The South Face Indirect

Looking for a full day technical ascent of Delaware’s biggest, baddest “peak”? Look no further. This climb entails run out trad, slab drytooling (get ya picks nice and dull for this one), and most importantly, a lot of walking on the flat Delaware landscape.

This 14 mile “climb” starts at sea level in Wilmington, traverses over to the one crag in the state, climbs over it, and continues on to Ebright Azimuth.

While we mostly did this as a joke, this was actually a great day and involved a surprisingly small amount of time off trails, but always on legit paths. Took us about 14 miles but this could be shaved down with smarter choice of trails.

This climb starts at sea level in the middle of Brandywine Creek, meanders via trail to Alapocas, leads up the cliff, and takes the trails in the park out to the greenway trail.  After some spicy neighborhood navigation, find your way onto the rocky run trail in BCSP and FSNHP. Follow this out to the Brandywine town center, then follow the sidewalks to the glorious summit.

Don’t drown in river during your sit start. Alapocas cliff can be climbed with a standard rack, I just chose to head up Old Grandmom because it looked like it had the best protection, but it was kinda runout still. You must rope up with your partners for the final push to the summit as the crevasse danger is astronomical.