Back on the Maine Coast

We always look forward to our week back in Maine. The Oelberger Residence is located on the St. George River about 20 minutes from the city of Rockland. Its so relaxing and we always enjoy our time with Ken & Dianne in their element on the coast of Maine. They are officially true “Mainers” now. Its always a full travel day (14 hours or so) from our house to the Oelberger’s house, but I feel its always fun taking the hour long flight from Boston to Owl’s Head on the 8-seater Cape Air Cessna.

Kristine’s sister, Carrie, was also there with her family (Thomas, Teo, & Kai) visiting  from Minneapolis. It was essentially one big Oelberger reunion. Our good friends Kate & Chris Danforth (with kids Harper & Afton in tow) from Burlington, VT (who vacation on the coast of Maine at Squirrel Island all summer) even came and stayed with us for 24 hours overnight. It was a houseful, but so fun. My sister, Logan, and her husband Ransome came up to visit for a few hours from Booth Bay Harbor as they were in-state for a wedding in Portland. It was a treat to have them visit us at the Oelberger Residence. Lots of activities were abundant each day including getting out on the boat(s), a few good trail runs (one great one with Chris Danforth on the local hiking trails), setting up a rope in a tree in the front yard (to show Thomas how to ascend a rope to trim/take down a large Mulberry Tree in Minneapolis yard), an afternoon of rock climbing for Kristine & myself at Barrett’s Cove Cliff, and numerous other fun events.

Kristine & I had coordinated borrowing a full rack of climbing gear and rope(s) from the nicest gentleman, Bruce Gerard, who lives in Appleton (40 minutes away from Ken & Dianne) and had done landscape work for the Oelbergers in the past. Bruce had done a lot of climbing around the US and in New England. He is a veteran of the local climbing scene especially around Rockland, Camden, & Rockport and is essentially a “guidebook” himself. He was so generous to lend us his gear and we so enjoyed visiting he and his wife at his home on 20 acres for a good hour or so. I hope we can climb with Bruce on a future visit. All Kristine & I had to bring from Colorado were our harnesses, shoes, a helmet, and a few slings/biners/quickdraws. Bruce indeed saved us a lot of hastle with transporting a lot of gear across the county. So, the Oelbergers with Carrie & Thomas were so nice to watch Sawyer for 5+ hours while Kristine & I went and had some time to ourselves scoping out a new climbing area (to us) at Barrett’s Cove Cliff about 40 minutes away. It was a great afternoon just the two of us. We climbed a 260′ two-pitch route called Charlotte’s Crack (5.7 R), which was apparently one of the classic climbs of the area. It was a lot of fun. I couldn’t have led it without Bruce’s “Camden Rack” – lots of small TCUs, micro-nuts, and “east coast” gear. Very different from our splitter cracks out here where you maybe need 8-10 cams of the same size.

We then transitioned to another 2-bolt anchor 15′ to our left on Broadway and I saddled up and began climbing up the enjoyable 2nd pitch of Charlotte’s Crack. The 2nd pitch was 120′ of 5.7 climbing up to two large trees which provided a suitable anchor from which I belayed Kristine up.

We then moved 15′ back to the left to find the rappel anchors and set up the double rope rap.

Upon reaching the ground after two double rope raps, we decided to hike around and find this other climbing area called The Verticals where several fun 5.9-5.10 sport routes existed. After scrambling up a gully and a stream bed we found two climbs on our right and just decided to climb these. I have no idea what they are, but the challenging climb was all good fun and gave me a bit of a pump. We felt like we needed to get back to Sawyer and while Kristine packed up the gear and coiled the ropes, I ran up the stream bed and found the top anchors for the climbs on The Verticals. They looked very cool. Next time for sure.

We met a nice climbing guide and owner of Northern Vertical named Ryan Howes at the base of Charlotte’s Crack with a client and he recommended we check our the Ocean Lookout crag with its variety of crack climbs. Looking forward to that hopefully on our next visit! A few more of our favorite pics throughout the week are as follows:

Until next time, Maine!