These guys were primarily mountaineers though, and mostly saw rock climbing as something you practice, so you can climb safely in the mountains. They had awesome back country skills, and got me addicted to Ice climbing, winter mountaineering, long road trips, and Pikesville Rye.
Howard was an early adopter of clean climbing, so although I started with pitons, etc... we quickly became big fans of clean climbing with hexes and stoppers. The Heights wasn't such a great place for clean climbing, many of the cracks aren't real solid... But being young and bold worked pretty well.
When I first climbed there the only known routes were the A-D climbs, which had been documented in the original Park Service printout. We did these routes pretty endlessly, till I got bored. Once my leading ability improved past the 5.7 level, I got into exploring away from the main climbing area.
I was joined in these explanations by many of the original IMSAR crew, Mike Carrol, Ed Bollack, Joanne MacLuso, Scott McClurg, Dru Marshall, and Paul Clancy. Back when we were students together, it was only a day trip from Catonsville, and the only multi-pitch area we could practice lead climbing on.
After college I moved to Shepherdstown, living for free in an old mansion for I was renovating for somebody. We called it the "Brokedown Palace". It was between Shepherdstown and Harper's Ferry so was a short trip on the back road past the swimming quarry. That house enabled myself and my friends to climb more frequently at the heights, so the explorations continued. At this point we had cracked the 5.10 barrier on lead, so that opened up many new possibilities. I know 5.10 doesn't sound hard these days, but back then it was a hard to lead trad with clean gear. Camming units hadn't been invented yet. Plus we believed all leads should be done ground up in one push. No hang-dogging, which was becoming popular at the time was allowed.
Although we liked doing hard climbs, as several of us were guides at that point, we also looked for easier stuff we could take clients up, as main A-D climbs could fill up on a weekend sometimes. So we eventually put up climbs on most anything more than 10 feet high. Some climbs like Cracking Up were a bit contrived, but fun. Others, like Baby Burn was sketchy... not much pro.
Once you get used to the rock at the heights, the big friction slabs are great fun. So we moved left of D climb, trying to put up a route every few feet across the face. This led to some classic crap routes like Joanne's Boob Killer, but also some fun routes like Dee's Rival.
The classic two routes were of course "The Sign". Hard-up was actually an old route, at least it was rumored to have been done by unknown climbers. The first time I led it I found an ancient 1960s era angle-iron piton. This later fell out on the 1st winter ascent due to the extreme cold, and still hangs on my wall at home.
Doing Hard-up got to be a trade route, because it had the most solid rock at the Heights. We also liked the overhanging finish put up by Alex. The real test piece for many years was the diagonal route across the sign. Slippery, soot covered rock, with flaring V slots instead of good cracks... Great fun to lead with trad gear, assuming you cvould actually get any in. I did some serious air time on that route on occasion.
It was rumored to have been done many years before in the 60s, but we never found any evidence of prior ascents, nor ever met anyone that had actually talked to anyone that had done it. I would have thought we'd find pin scars.
At one point though, Amtrak decided to enforce the fact the bridge was private property, and removed the walkway. Course as climbers, we'd just walk on the ties, or the rail. We'd just check the tunnel for trains coming before heading across. Needless to say, the Amtrak cops started to get pissed. It got pretty amusing though. We'd start walking across the bridge, and he'd eventually coming huffing and puffing out of the train station. He never did catch us as we were always faster.
The other way tourists would keep us ammused was to attempt to A or B climb, which look easier than they actually are. While most any beginner climber can do these easy routes, the tourists were unroped... On some weekends we'd just sit around keeping ourselves entertained just waiting for some idiot to start screaming for help. Luckily nobody ever fell off, although we had a few close rescues.
We also used to stay in bad weather at an Appalacian Trail shelter that was a reasonably short walk from a parking area on the Maryland side. This took us past the Cindy Dee Restaurant, which became a bit of a hang-out when we were in the area.
On rare occasions we'd camp up the dirt road in Harper's Ferry that goes to John Brown's cave. This was our least favorite camping because it was often crowded with no sites open.
At that point the Amtrak conductors kept a close eye on the place, and would call the cops to come up and ticket us. Our usual operating mode was when the cop would show up, we'd climb real slow, and since he never had a winter jacket he'd eventually give up waiting. As he left, he'd shout "turn yourselves in at the station", which of course we never did. After that we learned that to avoid trouble, we'd keep everything and everyone on the top of the route, which was out of view of the trains.
Climbing on that little flow launched my long-time love of ice climbing, which I'm still doing 34 years later. It was short, but steep. I learned how to place screws on the thing, so have many fond memories.