Rock Climbing

The Summersville Lake has become internationally famous over the past few years for the enormous number of vertical cliffs available to rock climb or rappel. With over 2,800 acres of water and 60 miles of shoreline, much of its shore is lined with towering rock cliffs and boulders which offer breathtaking scenery and some of the most accessible and yet challenging rock climbing and rappelling in the United States.  The rock at Summersville Lake is composed Nuttall Sandstone.  The sandstone cliffs range from 30 ft - 80 ft in height and the walls range from slightly overhanging to extremely overhanging.  In height, providing enjoyable face climbs and overhanging routes with horizontal edges, pockets, and jugs.

Index of Climbs               

The Coliseum 

Reckless Abandon                    5.12c               Surfer Rosa                  5.12d

Lobbying in the Crumble           5.12b               Tobacco Road             5.12b

Mercy Seat                              5.13b               Apollo Reed                 5.13a

Project 1                                  project             B.C.                             5.13c

The Pod                                   5.13b               Still Life                        5.13d

Perot Wall

Do It                                        5.11a               Trigger Happy              5.10a

Talk About It                            5.10b               Gun Lust                      5.10c

Armed and Dangerous              5.10c               In the Line of Fire         5.10d

Gunned, but Not Forgotten       5.10b

D.C. Memorial Boulder           

Spider Needs a Thesaurus        5.11d               Angle of Attack            5.12c

Animal Logic                            5.12b               Project 1                      project

Skinny Legs                              5.13b               Pro-Vision                    5.13b

Straight Up and Narrow           5.12b               The Route of All Evil     5.11c

Process of Elimination               5.11b               Psycho Babble             5.12a

Long Wall       

Ingrate                                      5.9                   Chewy                         5.10b

Menace Alert                           5.9                   Go Ballistic                   5.10c

Flight Time                               5.10c               For What                     5.10b

Six Dollars                               5.11b               Flirting with                   5.12a

Under the Milky Way               5.11d               Spice                            5.11c

Maximum Overdrive                 5.11c               No Way, Jose              5.11a

Jesus is my License Plate          5.10d               Gimme Some Tongue 5.11b

Satisfaction Area

BSIAGE                                  5.10b               Bored Spitless              5.10c

Tequila Maria                           5.10c               Lichen8er                     5.10c

Two-Finger Limit                     5.8                   Short Pirouette              5.10d

Make Way for Dyklings           5.10a               No Refund                   5.10b

Satisfaction Guaranteed            5.11b

Narcissus Cave          

Smilin’ Jack                              5.11c               Narcissus                     5.12a

Narcissus Direct Start               5.12d               Project 1                      project

Long Dong Silver                      5.12d               Deep Throat                 5.13c

Suicide Blonde                          5.13b               Simple Minds               5.12a

Jeff’s Bunny Hop                      5.8  70 ft.         Sniff the Drill                 5.8  70 ft

That Eight                                 5.7  70 ft.

Orange Oswald Wall

Fabulous Groupies                    5.9                   Unnamed SL #15         5.6

Hippie Dreams                          5.8                   Souled Out                   5.9

Unnamed                                  5.10c               Voodoo Surfing            5.10b

Chunko Goes Bowling              5.9                   Orange Oswald            5.10a

Strong Arming the Little Guy     5.10b               Baby Has a Bold Gun   5.10c

She Got the Bosch                    5.10a               Moon Pie Deluxe          5.10d

Barfing Butterfiles                     5.11b               Scoot Your Muffin        5.10d

Unknown face to crack            5.9                   Thou Shall Not Chum   5.11a

Perot Wall (to be merged)

Trigger Happy                          5.10a

Rats Hole                    

Lavendar Line                          5.10c               Dirty Stinkin’ Rat          5.10c

Rat Race                                  5.12b               Rat Hole                       5.10a

Rat Fink                                   5.9                   Unnamed RH #4          5.12a

Unnamed RH #3                      5.11c               Unnamed RH#2           5.10b

Whipperwill

Whinerlamer                             5.8                   Unnamed                      5.9

Wafer                                       5.11c               Gimme a Clown            5.8

Cowboy in the Dirt                   5.8                   Bongo                          5.7

Bender                                     5.11d               Masuko                        5.11a

Jason and the Arguenuts           5.11d               Java                             5.9

Stop the Presses, Mr. Cater      5.12a               Sunny Daze                  5.8

Blimey                                      5.10b               Playa                            5.11a

Rehab                                      5.12b               SIN                              5.12a

Unnamed project                      5.12

Rock Climbing Links

Brochure: National Park Service
Adobe Acrobat version of National Park Service (NPS) brochure of rock climbing and rappelling information for the New River Gorge area.

Map: National Park Service
National Park Service (NPS) map showing some of the more popular rappelling and rock climbing areas in the New River Gorge, near Fayetteville, WV and the New River Gorge Bridge.

New River Gorge and Summersville Lake, Rock Climbers Guidebook  The Rock Climbers/ Guidebook Second Edition is a comprehensive collection of 578 sport routes and 1036 traditional style routes at the New River Gorge and Summersville Lake, WV.  Easy to use maps, new route information, face topos, alphabetical indexing and graded indexing make this book the most user friendly and popular climbers' guide ever published for the area.  www.lattaoutdoors.com    

World of Climbs                                                                              TheCrag.com is a project to build a global index of climbs as an online resource for rock climbers.  Rock Climbers of all standards use this site for pre and post trip planning.   www.thecrag.com

Hard Rock Climbing Services

The ultimate rock climbing adventure! Explore, by pontoon boat, the 20 miles of rock that line the shores of one of the states most scenic lakes, Summersville Lake. The pontoon boat serves as a base of operations and will allow us to move to various areas on Summersville Lake for a remote climbing experience.   www.hardrockclimbing.com