Grayson Highlands Bouldering

Some areas in GHSP typically close with the Winter season. These areas include the Listening Rock Trail and the sub-areas of the LRT; Moonlight, Ginseng, Wildwood, and Back of Beyond. Also the Picnic Area closes with the season. These locations are closed due to the difficulty in plowing the Winter snow accumulation which is often several feet deep and persists late into the Spring. If you are determined to climb at these locations you can trek in past the gate on foot, but this is certainly not recommended. The distance on foot through ice and snow to the LRT is tedious at best, and the walk out of the Picnic area  on foot is a bear even during the Fall.  The approximate timeframe for their re-opening is the 5th of May, but a light Winter and warm Spring can bring about earlier openings. Throughout the Winter, and if you are an intrepid cold-weather boulderer, there are areas in the park that never close due to weather. These areas are (excluding an apocalyptic snow storm, where you couldn’t reach the park without a snowmobile or dog sled team in the first place); AVP, Boneyard, Contact Station, and the Highlands. Happy climbing, and happy holidays!

Jeff Greenough Photo (Jeff is a photography wizard)

I received notification from GHSP that in 2014 there will be a fee increase for several aspects of park visitation and use. This increase is coming from somewhere “above” in the VA State Park system, so increases could be seen in other state parks across the Old Dominion as well. For camping, standard sites will stay the same but electric and water campsites will be $30. Parking fees will be $4 on weekdays and $5 on weekends.

GHSP is working to limit the increase for overnight backpackers as they have very limited use of park facilities. While this doesn’t help out visiting climbers (unless you are going on an overnight Mt. Rogers bouldering expedition, which you totally should), the increase will help out the state park system in the long run and that certainly is a good thing. The best way to go about this, if you are a frequent GHSP climber, is to cough up some dough and buy yourself a parking pass. A parking pass pays for itself after eight visits.

Attention! Grayson Highlands State Park will be closed to climbing (and basically everything else), except for the beautiful Highlands Area on these dates: The 2^nd (yes that’s tomorrow), 4^th, 5^th, 18^th, and 19^th of November. Sorry for the short notice, it sort of snuck up on us. This is a yearly lottery hunt to control the enormous and unchecked population of whitetail deer in the park. No climbing or visitor use of the majority of the park will be permitted during these days. Hunting is not permitted on Sundays in the state of Virginia, so you are in the clear there. So remember, don’t come to GHSP to climb tomorrow, the 4^th & 5^th, and the 18^th & 19^th unless you plan to climb exclusively in the Highlands Area.

Also of great importance is the opening of general deer hunting in state and national forest near and adjacent to GHSP. This occurs from the 16^th-30^th of November. You will need to bring blaze orange into the forest if you will be climbing in state of national forest property. People get shot all the time, so don’t let that happen to you. Wear orange clothing, paint your face, and cover your crash pad in an orange trash bag, whatever it takes… You don’t want to end up on the wrong side of the barrel on this one.

I announced a few weeks ago that an extremely rare and federally endangered flower was discovered growing on a rocky outcrop in the vicinity of one of the most popular bouldering areas in Grayson Highlands State Park. This flower has never been found growing in the State of Virginia before, and has previously been known to only twelve isolated mountaintops to the south. The Roan Mountain Bluet (Hedyotis purpurea var. Montana) is a member of the coffee family (Rubiaceae), and produces heterostylus flowers (flowers with styles of differing length). The Roan is a compact, clump forming perennial which produces flat topped clusters with 1 to 4 deep red-purple flowers that bloom from May to September.

The Roan Mountain bluet grows at relatively high elevations, especially for Appalachia (above 4,200 ft), in shallow soils and crevices of cliffs and rocky outcrops, and on thin rocky soils of grassy balds. This species prefers acidic soils and to grow in forests with Fraser fir (Abies fraseri) and red spruce (Picea rubens). If you have ever visited GHSP and taken note of the ecosystems there, you will no doubt realize that GHSP has all of the above, and plenty of it. The specific clusters that were found are living on an exposed rocky outcrop edge habitat, mostly in shallow soiled pockets.

As listed, the top threat listed for documented populations of the Roan Mountain bluet is: Trampling by Hikers and Climbers.

I made plans to come up and assist with the recreational impact survey, and to help assess what boulders would need to be shut down to climbers if the population was found to be growing on established boulders, or boulders that may see impact in the future. While it would suck to lose a popular boulder such as The Hive, AVP, or Olympus, it would simply not compare to endangering such a beautiful and imperiled species such as the Roan Mountain bluet.

I got the recap of the initial population survey and the flowers were found to be growing primarily in a singular location, and not immediately threatened by the current scale of bouldering in the park. This does not mean however, that we as climbers do not pose a threat. This shows that irresponsible, unneeded cleaning and climbing related damage to the fragile ecosystems in GHSP could do serious, and in the case of endemic and isolated species such as the Roan, irreversible harm. As boulderers, we too are hikers and should strive to tread lightly. Please do not remove or damage plant life in GHSP, or anywhere you climb for that matter. Enjoy the complex and astonishing ecosystems that we get the opportunity to experience in areas like GHSP, and respect it. Just getting the chance to be in a place that harbors fragile endemics and rare species such as this bluet is an incredible thing. The fact that we are allowed to climb in such a place as this is truly special.

The 2013 Festival will be held Saturday, September 28 and Sunday, September 29 from 10:00 am until 5:00 pm

“Since 1976 the Rugby Volunteer Rescue Squad and Fire Department, Inc. and Grayson Highlands State Park have entertained tens of thousands of people with their live exhibits of Appalachian culture. Step back into a simple age when horses and mules ground cane into juice to be boiled into sorghum or molasses; when apple cider was the soft drink of the time; when fresh apples were cooked in a copper kettle over an open fire all day long to render apple butter; and when Saturday night was reserved for fiddling; and making music with the neighbors. Such was the lifestyle of the early Appalachian pioneers.”

If you are thinking of taking a long weekend to boulder at GHSP, you should aim for the weekend of the 28th and 29th. The Fall Festival is a lot of fun, and held at the Picnic Area of the park. Boulder at the Rock House and Olympus boulders and on rests between crushing your favorite problems you can get a cold drink and warm food while listening to live bluegrass…

A recap of the Ribbon Cutting event for the Split Rock and Haw Flats was on the front page of The Declaration, Independence VA’s newspaper, in the July 31^st Vol – No. 31 edition. It not only recapped the event but also described bouldering in the park, the guidebook, the boulderfield map, and the trail itself. Bouldering, while gaining continual and steady popularity in America, and being embedded in many parts of the U.S. for decades, is still relatively new in Southwest VA and basically unheard of locally outside of Grayson Highlands State Park.

Seeing heavily stickered cars, strange people with spongebob-like backpacks, and walking past groups of sweaty, chalk covered, sometimes bloodied people standing around the rocks has no doubt been a strange happening over the past few years. This edition of the Declaration is a great opportunity to spread the news about this new “bouldering” scene locally and to get kids near the park psyched on their close-to-home stock of big blocks.

For the past two years, from the months of April-September, I have run the Bouldering 101 program for the park. This has given me the chance to teach kids in the area about bouldering safety and techniques along the Listening Rock Trail. Many of them have returned multiple times, keep track of the event schedule, and have become pretty excellent boulderers! Nearby Abingdon VA has just constructed a small bouldering wall in their high school gym, and it is my hopes that some of these kids too get psyched on their local scene. Seeing support for climbing grow from a small core of pebble wrestlers to a community wide awareness over the past several years has been a truly awesome experiance.