RRC Archives

From a summer full of rainy days and introducing new climbers to the sport, here's some of the stuff I've come up with for the best rainy day crags at the gorge. This list is broken down by some classics for each grade that stay dry in a downpour. PLEASE post with your favorites, as it doesn't look like it's going to stop raining any time soon and I'd love some new ideas for future trips.

http://www.elementalclimbingclub.com/bl ... iver-gorge

Thanks!

For another way to find routes, use this site's advanced route search. You can select your dryness criteria based on how much rain the last few days have seen. Select other criteria like grade range, star rating, region, wall etc... So we'll designed and simple. This site really is the shit, Ray I'm talking to you.

The left side of left flank stays very dry. That 4 star 10a and the 5.12.

A note to those who may think the rainy day crag list is gospel: there are conditions that also make rock damp or wet besides rain falling directly onto it.

Condensation (water that collects as droplets on a cold surface when humid air is in contact with it) and seepage will affect almost every route at times. Seepage can occur on steeply overhanging faces that would never be exposed to precipitation while condensation can affect virtually any surface in the area.

Long period of steady rain contribute to seepage and there can be a significant delay after a hard rain event before routes become wet.

That's a very solid point Ascentionist -- ran into the same problem the other week at the zoo after a long period of heavy rain. Both Scar Tissue and Hippo were NASTY and i thought they would be desert dry.

Another interesting phenomenon (not isolated to the Gorge obviously) is when the inside of a crack is wet with condensation even though the outside of the cliff is dry. That's probably more common than most people realize.

This happened to us today. We were at Chica Bonita, climbing Rain Dancer which was appropriately named when you considering we were climbing it in a severe thunderstorm. The route stays completely protected from even the hardest rain. After the first bolt every pocket was wet. I ended up having to pull up through pockets that were full of sludge. It turned a route that I considered an easy 10a into a heady hard climb.