The world of the Adirondack rock climbing is very expansive, covering a wide variety of locales in the confines of the Blue Line. How do climbers find these areas in the Adirondacks? The preferred answer for tackling the Adirondack region, to this day, is a guidebook. Guidebooks help inform the public about such important details as where a climb might be, how the rock formation looks, life-saving details on how to avoid common pitfalls, and so on. Adirondack Rock, by Jim Lawyer and Jeremy Haas, is one such guidebook that chronicles a region of climbing within its two volumes.
The introduction to the climb of the classic Trap Dike on Mt. Colden is quite indicative of the relative intimate seclusion of Adirondack climbing. The description, as seen in Adirondack Rock, reads: "Hike to the south end of the lake to a bridge over the outlet. Cross the bridge and leave the trail, roughly following the shoreline along the Mt. Colden side of Avalanche Lake. The herd path enters the woods briefly, passes behind the house-sized boulder perched above the shore, then drops back down to the shore (the site of the old Caribou lean-to, destroyed by a massive slide in September 1942, which temporarily raised the level of Avalanche Lake by 6'). Continue on the path roughly following the shore to the clean avalanche path, then up a rocky steambed into the dike. " (Lawyer, 515). These types of descriptions - though initially sounding confusing and non-concrete - have helped hundreds of climbers get to the cliffs and routes they desire to climb. Very rarely outside of the Adirondacks would one get such an intimate, thorough, and nature conscientous pathway. Each one of the 3,100 climbs is painstakingly listed, described, rated, and commented on. Most of these include new climbs that cannot be found via a smartphone app or on the internet. The guidebook also speaks to the history of each location. There is a large amount of lore within the climbs listed in Adirondack Rock. Lawyer and Haas speak to the location's ecological history, and to word of mouth stories that have permeated through the rock climbing culture of the Adirondacks. Almost everything about the guidebook embodies a familiar and devoted connection to the land.