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Love those Gunks
June 26, 2006
 By Kathryn Gill
Daily Freeman

NEW PALTZ - It's summer, the season when the sport of rock climbing peaks in popularity as local novices and well-traveled experts flock to the "Gunks" in the New Paltz to cling to sheer rock faces harnessed by a single rope.

Requiring strength, agility, determination and at least a dash of bravado, rock climbing has become a well-established sport and a tourist attraction for the region.

The one thing all rock climbers have in common?

"They like to hold on," jokes Rich Gottlieb, a veteran climber for over 30 years and owner of Rock and Snow in New Paltz, which carries gear for climbers.

The "Gunks" as they are known to locals and climbers in the know, is a nickname for the Shawangunk Mountains, which run over 50 miles in a southwest to northeast direction from Port Jervis to Rosendale, reaching over 260 feet in height. Within the mountain are the four most popular climbing cliffs, the Trapps, Near Trapps, Skytop and Millbrook, according to Evan Marks, publisher of gunks.com.

Though the majority of climbers are locals or visitors from the New York City or Boston areas, people travel from as far as New Zealand or Australia to climb the Gunks, says Gottlieb, who has even witnessed Sherpas from the Himalayas coming to climb there.

Climbing has seen an explosion in popularity in the past 50 years. In the early 1950s, there were 50 climbers on the Gunks on a busy day. By the 1990s the number of daily climbers grew to 500 to 800. Today there are 50,000 climbers per year that visit the Gunks, say Mohonk Preserve officials.

The advantages of climbing are that it invokes a different perspective from many other sports. Whereas cycling and running require the athlete to pass through nature, climbing helps the participant to become a part of nature in a different way, says Gottlieb.

On a Thursday afternoon in the early summer, the "Rhododendron" climb on the Mohonk Preserve was populated with a diverse group of climbing aficionados who traveled from locales including Europe and Connecticut.

Brian Greenberg, 23, and Matt Swartz, 21, easily scaled the route. The two friends have been climbing for the past four years and both are employed as climbing instructors in a gym in Connecticut called Go Vertical.

"It's a big part of my life now," said Greenberg, who estimated that he climbs at least four days a week. The hour and a half drive from Connecticut is a small price to pay to visit Mohonk, said Greenberg, who called it the traditional climbing capital of the east.

Sabrina Lee, 24, a graduate student at Penn State University studying biomechanics who is from Canada, said she began climbing for the "thrill" of it, but found it easy to relax on the mountain because "the concentration rock climbing takes clears everything else from your mind."

Work hard and play hard could be the motto of Lee, who came to the Gunks with friends Ali Tavassoli, 31, a post-doctoral student at Penn State involved in cancer research, and Stephen Hordez, 34, another post-doctoral student and Paris native. The three met as climbing instructors at a YMCA, and get together to climb regularly.

The advantage of climbing are that "it's your own limits you are fighting against, not anyone else," said Hordez.

New Paltz native Richard DeCredico has been climbing since he was 11. Now a resident of Chattanooga, Tenn., DeCredico said he was once a "dirtbag climber" who squatted in nearby abandoned houses and lived off the land in order to climb all day, every day.

Now, the 46-year-old has scaled back on his climbing habit in order to accommodate a more regimented lifestyle, and estimates he climbs about 150 days per year.

Those looking to hook up with a climbing partner can visit gunks.com, a Website dedicated to climbing that was begun in 1997 by Evan Marks. Today, about 14,000 people per month visit gunks.com to read about climbing, find new route recommendations, and visit the partner database that allows climbers to post messages soliciting a climbing partner.

Marks, a climber himself, discovered the sport in 1987. "I was very exhilarated by the experience and thought, 'I have to do this again,'" he said.

To find a climbing partner on gunks.com, users can visit the request-for-partner database and fill out a form with their dates of availability, the activity sought (including hiking and biking as well as climbing) the destination, number of partners needed, and the proposed activity. The fee for this service is $10 a month.

New Paltz resident Bob Elsinger, 63, a Mohonk Preserve ranger for the past eight years, took up the sport of rock climbing at 55 after retiring from a career in physical education and gymnastic coaching in Suffolk County.

Every Monday Elsinger and the other Preserve rangers practice "high angle rescues" that prepare them to evacuate someone on a cliff that has to be rescued. The dangers inherent in climbing co-exist with the appeal of the sport, Elsinger said.

"People like to climb because there is some adventure in it. If they know they are going to succeed, it doesn't appeal to them," Elsinger said.

Mohonk Preserve allows climbers to buy a day pass for $15; Minnewaska State Park also allows climbing at the Peters Kill area, and climbers can buy a permit for $7.

Hudson Valley residents wishing to try rock climbing this summer are in the perfect area of the world to do so. But be careful, "Rocks are hard, gravity is unfailing and people are relatively fragile," said Marks.