The Joy of the Off Season

As climbers, we can be a pretty picky bunch. Maybe it’s just the company I keep, but we have our ideas about what makes for good conditions, acceptable approaches, manageable crowd sizes and so on. Anything that falls outside these norms can throw us off our game and elicit comments that tend to belittle the offending situation.

Among these, the idea of “on season” and “off season” might have the most universal acceptance. Certain areas are best at certain times, it’s a law of the universe, like entropy. Indian Creek is best in the fall and spring, Shelf Road is a winter crag, Ten Sleep rules the summer. And the flip side to this is there are times you don’t even consider going to these places. Indian Creek and Shelf Road in the summer? Rifle in February? Are you crazy?

The simple fact is that climbing is getting more crowded. New gyms are popping up faster than the angry orange man makes up alternative facts, and while many new climbers are staying indoors, the side effect is a growing number of people that are heading outside. This is going to sound totally elitist, but I have a personal rule that I don’t go to Rifle on weekends. It’s just not that fun anymore, all the best routes can have huge lines and I don’t feel like waiting around when I could be climbing at any number of other lesser-known areas where I might even have the place to myself.

But assuming you only have weekends, or precious vacation time, what’s a climber to do? My simple solution: go in the off season. I was reminded of this when we recently visited City of Rocks in Idaho, a place we used to go once a year, usually in June, when it was always very busy, but the conditions were great. In fact, I’d always been very vocal about not going in August because it would be “way too hot” (in spite of Tracy’s insistence that it would be fine). But then some things lined up where we were going to be up that way anyway at the start of the month, and I was looking for some place with classic moderates to test out my recovering finger, so the City in August it was. We got our favorite campsite no problem, had an incredible week and hardly saw any other climbers the whole time. And I was reminded of why being somewhere in less than prime conditions can be great, so in no particular order, here are just a few reasons the off season rules:

Less crowds

You can experience an area “like it was many years ago.” At the City we met some folks who had just been in Indian Creek, in July, and they told us how they had been the only ones at Supercrack on a day with highs in the 80s. That sure doesn’t happen in October (when the highs can still be in the 80s). We never once waited for a climb, and we were only climbing the most classic moderate pitches. Not too shabby.

Mellower schedule

With the heat, we weren’t worried about sending, we just wanted to do as much climbing as we could. Maybe I’m too used to being focused on projects, but it felt much more relaxing and vacation-like to just go with the flow and climb whatever looked good that was in the shade. As it turned out, we reclimbed most of the mega-classic moderates we had done years ago, marveling at pitch after pitch of 30-to-35-meter featured granitty goodness. Is Rye Crisp the best trad 5.8 in the US? Yes, yes it is.

Fun to see people

Lastly, there were so few people in general, and very few climbers, so when you did see someone, it was really fun to connect and revel in the shared joy of having the place to ourselves. It’s certainly more fun than showing up to a wall and thinking “Oh my God where did all these people come from?”

The next time you’re bummed about how crowded the crags are getting, maybe it’s time to start thinking about taking a trip in the offseason. Got any other reasons the off season is great? Leave a comment below.