It’s a sport involving heights, some significant enough to put a quake in the average person’s knees. But it’s the widths that are the real challenge.
Bouldering – a kind of rock climbing done without ropes and harnesses – requires participants to scale what can seem like sheer walls by grabbing onto impossibly shallow ledges with only fingers and toes.
“We’ll reference things like dime edges, where you literally stand on rock as wide as a dime edge, or on a credit card crimp, where pressure is the only thing that allows you to stay on the wall,” said Ryan Shipp, president and co-founder of South Central Pennsylvania Climbers, a nonprofit climbing advocacy group operating regionally, including in Lebanon County.
“If you walked up to that rock, you’d be like, that’s impossible. You would literally look at an eighth of an inch edge that someone’s hanging on with their fingers. And standing on as well. It’s impressive.”
No wonder gymnast’s chalk for hands, rubber shoes for feet, and crash pads – 4-foot-square mattress-like pads climbers carry into the woods like a backpack and put at the base of ricks to catch those who fall – are standard equipment.
But that challenge is one of the main attractions of bouldering, it seems.
“The motivation to climb is probably different for everyone,” said Nate Bussard, the climbing group’s treasurer. “But you can see, from anyone, that sense of accomplishment from doing something that maybe feels unattainable at first.”
“It’s a physical pursuit most of the time. Sometimes things are really hard and when you finally do it, it feels pretty good.”
Climbers from the South Central group and others will put their skills and motivations on display at Governor Dick Park on Nov. 16 (rain date Nov. 17), when upwards of 200 climbers – not to mention spectators and vendors – will turn out to climb some of the park’s 18 official bouldering sites.
The event’s been going on at Governor Dick for 14 years now, pre-dating the 9-year-old South Central Pennsylvania Climbers in its current form. Pre-pandemic, it was bringing in closer to 350 climbers, so many that the group had to cap participation due to limitations on parking and space. It’s building back up toward that again now, Shipp said.
Most of those who attend are from Harrisburg, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, “anywhere within a day’s drive,” Shipp said. But he’s run into climbers from Massachusetts who came specifically to climb at Governor Dick, he added.
The event is one of the club’s main fundraisers, the money going to lease climbing sites on private ground, pay for liability insurance, and support its outreach efforts.
It’s also a way to bring “climbing communities together,” Shipp said.
“We talk about ways we can all collaborate and keep climbing open and reasonably safe for everybody and build the recreation in our community,” he noted.
It’s appropriate for Governor Dick to host the event since bouldering has been popular there for a long time, said park naturalist Taylor Casey. People can boulder there any time they like, she added; no permits are needed.
Most of those who visit check out the park’s 18 main bouldering sites, all identified on the park’s hiking trail map.
“They all have fun names, like Mojo, Fugitive, and Smiley,” she added.
There are lots of other places to boulder in the park, too, though. Adam Hartman, the other co-founder of the South Central group and still a board member, wrote a book detailing them. Copies are available in the park visitor center and “they sell like hotcakes,” Casey said.
The popularity of the sport, if not of the book itself, was a bit of a surprise to her initially.
“I hadn’t heard of bouldering until I started working here,” Casey said. “But it’s a big thing.”
That lack of awareness isn’t totally uncommon, which is another reason why the South Central Pennsylvania Climbers is so big into advocacy, Shipp said. The group works with land managers with state and local agencies, like the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources – which manages state parks and forests – and private landowners to keep climbing sites accessible.
Most are welcoming of the sport once they realize what it is, how safe it really is, and how willing organizations like the South Central group are to pitch in with maintenance and conservation work, he said.
But it’s the fun and challenge of bouldering that opens doors and gets attention as much as anything.
Bouldering climbs are rated on a scale, from Scale V0 to V17. The climbs at Governor Dick top out at V13, which is plenty difficult, especially on rock faces that are still pretty high. At Governor Dick, for example, Brussard said, most of the climbs are 10 to 15 feet, though a few hit 20.
At Governor Dick and elsewhere, climbers can use those guidelines to pick and choose which rocks they want to tackle, based not only on difficulty, but angle, too. Some climbers, Shipp said, like to climb baselines or cracks, while others prefer slabs, and others like to do overhanging rocks, almost climbing upside down from the underside to reach the top.
“It’s kind of like going into a nice restaurant,” Shipp said. “Everybody has something that they’re going to find.”
Just about the time a climber gets good at one thing, there’s something else to face, too, Bussard said. There’s an appeal in knowing that though you can gain proficiency over time with practice, new challenges always await.
“Everyone’s ceiling is probably different. But that’s the cool part,” Bussard said. “Everybody can find something that will challenge them to their max at any given time. And everyone has fun doing that. It becomes very personal, I think.”
The event at Governor Dick – one of two climbing events the group is hosting, the other being held at Governor Stable Park in Lancaster County on Dec. 21 (rain date Dec. 22) – is timed to offer good climbing conditions. Some might think summer would be the peak of the climbing season, but that’s not so.
“We want it to be cooler and less humid,” Shipp said. “That allows us to have better friction on the rock. When you go to our Pennsylvania climbing areas in summer, they’re like ghost towns usually. It’s just too hot, it’s hard to get friction, it’s typically not as enjoyable.”
Just as important as the conditions, though, is that these events serve as potential gateways, allowing people to turn out and see for themselves what bouldering and climbing and the climbing community are all about. Shipp himself got into climbing sort of like that. He didn’t know anything about it before his sister’s then-boyfriend took him bouldering at Governor Dick years ago. The adventure, he said, was “a game changer.”
Events like these give others the chance to perhaps find their own passion in bouldering and climbing.
“The sport’s growing, and we’ll see where it takes us,” Shipp said.
The events
Bouldering events at Governor Dick on Nov. 16 and Governor Stable on Dec. 21 are known together as the “Diabase Double Down” (diabase being a type of common local rock).
The Governor Dick event begins the night before, on Friday, Nov. 15, with something new this year, a Pint Night pre-party. To run from 5 to 8 p.m. at a location to be announced, it offers the chance to hang out and collect some event swag.
There will be a vendor village at both events – bring cash, as that’s all some may take – and several new categories of competition.
For registration fees, schedules, and other information, details on what to bring, categories of competition, guidelines for spectators, and more, visit the South Central Pennsylvania Climbers site at scpclimbers.org.
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