Glad you guys had fun up there. By coincidence, I just wrote about the Gunks in "Other Places" over at ADKHighPeaks. I'm not a technical climber, but I have heard of "High Exposure." One time while having a beer at the Guilded Otter I was looking at the Gunks climbing guide they have at the bar, just because I liked the colorful names of the routes. A memorable one was "Amber Waves of Pain."
I was doing an after-work hike Thursday evening on Millbrook Ridge, which is across 44/55 from the Trapps. The climbers refer to the walls over there as Near Trapps, or just "The Nears." Anyhow, I saw a couple rangers and stopped to chat. They told me they had gotten a report of some beer bottles tossed over the cliff! They figured it was probably kids, but they hadn't caught the culprits. A few minutes later, I ran into a climber who had just completed a route and was waiting for his partner. He had been the guy who reported the bottles. Fortunately no one was hurt. I continued on as far as Millbrook Mountain and looped back through Coxing Kill Clove, this being a route I often do, but I never saw anyone else until I got back to lot.
It was quite disturbing to hear of this happening. Not only is it littering, but someone could have been hurt or even killed. I seriously hope that whoever threw the bottles didn't realize that there were potentially climbers below. If that were the case, their actions would still have been immature and irresponsible, but at least not dangerously so. I do want to stress that this is the only time I've heard of anything like this occuring, and I am in the Shawangunks a great deal. As such, I consider it an aberration. Not at all the norm up there.
Anyhow, sorry to digress. Nice TR and pics.
Matt
