Raymondskill Falls

Been meaning to post this for a while.

Back on February 22, Paul, Craig and I headed up to the Delaware Water Gap to climb Raymondskill Falls. It’s considered a high flow (not my favorite) water fall that requires a good long cold spell to freeze enough to climb.

There are three parts to it. There’s the lower falls (seen above), which is about 25′ tall and 60′ wide with both a pool at the top and bottom. There’s the upper falls, which is taller, but more rambling, less vertical and intermittent pools. And last there’s what they call Raymondskill Wall, which is a vertical creek drainage (very low flow) coming in at the side of the lower falls. The wall was about 40′ tall and 20′ wide.

We started by jumping the fence in the middle viewing area and rappelling over the lower falls onto the frozen pool below. I climbed (on top rope) the first line, which was short and next to the rocky side. At the top, the guys asked me to place a directional (an anchor that redirects the fall line of the rope), so that we could climb more over the center of the lower falls. I said sure, though this meant walking further out over the frozen pool at the top, setting a screw, then getting lowered down over the middle of the lower falls.

Have I mentioned I don’t like high flow fall ice?

High flow means there’s a lot of water there. Sure most of it’s frozen, but not all of it is. You can constantly hear it under the ice thundering at your feet – thundering in your chest.

As they lowered down over the face, the thundering was really freaky. Not to mention they were lowering further out onto the frozen pool at the bottom.

Eh. It was fine. I got down, but thoroughly freaked out Paul and Craig who each then climbed the middle of the face. By the time it was my turn, it just wasn’t that scary anymore.

Next was climbing the upper falls to the top. We had a deadline by which to leave to get home, so we weren’t poking around. We didn’t rope up, and just soloed to the top.

That’s Paul walking across the edge of the pool at the top of the upper falls.

We were moving pretty quickly, so we decided to hit the Raymondskill Wall. It was the finest objective of the day. The tallest and most vertical.

To get to it we had to bushwhack through the woods a little, build an anchor, then rappel down over the side and over top the frozen pool at the bottom of the lower falls again.

Luckily there were people at the viewing area kind enough to take our pictures and send them to us.

What’s really interesting is the ice ledge Craig is standing on at the bottom.

It’s literally an ice shelf hanging over the pool at the bottom. I had rappelled down first, and wasn’t really sure what I’d be getting into. The thought of just dropping onto the pool didn’t really excite me, so when I saw this 2′ wide ledge show up beneath my feet I stopped and set a screw as an anchor. It was barely wide enough for two of us to stand on. As soon as Craig rapped down, I tied him to the screw, tied myself back to the rope and had him belay me up. Once I was at the top, Paul lowered down, then climbed back up, and finally Craig climbed back up with me belaying him from the top.

If we’d had more time or more choice, I would have definitely focused more on the wall. It was really great climbing and the ice was fantastic. There was enough confidence there to even consider leading, but it was time go and make our deadlines back home.

– b