A place where I write about a place called Read: Rockin' the Roger - Waxing at length about climbing in a beautiful setting.

My favorite all time place to climb in the world is Roge's Rock on Lake George. The setting is beautiful, the difficulty is moderate, the approach is a blast, and the view can't be beat.

Not me, but similar to many photos I've taken in pre-digital days on the rock.

Climbing is a geeky sport. What I mean by that is there's lots of technical terms, tons of gear in different sizes and colors and it uses lots of physics and engineering, and there's lots and lots of guide books. Boy do climbers love guidebooks. Though I had only been climbing for a year and never yet in the Daks, I had already purchased Don Mellor's Guide to Rock and Ice Routes in the Adirondack State Park. This was considered the bible of Adirondack climbing and had over 1,000 routes. I had read them all in the off-season.

For a silly portion of my life (the time roughly documented in this blog) I referred to Sept. - May as the "off-season" in the delusional belief that my Summer job as a guide was my real work and my career as a professional educator was just something I did until the Summer came along. A wife and kids cures these young delusions.

I'd been climbing for a bit when I first met KW at camp in '93. He got me really into it and during the off-season I met him at the Gunks for as many good weather weekends as we could. When we returned to camp for Ranger Staff in '94 I was prepared. KW and I were going to try a route near to camp called

"Little Finger Direct," (5.5) on Rogers Rock. KW was game, he was game for anything. When I said I was prepared I mean I had read the book, KW had the gear and experience. One afternoon Ranger Bob let us off work early (mind you we had been moving and lifting things since 6 am and a sausage breakfast - Bob's favorite). So we threw a canoe on the car (KW's 1982 Chevy Lynx) and headed out Route 8 to Roger Rock State Campground. We loaded the canoe and put it in the water and here I discovered one of the most endearing and baffling personality traits of KW: He doesn't like to canoe. I mean he hates it with a passion. KW was 6 feet 2 inches of muscles fueled by gummy worms and mountain dew. A great guy with the physical ability to seemingly do anything; he was the unstoppable force and the immovable object, yet he did not enjoy canoeing. No fear of water, just didn't love the 'ole Grumman. So climbing gear plus two people but only one paddler, me, and off we went. It's like a 3 mile paddle from the put in at the state campground to the actual slab. It took me longer than expected as I was the only paddler. On the paddle out you begin to realize how special this climb is. The water is blue, the sky is blue, it's usually clear and hot in the Summer. This particular early June day was hot, really hot. Not NYC humidity hot, but thermometer scorching. As you arrive closer to your destination the sides of the lake get taller and taller, with campgrounds giving way to trees and trees giving away to rocks which rise straight out of the water and go up and up. By the time you get to Rogers Rock (in typical ADK fashion there's a legend as to how it go it's name) a slab rises 500 feet out of the water. We arrived at the base of the climb and pulled our canoe up on shore. You have a small flat area where you can scramble up to the base of the climb, with enough room to get your shoes on, set your belay and relax. At the end of the climb this is where you jump into the water as well. KW and I got tied in, put our shoes on and off he led. Typical of KW, he was fast. So fast that he didn't notice the heat. That rock bakes in the sun all day and that sun shines straight down as well as reflects off the water. However when he was at the first pitch belay, he felt it and as I seconded up the rope, I felt it too. My feet actually hurt, even through .5 mil of hardened rubber. We started up the second pitch again with Keith leading and it only got worse. By the time I reached him, our feet were hurting so much we had made the decision to bail. Keith led across on tension to one of the rappel stations and we started down. Behind us on the climb was a guide with two clients. I'll never forget thinking that it was really getting hot and probably not a good day for climbing. As we were rapping down, the second client started to feel faint and pass out - on the end of the rope. He sounded real weak and indicated he had fig newtons and water in the fanny pack on his back. I rapped across to him and helped him access his pack, which he was too weak to take off and get to himself. This concerned me as climbing in the heat is a lot harder than accessing your pack. However after fig newtons and water he said he was okay and the guide made the decision to continue on. I didn't get it.

That was my first Rogers trip. The next week before camp started, KW and I hit it again and climbed it in glorious style. It was another beautiful day, but not a scorcher. The canoe ride was smooth and I didn't mind doing all the work. KW led the first pitch, basically a finger width crack up a slab, and the 2nd, and the 3rd which involved the crux. The crux was a bulge that was rated at 5.7+. The thing is the crux was protected, while the "easier" way around was not. KW chose the crux, not because it was harder, but because his style was usually direct and straight forward. Following, the crux was quite easy, though KW loved to place gear as high as possible to make it difficult for his followers to reach. This amused him. The 4th and final pitch of Little Finger is an easy traverse across to the rappel station with pretty much no gear. This was also apparently my first lead. KW gave me the rack (which was useless but meant he didn't have to carry its weight) and told me to go. This was typical of him. He knew I could handle it and without ceremony told me to do it. And I did. I think I placed two useless pieces for what climbers call "psychological pro." We rapped off in record time, avoiding bushes and snags and took a nice jump in the lake.

I don't know if we made it up again that Summer, but the next trip I recall was the following May with my friend Jessica. It was to be my first full lead and my entire rack at the time consisted of two Black Diamond 3/4 inch cams, one BD 1/2 inch cam and a set of Wall Nuts. Not the best rack, but I was young and in shape and quite brash back then. We cruised the climb in pretty nice style and I actually enjoyed my first multi-pitch lead. May in the Adirondacks is quite different than June, July, August though and there was no jumping in Lake George after the climb.

The following years '96-'00 is when things got out of hand - in a fun way. Summit staff grew, more of us were into climbing, more staff from the other camps wanted to go up Rogers with us, and more and more people owned lots of climbing gear. You could do a party of four on Rogers as long as you had three ropes and a lead rack. And we did often. We had harnesses and helmets at camp and we borrowed those liberally for these excursions. The Voyageur already wrote about our climb where I earned my moniker, The Load. I just want to point out that it was because I was protecting the Weebs from the side affects of sun exposure mixed with his lime disease medication that I took my sweatshirt off in the first place to loan to him. 'Nuff said.

On another one of these excursions there were five us (the largest group I can recall) and what made this one so memorable was that KW decided our canoe was overloaded and given his already stated disinclination to ride the Grumman, he jumped out and held on to the stern as the rest of us paddled. He spent 3 miles in the water half swimming and half being towed to avoid the ride.

Another time towards the end of my tenure at camp, I took one last group trip up Rogers. The Voyageur was there and two or three others (it amuses me that I can't even recall the attendees on these climbs - I would literally take anyone interested). It was the end of the Summer during what is called referred to as "take down week." The problem with this trip is we left at about two in the afternoon. It was about an hour drive from camp over to Rogers Rock state campground, West on Route 8 over to Route 9N and then north on 9N for a bit. I mention these roads because one of the coolest things on this ride was passing the elephant on Route 8.


On NY State Route 8 between Brant Lake and Hague

I've never stopped on the road to take a pic, so I thank the Internet that someone took one and posted it.

Arriving at the campground at 3, we then put the canoes in the water, loaded them up and headed off. Which means a 4 pm arrival and set up - you can see where this is going. I think there were four of us. 3 1/2 pitches. I think one person had never climbed before. It's at least six pm by the time we are atop pitch 1, another 3 hours for the next two pitches, then a further hour to complete the traverse on the last half pitch. That puts us at 12 am and a long way to go. It was a moonlit night and we had headlamps (Boy Scouts - Be Prepared, etc.) so darkness was not a problem. But it was midnight and we had 3 long rappels to do with four people. Simul-rapping was out, though I had done that with KW on several occasions at Rogers, it wasn't in the cards with this group. I figured we would be down in a few hours and back to camp by about 4 am; I was two hours off. In daylight there is an easily avoided bush where your ropes could get seriously tangled on rappel. As it happens, our ropes got stuck there, several of them. I can recall hanging on rappel, untangling 160' of 10.5 mil rats' nest by headlight and not loving it. Eventually everyone got down to the canoes by 4 am and we reached the campground at about 5. A quick call to camp (on a payphone - this was like 2000) to let them know we were okay - nobody knew we were missing apparently) and then the ride back to camp. We rolled in just about 6 am. We sought out Big Bird, one of the head honchos at camp, and copped to our overnight escapades. As a "punishment" we were told to work the whole day, right after breakfast. So there was no sleep for this wicked group, but I wouldn't have traded the experience for anything.

In all I've probably made the climb up Rogers about 18 times. Almost exclusively on Little Fingers or Little Fingers Direct, though once KW and I scouted out some of the steeper bolted lines on the side. He led a rather scary 5.9. I recall getting my ankles mauled by red ants and not being able to swat them as I belayed him up a really dicey crux section. I fell on second several times on that climb, but KW was KW.

I've taken my wife up (before we were married) and I had plans to free solo it, naked, with Coady. That fell through (thankfully?) due to the tires on the '82 Regal blowing out. According to the garage, they were so old they just rotted away.

The glorious view, the moderate difficulty, the canoeing approach, the beautiful blue waters of Lake George; I love everything about Rogers. But I missed all of these on my favorite trip. One summer over Labor Day weekend, Coady and I had a plan to do a "Slab-A-Thon." We were going to climb as many Adirondack slabs in 24 hours as we could. We began at Rogers Rock campground. The idea was to start at 12 midnight. We arrived at the campground quite early in the evening and tried to sleep to no avail, even with the aid of a beer or two. We lay awake listening for the alarm to go off at a quarter to twelve. As soon as it did, we packed the tent and got our climbing gear down to the dock and at 12:01 we were paddling. we hit Rogers pretty quickly and led off. We were climbing by the light of a full moon and the rock was wet. It had rained for several days before we arrived and while the air had dried most of the slab, there was still a stream pouring down the crack in the center of Little Fingers. This was one of those climbs where everything just clicked: my partner, my physical ability, my climbing ability, my mental preparedness. Being that the rock was hard to see and pouring water, I should have been nervous or worried, but I wasn't. I sailed up the pitches, moving over rock that had become familiar to me by now, not feeling any difficulty or hesitation. At the belays I would stare out at scenery which had always been bright and vibran,t blues and greens, and was now a dark night dotted by starts and punctuated by the moon. It was simply sublime.

The rest of the Slab-A-Thon did not go so well. We got lost finding Moxham Dome, having never actually climbed the slab there. On the approach we walked through muddy, swampy woods and invited black flies to feast on our skins. Coady led the first pitch and I could barely make out his body as I belayed with every ounce of bare skin including my face buried in my clothes trying to hide from the flies. We were miserable when we topped out on that one and then headed up for Chapel Pond Slabs. We took a nap in the van and then climbed Chapel Pond in the evening when there was a little wind that helped keep the black flies at bay a tiny bit, but not enough. My neck and ears were destroyed by these buggers, my ears were literally swollen about 2 inches thick. Coady's mom took him to the doctor cuz he was so badly off.

I wish we had ended that trip on Rogers.

Below are some random pics from Rogers I took in the early 90's. In true old school fashion I took a digital picture of the paper one and uploaded it.