Last weekend was my birthday, so I decided the best way to celebrate would be to climb some big rocks. I recently discovered that central Pennsylvania is full of places to climb which seems to make up for the lack of gyms around here. I always prefer climbing outside to in a gym because it gives you a chance to be more free form with your climbs and push your limits more than you would normally in the gym. Not to mention the outdoors is a lot prettier and smells less like feet.
On this trip we went to donation rocks which is only 40 minutes outside of state college and very easily accessible. The roads to the climb are paved and while there is no paved parking there is plenty of space to pull off and you can see the rocks from the road. The rocks on the left side are private property and not open for climbing but the right side has plenty of great climbs and even on a beautiful Saturday there were only a few other groups of climbers and plenty of space for everybody.
The top of the cliff has bolted anchors which makes setting up a top rope so much easier and makes me feel less bad about hurting the trees with slings. However, I am in no way qualified to teach anyone how to set up a proper top rope and half the time I am just praying that I don’t fall and die. If you want to learn how though this is the YouTube video I used to learn.
We set up on two different climbs one below the parking lot and one above. I am not quite sure which climbs that we did since our phones didn’t have a whole lot of service and we generally prefer to just wing it rather than climbing something specific since we likely won’t be returning to project anything it doesn’t matter all that much what exactly we climbed.
The first climb below the parking lot was around a 5’7 and had some nice cracks and some very comfortable shelves that I was able to sit down on and take a break to warm my hands on my way up. It becomes a lot harder to feel around for a good grip when you can’t even feel your own fingers.
The second climb was probably around a 5’8 maybe a 5’9 and is probably one of the coolest outdoor climbs I’ve done. This climb was less of a slab than the first one but had some amazing cracks. You have to be a little careful though my boyfriend split open two of his fingers on the rock. Overall it was an awesome challenge that I wasn’t expecting from Donation.
After we left donation with my boyfriend nursing his bleeding fingers we stopped for pizza at Snap in downtown State College and meet up with someone who told us about a building on campus that had rock walls you could traverse on and since we had our shoes with us we decided to go check it out. This was such an amazing spot leaving us all wishing that there was something like it up in Rochester. Making it an excellent end to a day of climbing.
Mischief Managed 