Maryland Heights Gear

These are photos of the actual gear I used during the time I climbed heavily at Maryland Heights. Gear has definetely improved in the last 30 years, but I still use most of the pro in these photos. Some of this gear has stories, which is why their pictures are here.

I pulled this piton out of a small crack on the crux move of Hard-Up on the first winter ascent I did with Ed Bollack. We did this route in what was full alpine gear at the time, Dachstein wollen mittens, wool Millarmitts, 60/40 Mountain cloth (pre-gortex) jackets, leather hiking boots.

In a weird way I was glad the pin fell out wehen I tried to shove my bulky millarmitt cover hand into the crack next to the pin. With the pin in it, it was only a 2 finger hold anyway, and with millarmitts on, it wa a bit hard to get the jam WHen the pin cam loose, it opened up the rest of the crack, at which point it bacame a decent handhold.

It was just in time too, as my cold leather boots were sliding, and I still had to puill the little overhang to get to the belay ledge from D climb. It had snowed the night before (the excuse to go climbing), so everything was buried in about 6 inches of snow. If I hadn't done the route many times, I'm not sure I woul;d have got up it on lead.


These were my first pair of decent rock shoes, and old pair of EBs given to me by Ray Franklin. He had bought them at a sale, but they didn't fit, so he gave them to me. They were a half size too big, so for years I often wore a pair of think wool socks in them. So much for the belief rock shows have to be so tight the blood stops flowing in your feet.

I used this pair of shoes for most of my climbs at the Heights, including on all my first ascents. These eventually wore out a long time ago, but I just couldn't bear to throw them out, so they hang on my wall at home instead.


These are some of the SMC biners I bought from a traveling Rainer guide in the early 80s. Many of the IMSAR folks bought some of this stuff. This would be really boring, but blog post got me motivated to dig up some of the biners I had from that batch for the author to compare. There is more detail on the blog post about these biners.


Ice screws at Maryland Heights ? Believe it or not, on the Wva side of the river, on the back road past the Harper's Ferry train station, there is a great one pitch ice climnb that would form somewhat reliably, as it was in the shade of a road cut next to the train tracks.

I had been turned onto ice climbing a few years before, but living in Maryland made it hard to get much practice setting ice screws while climbing. So this became where we could do practice leads. Those are Salewa crews, and and old army ice piton.


This is the rack I used at Maryland Heights, and still do actually. (I've replaced the webbing of course). You'll see an assortment of Chouinard Hexes, straight Stoppers, a bunch or Forest Titons, and an old bong slung for winde cracks. The biners are mostly SMC or old Chouinard Ovals and Ds.

The homemade shoulder sling design was popular in the IMSAR crowd, as many of in the 70s had to make our own gear. I disliked the one big shoulder sling, which was common, as all the gear would slide to one place, making it harder to pull pieces off. So I made this shoulder sling to have gear loops, and I'd put 2-3 racking biners in each loop, which at least for me, was a big improvement.

THis rack was used for most of my climbs at the Heights, including all my first ascents. I still climb with a variation of same sling design, I just use perlon instead of webbing for the gear loops.


This was the harness I wore for most of my climbs at Maryland Heights. This was also a homemade design, and tested by jumping off a cliff. As we grew confident with this design, many of the other IMSAR crew made this same design for themselves. I went throuygh 2 generations of this design before I finally found an off the shelf harness I liked.

The old piton was used for cleaning gear, often using a hex as a hammer to pound stuck gear out of cracks. The piton was slung on cord so I couldn't drop it.

The Gibbs ascender I used when climbing roped solo, usually toproping the obscure short cliffs at the Heights when I couldn't find anyone to climb with. This was the same Gibbs used for other first ascents at Ilchester, Woodstock Rock, Annapolis Rocks, and the Friction Wall. These days I use an Ushba Solo Aid for this same thing, and still climb solo quite a bit.


This is other gear used occasionally at Maryland Heights, but the lack of big cracks meant this stuff stayed in the truck alot.