Rock and Ice. The Memory Bank

The
THE Memory
Bank
MEMORY BANK The stories drawn on the
white walls of Millbrook, tallest
cliff in the Shawangunks, are
of steep routes and iron-willed
characters. A tale of time,
place and a guardian.
By Whitney Boland
1969
F
resh off a trip to Yosemite and with a hazy head from
an impromptu stop at “a concert” that turned out to
be Woodstock, Gary Brown was back climbing at his
home area, the Shawangunks near New Paltz, New
York. He looked down at the landing zone and then up to
where his next piece of protection might be. Stalled above
the single-piton belay, he imagined, in fine detail, the sounds
of breaking bones and what a skull fracture might feel like.
Brown and John Stannard had reached the last pitch in an
attempt to free the imposing New Frontier at Millbrook, the
tallest and steepest cliff at the Gunks. Two pitches off the
“Death Ledge”—a small, loose ledge that cuts the wall about
a third of the way up—Brown was runout beyond belief.
Jim McCarthy and Ants Leemets had established New
Frontier on aid in 1962. The Gunks’ first guide, written by
Art Gran in 1964, recorded it as one of about 20 routes, most
of which were aid climbs, at this overlooked crag.
Since the guidebook had been published, John Stannard,
one of the leading climbers in the East, had been on a tear
to eliminate aid, and he’d recruited Gary Brown to head out
to Millbrook.
At the bottom, not knowing what they were getting into,
Brown had taken the first lead to allow Stannard the tiered
overhangs of the second pitch, which appeared to be the
crux. That assumption proved wrong, as Brown led through
a runout corner, then up over a slab, moving steadily to
the obvious crux—thin, powerful moves that were bound to
be irreversible. He stopped, down-climbed to a stance, and
made a mental list of worst-case scenarios.
Stannard said nothing; he just quietly waited as Brown
allowed the bleak thoughts to enter his mind so that they
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CHRIS BEAUCHAMP
Ken Murphy avoids
becoming the King of
Swing (5.12a), MIllbrook.
R O C K A N D I C E . C O M / J A N U A R Y 2 015 | 4 5
CLOCKWISE
FROM LEFT:
Back in the day:
Jeff Gruenberg,
Jack Mileski,
MIke Freeman,
Rich Romano.
wouldn’t ambush him in the midst of the hard moves.
Brown had been climbing long enough to know that he had at least a 70
percent chance of making it, which left a 30 percent chance of hitting the
slab, or worse. But that was enough for him to commit.
He worked his way through the powerful moves like a technician zoned
in on his craft. The farther up he moved, the more focused he became. He
pulled the crux, yet still found smears and tentative body positions with no
stances for even quick shakes.
Brown came to a roof and, thankfully, in typical Gunks fashion the
rock opened up into a horizontal crack. He slammed in a piece of gear
and romped to the summit.
The ascent was groundbreaking for Millbrook and the greater Gunks.
Though originally graded 5.10, New Frontier was soon upgraded to
5.11—Millbrook’s first.
Millbrook is the forgotten outlier of the world-renowned cliffs of the
Shawangunk Ridge. It was here that Fritz Wiessner pioneered the first
Gunks route in 1935; where Jim McCarthy forged numerous aid climbs
in the 1960s, and John Stannard freed them in the 1970s. By the 1980s,
Rich Romano, Jack Mileski, Jeff Gruenberg and others left their marks at
Millbrook with new bold, brash first ascents; many have seen only one,
maybe two, repeats.
Despite a rich history—and inclusion in every guidebook since 1964—
Millbrook, a half-mile long and with about 115 routes, remains the leastvisited crag in the entire Gunks area. When Christian Fracchia, a local
photographer, asked how many climbers at a local slideshow had visited
Millbrook, more had been to Red Rocks in Las Vegas.
There’s not a single bolt or fixed rappel at Millbrook. The cliff is
known for its scary, runout R- and X-rated routes, but also some of the
best hard climbing in the whole area.
T
he first free ascent of New Frontier was emblematic: During
the late 1960s and early 1970s, Stannard and his crew were
freeing aid climbs in efforts to save rock from being destroyed
by pitons and hammers. Unknowingly, their efforts mirrored
the development of clean climbing in the West.
Doug Robinson of Bishop, California, often called the father of
clean climbing after his seminal 1972 essay "The Whole Natural Art of
Protection," recalls in an e-mail: “Here was this guy from a place with
very different rock structure doing exactly the same thing, and with a
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matching passion.”
But while a whirlwind of activity was occurring at the major Gunks
centers of the Trapps and the Near Trapps, Millbrook in the 1970s still lay
outside of the scope of most attention. As of 1975, New Frontier had only
seen one other ascent, by the visiting standout Henry Barber.
That same year, however, the local climbers Ivan Rezucha, age 24, and
Rich Romano, 18, embarked upon the route’s third ascent, though Romano
says he backed off the initial runout 5.4 pitch: “I was freaking out.”
At the last pitch, the two traded attempts, and Romano ended up
snagging the crux moves.
“That was the breakthrough in my climbing, doing this route,” he says.
“I was leading Co-Existence and the usual 5.10s, but this one … this
climb ... is not for the meek. It’s one of the great sleepers in history.”
Hooked on Millbrook, Romano would become its greatest route
author and advocate.
2014 C
hristian Fracchia and I jump on our bikes at the parking area
of Minnewaska State Park Preserve and start pedaling up the
gentle hill past Minnewaska Lake and down the carriageway,
a wide trail built of shale. Hiking to Millbrook from the West
Trapps parking area on the Mohonk Preserve takes an hour, but biking
the 3.1 miles from the neighboring state park cuts the approach to
about 20 minutes.
Christian lives in New Paltz. He has salt-and-pepper hair cut short,
calm gray-blue eyes and a gentle manner.
A physics teacher, he travels every summer, to places like Yosemite
or the Verdon Gorge in France, but always comes back to the area and
its crown jewel, Millbrook.
“He’s kind of a mad genius,” says Tom Chervenak, a local climber
and friend of Christian’s. “There’s nothing he can’t do that he puts his
mind to.”
Also known as the White Cliff or The Bank, Millbrook is the tallest
sector in the Shawangunk Ridge, sitting to the southwest of the wellknown Trapps. Its white—milky white—face is huge and inviting, and
dominates the skyline from such vantages as Breakneck Ridge, an hour
south, from which the climbing pioneer Fritz Wiessner first saw the
FACING PAGE: RUSS CLUNE (ALL). THIS PAGE, CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: DUANE RALEIGH (2); RUSS CLUNE (2)
DESPITE A RICH HISTORY—
AND INCLUSION IN EVERY
GUIDEBOOK SINCE 1964—
MILLBROOK, A HALF-MILE
LONG AND WITH ABOUT
115 ROUTES, REMAINS THE
LEAST-VISITED CRAG IN THE
ENTIRE GUNKS AREA.
TOP: Alex Lowe was a regular visitor
to the Gunks in the early 1980s. "We
considered him an honorary local," says
Russ Clune. Here, Lowe, in 1981, sends
King of Swing, originally rated 5.11-.
Compare Lowe's gear to that shown in
the photo on the preceeding pages—
more than the grade has changed!
BOTTOM LEFT: Rich Romano on the
first ascent of Hang ‘Em High (5.12R), in 1982. He and Clune skirted the
difficulties on the original ascent.
On this occasion, after a couple of
"testosterone injections," says Clune,
the big roof went.
BOTTOM CENTER: Clune, decked out
in fashionable attire of the day, on
the Gill Egg in 1980. A Gunks local,
Clune has climbed almost every route
at Millbrook. He says that the adidas
sneakers he's wearing in the photo had
the best friction before sticky-rubber
shoes came along.
BOTTOM RIGHT. Doug Strickholm
on the upper wall of Happiness is a
110-Degree Wall in 1979. The upper part
of the route is the easy stuff—a simple
outing on 5.11 jugs and a friendly crack.
The biz is the first 30 feet of the route:
5.12 PG that is classic Gunks—with
fiddly, difficult protection.
R O C K A N D I C E . C O M / J A N U A R Y 2 015 | 47
Approaching the Gunks from Minnewaska State
Park, the people-powered way.
once called the best 5.12 in the Gunks.
Christian sets off on a zigzagging tiptoe through the forbidding first
band, on the first pitch of a 5.10 called A Lesson in History.
range in 1935. He traveled across the valley directly to Millbrook and
established the first Gunks climb, The Old Route, blasting straight up
the middle.
The cliff is not just set apart by geography, but is a whole other world,
with a reputation, for many, as untouchable. A few people are quietly
learning its secrets, though. Following a decade of relative silence, the
past five years have seen a surge of interest among a handful of locals.
Christian and I round a corner and come to Patterson’s Pellet, a
giant glacial erratic balanced on the edge of a cliff overlooking the
Palmaghatt Ravine. Next we pause for reference at the “cul-desac” where the Millbrook Trail begins, leading to Westward Ha, the
quintessential 5.7 prerequisite. We continue a bit farther, and park
our bikes behind a boulder.
From here we wade through thigh-high brush—thick, tangled and
gnarled—to the edge of the main cliff, which rises from dense evergreens
and pitch pine to bare rock ledges with sheer drops. We walk along the
edge to a tree with two giant branches curving out as if from a pitchfork,
where we tie off a single 70-meter line and, finally, drop into Millbrook.
Below, the cliff expands and swells out in both directions. What
strikes me is how untouched it seems: There are still lichen-covered
sections, grass grows out of cracks and horizontals, and small pines
aim at an angle toward the sun.
At the end of the rap line, we hit a ledge just a few feet wide. It slopes
down away from the cliff and is covered with large detached blocks that sit
glued into the ledge by dirt and a layer of slippery pine needles. The Death
Ledge. We carefully traverse it for perhaps 100 feet until Christian stops.
“We’re here,” he says.
The rock looks loose and scaly at the bottom of the wall, but higher
up seems sound and even bomber. The dense and pale “Millbrook white”
rolls out to a series of tiered roofs that jut like a tense jawline, capping
the neck of the cliff.
This section is known as the American History Wall, and has been
called the longest unbroken vertical section of rock in the East. It is
home to showcase testpieces like New Frontier and Manifest Destiny,
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LEFT: CHRIS BEAUCHAMP; RIGHT: CHRISTIAN FRACCHIA
FOLLOWING A
DECADE OF RELATIVE
SILENCE, THE PAST
FIVE YEARS HAVE
SEEN A SURGE OF
INTEREST AMONG
A HANDFUL OF
LOCALS.
R
ich Romano began climbing as a rough-and-tumble 13-yearold from Poughkeepsie, about 30 minutes from the Gunks.
He sits across from me at Bacchus, a restaurant known for
its copious selection of beers, nestled in the quaint village
of New Paltz. Rich pours his 22-ounce Yard Owl into a glass, then taps
the bottle and says, “local born and raised.” I am not sure if he means
himself or the beer.
He says, “Climbing saved my ass. I was in a bad crowd in high school
and I would say that most or all of them are dead or in jail.
“I went,” he says, “from these assholes to hanging around masters.”
Romano, with a sturdy build, short reddish-brown hair and a
mischievous grin, is soft-spoken at first, dropping his gaze when he
talks. But his tired slouch soon extends up, as the stories emerge. He is
one of maybe two people who know pretty much everything there is to
know about Millbrook.
He was 15 when he first visited Millbrook, he says, rappelling from
the top into the fog “terrified.” Yet he fell in love with the area.
“It has a certain feel to it,” he says. “A certain mystique. Almost
seems like it’s a really spiritual place.”
At the time local climbing leaders like Bob Richardson, Mark
Robinson and John Stannard were pushing standards in an almost
puritanical style. Romano became enamored of not just Millbrook but
his heroes’ ethics, and he rallied to establish routes in that mode. He
frequented the cliff with anyone he could find, trying new lines. In
1977, he and Fred Yaculic established White Rose, the second 5.11 at
Millbrook. Its easier sections featured R- and X-rated climbing.
In 1978 Romano and Dave Feinberg freed the 1968 Jim McCarthy
and Burt Angrist aid route Schlemeil—a 5.10 to the left of New
Frontier that blasted straight up through the American History Wall.
Its name means “idiot” and recalls the moment McCarthy and Angrist
realized, halfway through a 1971 “first ascent,” that they had already
done the route.
Romano joined the Millbrook climbers Chuck Calef and Albert
Pisaneschi to put up routes like Search for Tomorrow (5.10), Square
Meal (5.11) and Back to the Land Movement (5.11). But the real
explosion came in 1980 and 1981, when Romano put up about 40
new routes, all ground-up on nuts and hexes. He was on fire. As strict
about method as he was prolific at Millbrook, he became known as the
Manager of the Bank—its protector.
“Millbrook was always Richie’s crag,” says Russ Clune, a leading
Gunks climber of the 1980s, who still makes his home in the area and
frequents the cliffs.
While the early 1980s in the Trapps and the Nears saw a
transformation spawned by Euro-style ethics—yo-yo siege-style
tactics, bolts, hangdogging—Millbrook climbing was isolated from
such change mostly because of Romano’s watchful eye.
“You have to protect what you believe in,” says Romano.
Young and idealistic, he was hell-bent on keeping Millbrook the way
he found it, preserving the experience of adventure he felt had petered
out in the Nears and the Trapps.
“There’s something about [first ascents]. You’re going into the
unknown,” he says. “In certain situations, I’m scared of that. I’m actually
a very shy person. But when it’s climbing, it gets my blood flowing.”
Dustin Portzline gets
squirrelly in the crux of
the Romano testpiece
White Rose (5.11c).
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Lindsay Chervenak
and Jennifer Merriam
play their roles on
Movie Star (5.10c).
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Thea Blodgett-Gallahan
finds Happiness is a
110-Degree Wall (5.12c).
Patrick Mulhern on the
long traverse of High
Plains Drifter (5.10c).
BOTH PAGES: CHRISTIAN FRACCHIA
T
he first 30 to 40 feet of A Lesson in History is basically rotten:
loose blocks, fracture lines and an undefined path.
Christian climbs delicately, testing every hold. He places his
first two cams about 30 feet up, extends them and pulls a roof.
Then he runs out a grassy corner for another 20 feet before putting in
a series of nuts and cams with four-foot runners. He rolls around the
arête to some deliberate slab moves, then traverses 20 feet left.
He takes his time, testing the rock, inspecting his gear, up- and
down-climbing before deciding on the cleanest, most solid path. He has
climbed here enough to learn the style. If Rich Romano is the manager
of Millbrook, Christian Fracchia is the modern-day treasurer.
Christian stops in a corner to build a belay. I throw on my shoes and
set off through the loose rock, surprised at how interesting the climbing
remains despite the loose sections, and join him.
Romano put up A Lesson in History in 1995 to show his friends George
Peterson and Albert Pisaneschi the real and all-inclusive Millbrook tour.
The last and easiest route on this wall, the link-up wanders through the
easier sections of several historic routes.
Christian points out the striking lines. Nectar Vector (5.12+ R) climbs
the exposed hanging arete that bookends our route to the left. Up just a
bit and right, at our next belay, is the start of the last pitch of Manifest
Destiny (once 5.12, now probable 5.13-, with 5.10 R sections), called the
“best of the grade in the Gunks” by Mileski and Gruenberg, first to climb
its grand final pitch. Just above us is the revered New Frontier.
I lead the second pitch, an arching 5.9 crack that leads into a 30-foot
traverse to a hanging belay. Overhead, massive roofs guard the summit
of the cliff like castle turrets, and I can feel the exposure pulling in all
directions. Even the terrain we have already covered drops away into
the void. Fortunately, the rock starts to clean up; the arch is impeccable,
with textured white rock, smears and solid gear.
When Fracchia arrives, he gives me the lead on the last pitch as
well, with a tenuous move over a bulge to gain a crack under a roof.
Traversing left, I reach a hanging corner, hand jam and pull the roof.
A corner leads to a tree with nesting turkey vultures, then a traverse
right onto a finger-sized rail cutting the face, and a final chimney.
The route takes us nearly three hours, but Millbrook has a way of
warping time, as shown in names like In Search of Lost Time, Time
Eraser and Remembrance of Things Past.
I stand alone on top looking into the Hudson Valley and, with the
exception of our modern gear, feel like I’ve stepped into another era.
R
omano put up two-thirds of the 115 or so routes at Millbrook,
which often have R, R/X, or X-rated sections. These lines
gained him the reputation of being unnaturally brave and
a little crazy.
I LEAD THE SECOND
PITCH, AN ARCHING
5.9 CRACK THAT
LEADS INTO A 30FOOT TRAVERSE TO
A HANGING BELAY.
OVERHEAD, MASSIVE
ROOFS GUARD THE
SUMMIT OF THE
CLIFF LIKE CASTLE
TURRETS.
He has a different view.
“I’m very conservative,” he says.
“You got to know when to hold ’em
and when to fold ’em.”
Millbrook is about learning to
rest, test loose holds, see smallwire placements, and even kneebar.
Perhaps it was because Romano
started climbing at Millbrook at an
early age, but for him those skills
were innate.
He put up lines with various
climbers—like Truesdale, Pisaneschi,
Clune, Yaculic, Calef, Rich Gottlieb
and numerous others. In 1982 he
found the king line, Manifest Destiny,
a route he saw as the culmination of his life’s work at Millbrook.
He led the first two loose, dirty pitches clean, but he had a no-fall
philosophy, and backed off when he found a flake he didn’t trust at the
third pitch. That was right about the same time that another group of
climbers started coming out to Millbrook.
“The first challenge to Richie’s supremacy at Millbrook,” says Clune,
“was when Jeff Gruenberg, Jack Mileski and Mike Freeman started going
out.” Clune and Hugh Herr occasionally joined the group, but “that trio
more than anybody else started spending time at Millbrook, and they were
going after plum lines.”
Jeff (“Bones”) Gruenberg, known for the obsessive eating habits he
employed to maintain a sinewy 6’3” frame at 145 pounds, and Jack
Mileski, famous for his masterful footwork and imaginative descriptions
of climbs (he coined the word “beta”), were fast friends. A climbing day
started at the Plaza Diner for “plasma,” i.e. Mileski’s coffee order—
black, no milk, no sugar—and half a dry bran muffin for each. They
saved the muffin-top “helmet” for a mid-morning snack. Then it was
onward to fire some routes, have a toke, and finally dinner at Bacchus
to deplete the salad bar—to the vexation of the owner.
Gruenberg and Mileski had ticked off such Gunks testpieces as the
Twilight Zone variation The Zone (5.13), sometimes employing crafty
methods. Unable to push past the initial run-out 5.11 section on his
first attempt of the route, Gruenberg convinced a friend to climb the
neighboring 5.4 and drop a rope, which he rappelled. Not long after, a
bolt appeared.
Most climbers weren’t into the Gunks going sport, and bolts that were
blasted in got chopped pretty quickly. At Millbrook, more than anywhere
else, climbers followed the hard and fast rules laid by Romano.
“Everyone knew Romano would chop [bolts] at Millbrook, so no one
wasted their time,” says Clune.
R O C K A N D I C E . C O M / J A N U A R Y 2 015 | 51
LEFT: Ken Murphy begins
the sparsely protected
arete of Nectar Vector
(5.12c).
RIGHT: Christian
Fracchia, Ken Murphy
and Andy Salo share
beta atop the American
History Wall.
BELOW: The Mountain
Brauhaus has been
serving Spaten and
Spaetzel to climbers for
over 50 years.
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S
ometime in the 2000s, Fracchia and Romano started
climbing together. Intrigued by the isolated, exposed routes
and brilliant rock of Millbrook, Fracchia set out to document
the routes and history of the area. In 2010 he started the
site thewhitecliff.com, which today holds the most comprehensive
information about Millbrook. Fracchia’s site led to the re-discovery
of routes like Movie Star (5.10+), established by Chuck Boyd and the
“Rhodie Loadies,” a wandering group of mischievous climbers that was
Rhode Island’s equivalent to the Shawangunks’ famous Vulgarians.
Until 2012, the route had probably seen less than five ascents.
Rich Goldstone, a leading climber of the 1960s, calls Millbrook
the “traddest cliff in the country.” While you’ll find bolt anchors and
fixed gear in many trad-climbing areas—the Trapps and the Nears in
the Gunks, Cathedral Ledge in New Hampshire or even Yosemite—
Millbrook still upholds the traditions Rich Romano valued.
In most developed areas you can’t push back the clock, undo
changes and experience a cliff in the virginal state in which the first
ascentionists found it. At Millbrook, you pretty much can. Millbrook is,
like an insect in amber, stuck in time.
Even Romano, who still climbs at Millbrook and put up a new route
in October, is in awe: “I just think it’s amazing it survived.”
Whitney Boland, a Rock and Ice contributing editor, lives in
Gardiner, New York—a bike-ride away from the Gunks. Her newest
project is collecting interviews of historic Gunkies.
CHRIS BEAUCHAMP
Still, the new guys were plenty
THEY HAD SWAPPED
bold and talented themselves.
They took to the cliff to
LEADS TO FIGURE
establish even harder routes,
OUT THE CRUX,
like the difficult yet obvious
TAKING 40-FOOT
line of Nectar Vector (5.12+ R).
FALLS ONTO A NUT.
Freeman, Mileski, Gruenberg and
John Myers (who first envisioned
GRUENBERG FINALLY
the route) tackled it as a team.
SNAPPED THE WIRE
“We went out, set up a
AND FELL 60 FEET.
portaledge and a boom box and
just worked it,” says Gruenberg.
Theirs was a new style at Millbrook, considering Romano’s efforts had
all been ground-up.
Then, to Romano’s dismay, after Nectar Vector went down, Mileski
and Gruenberg led through the roof on the last pitch of Manifest Destiny.
Says Gruenberg, “Jack and I had run through Manifest Destiny at
least five or six times and glared at the final roof section. One weekday
we decided to work the final roof.”
Mileski, he says, “was the first to crack it.”
Romano was torn up. The climb had been so important to him that
he had claimed he was going to retire from climbing after sending it.
“We were climbing out there every weekend and we didn’t see him
working on [Manifest Destiny],” says Gruenberg. “We figured it was up
for grabs … but I guess we didn’t ask, either.”
For the rest of the 1980s, Romano put up a number of other climbs,
like In Search of Lost Time and Rags to Riches, but his streak slowed
considerably. Other climbers continued ticking off testpieces, coming
back with intimidating stories: like that of Gruenberg and Clune on
Sudden Impact (5.12+ R), named for their massive wingers. They had
swapped leads to figure out the crux, taking 40-foot falls onto a nut.
Gruenberg finally snapped the wire and fell 60 feet, ending up at the
same level as the belay.
Says Clune: “The routes out there are always serious. They’re almost
always good, but they’re very, very rarely straightforward. Millbrook
also may be the only place in the Gunks where you see this obvious jug
above you that ends up not being a jug.”
Another serious endeavor was Rings of Saturn (5.11+ X), “a highin-the-sky boulder problem,” as Gruenberg puts it, that he established
with John Myers.
Rings is plopped on a section of wall called
the Asteroid Belt, known for showering loose
rock.
“The whole route is just a single RP until you get some good gear at
the belay,” says Gruenberg.
But while Romano was less active, the ethics he had fought to
establish at the cliff prevailed. When he regained momentum in the
mid-1990s, Romano returned to Manifest Destiny. He climbed the first
two pitches, just as before, and set off on the third. He grabbed the
suspect flake, thought, to hell with it, and started pulling through to a
jug. But just as he committed to slam dunking the next hold, the flake
exploded in his hand.
As Romano fell he looked up to see, in that instant, how the new
sequence would go. He went back two more times before he sent the
route, and suspects that in its altered state it might be 5.13. That was
almost 20 years ago, and he doesn’t think it’s been done since.