a nice slab climb to wake up the legs and the brain meats.

Lauren gets ready to work her magic on the Old Spice slab

After we got warmed up it was time to explore! The last time I had gone there my friend Brad Staier (who I do a lot of my climbing with) and I wanted to check out “The Verticals,” but we got distracted and climbed some other cool mixed routes we found instead. So with two more focused individuals than Brad and I on the trip we made it to the Verticals! Right away we picked out a line that we thought would suit us, mostly because it was the shortest route and we knew my 60m rope would suffice, but it also looked super fun! This route was called Deception (5.10b) and it was the rightmost route on this wall. Deception starts out with some fairly pumpy moves working right on a flake, with a nice cross to reach a good finger pocket. After gaining good feet to get onto the face, there are some very nice crimpy/balancy moves trending left along a blunt right facing bulge that runs from about halfway up the route to the top. It was an instant classic and Tracy considers it the best route that she has ever done. 

Tracy on Deception (5.10b)

Lauren finding good face features on Deception (5.10b)

The author on the pumpy starting flake

There were more routes to explore on the Verticals but alas, it was time for lunch! After a nice descent back down the stream bed that we took up for a trail, we were back at the car and scarfing down sandwiches with too much cheese and questionable meat (or…I guess that was just me). After lunch we went to the only OTHER place that I had been in Camden which was just down the road and I knew this spot a little better. The place we were headed is called the “Rampart,” and it has some of the best development in the area done almost single-handedly by a man named John Weaver. On my last trip to Camden with Brad we had the pleasure of meeting John Weaver and got to hear about the amount of development that he has put up over the last 20 years.

On the approach to the Rampart walking down the carriage road that splits from Route 52, we stopped at a spot that Brad and I had found last time we were up there. There are three very short routes with bolted anchors that have some awesome and easy trad potential. Being very new to trad climbing I love stumbling upon little gems like this. After leading the longer of the short pitches I set a top rope for the girls to hop on and enjoy the nice moderate goodness as well. This was a big moment too, because when Tracy climbed it at the end, she decided to clean the anchor and rappel for the first time, and everything went smoothly.

The awesome trad pitch (anchor above and right of last ledge)

After getting this fix, we headed up right to work our way over to the Rampart. After a bit of scrambling to get over to the cliff, I had to do a little more to get up to the anchors of a nice 5.10d that we spotted coming in called Prospero, far left of the Dream Weaver prow. We chose this route because it was getting late and it looked to be the most accessible to quickly set a top rope. I was the only one who made it up the 5.10b (with pretty much all power moves), but everyone agreed that the route had some great features and a good location. At the end of the day, Lauren’s finesse always trumps my power moves anyways! 🙂

“Dream Weaver” prow

The day was getting late so we decided to pack it up and head to Acadia to settle into our KOA campsite (again, Blackwoods and all others were booked). The drive to Acadia was lovely, and rain free most of the way! After we settled into our campsite and ate our dinner (some nice tortellini is good after a day of climbing), we all decided some good ol’ Bar Harbor ice cream was in order. So we jumped back into the car, got our ice cream in town, and walked around Bar Harbor for a bit on a cool Saturday night. My stomach felt like a ripe Watermelon all the way back to the campground, but after an hour or so I was ready for sleep and we all got ready for bed.

The last thing we wanted to hear the next morning was bound to occur in the form of little flicking sounds on the fly of our tent. It was very light at first so we thought, “Hey, why not just go set some top rope on Otter Cliffs, climb one or two routes and call it good.” But as the morning progressed the weather said, “I mean, you guys COULD do that, but I tend to shatter dreams in the form of downpour, so you should probably sit this one out.” The weather was spot on, as the rain poured harder and harder our motivation degraded exponentially. As a compromise we took one last stroll through Bar Harbor and got some coffee at a nice little bakery (Lauren would know the name). After the wet stroll (complete with an  awe-worthy parallel parking job) we decided to at least drive over and check out Otter Cliffs anyways, especially since I have a pass so we could get on to the Loop Road. When we arrived at the cliffs we were astonished to see that in this monster of a downpour there were still guiding services out with their clients! Nobody really seemed to be bothered by the rain which we thought was pretty BA, and after watching for a few minutes and gawking as the guides set their trad top rope anchors, we decided to head home after an awesome trip on the whole.

So the weekend was a success! The camping arrangements didn’t work out the way that we had planned but we were able to arrange some cheap camping after all. We still got Camden, which neither of the girls had been to and there were plenty of positives to be taken from our journey to Acadia:

• We got to see what a KOA site was like (not half bad)
• Got to eat some quality ice cream in town
• Got to at least SEE Otter Cliffs and people climbing on them
• Got to eat Epi’s pizza (which is always a treat)

So who can call any of that a loss? Acadia will always be there and we are planning on heading down some time during the week soon. The trip was an overall success and everybody was satisfied at the end of the day!

For guidebooks I used Rock and Ice Climbs in the Camden Hills by Ben Townsend. This is a decent guidebook from someone who seems to know the area pretty well. The only real downside is that there are no topos and only a few photos throughout the whole guidebook. This guidebook is certainly enough to get you around though, and if you get as lucky as Brad and me you could end up meeting John Weaver! I also used Rock Climbing New England by Stewart Green, a more general guidebook for everywhere from Connecticut to Maine which has more pictures of certain climbing spots and some simpler descriptions of approaches.

Even though it has been hot and muggy recently, there is always some good rock climbing to be had, especially when you have some rain or a nice ocean nearby to cool you off afterward. 🙂

Even pouring rain can’t keep us from our coffee!

Keep on the sunny side!