Points for southern exposure, dark coloured rock, sheltered from the wind, no trees to block the sun... You get the idea. I'm posting too late to help myself this weekend, but maybe y'all will be able to help out others.

GO

Peterskill has some south-facing routes.

Classic (maybe Pink Laurel too), the Maria corner, Strictly including "Oscars Variation" corner at the bottom. Easy V should be warm on the first pitch.

At the Gunks: In winter, traverse the Grand Traverse Ledge. In general, seek out face routes to the left and right of left-facing corners.

Nearby: Go to CT. Before there were climbing gyms and for a while afterwards, on any winter day that was supposed to be sunny and ~freezing or warmer, we used to go to south-facing crags in Central CT. The dark orange rock would warm up nicely. There are quite a few more options than the now-off-limits Short Wall and Winter Wall.

I was gonna say this topic has been SO DONE. But a search came up with nothing! Maybe I'm a bad searcher.

Anyway ... you can't do better than the Sun Bowl at Bonticou. But ... setting TRs there is an adventure in itself.

If you're up for the harder climbing, the Yellow Wall area is usually very good on a sunny winter day. You can tough it out by leading Airy Aria and set a TR on Scary Area which gets nice sun in the late morning. One of my last days climbing in the Gunks was in late December. Had to shovel snow off the ledge at the bottom to find a place to sit. But once on the rock, it was toasty.

If you can find anything that is angled even a bit to the south ... like say Birdland ... if there's no wind and the sun is out, you can usually climb comfortably.

One of the best winter climbing areas used to be left of the crevasse at Skytop ... but .... oh well.

Interesting. I would have said light colored rock, not dark.

Anyway, what you want to avoid are cracks (not so hard to avoid at the Gunks), right facing corners, and the Nears. Pretty much anything else is fine once you get above the tree line.

actually watch out on maria if there is any sort of wind, i did that when it was cold and windy bit sunny., and we froze since everything blew right into the corner

Birdland, especially the second pitch, has always been a great winter climb if you can get on and off by 1pm. The first pitch of Wrist has a nice semi-offwidth left facing corner. That was nice last fall, should be fine for winter, but I would suggest skipping the first 20 feet, and simply hiking up to the upper ledge to do the clean 60 foot vertical lead.

I thought the obvious choice would be the snubowl at bonticou

The Arrow wall, late-a.m. to early afternoon; ditto the first half of the Nears. Snooky's gets good sun until mid-afternoon.

The Brat and climbs around The Brat. Best climbed in the afternoon about 1-3 P.M. This climb is one of the last to catch sun in Trapps. Let it soak up the sun all day and then climb away on toasty rock.

Sunbowl is THE place for winter climbing. But as I mentioned, setting TRs there is an adventure in itself. Or you need to scam the beta on which routes are leadable.

Forgot to mention The Brat area. It has great southern exposure. Though it will usually be the first place most people go for a sunny winter day.

The best cold weather routes have big fat blue ice and are north facing or in deep crevices. Oh, you meant ROCK routes! Never mind (in best Gilda Radner voice).

Now going,
Dizz

The NJ side of the Delaware Water Gap. South facing, plenty of dark rock and if the wind is down very climbable. The winter months will keep a damper on the heaps of vegitation that can otherwise plague many of the routes. November through March has provided me with the best conditions for climbing in its wilds.

Sunbowl is THE place for winter climbing if, and only if you lead 5.11
-I wouldn't send the average Gunks climber to an area with no guide, tricky access, and such a predominance of stout leads. Keep the gunks.com demographic in mind.

Damn straight. i can't lead 11's regularly, and i've had a couple of good days at sunbowl. if something looks hard or unprotected, don't do it.

What an ridiculous thing to say. Trying to make freinds JFS?

Actually, JFS has a very good point.

While the Sunbowl is indeed THE place to climb in the winter, it's not necessarily appropriate for all climbers.

There's no guidebook and it's not like Lost City where setting TRs is easy. My initial warning about difficulties of setting TRs there was my attempt to caution people about running out to Bonticou.

I'm not sure what's "tricky" about the access. Apparently the A.I. wall is officially not open, but I'm not sure what the status of the main cliff is. Also, I'm not sure if it's difficult to hike to the base of the Sunbowl. It didn't use to be ... but now?

I should have mentioned that most or all of the routes are 5.11 and up. But I don't know this to be absolutely true. Other people here have mentioned climbing at Bonticou recently on much easier routes. Where they are in relation to the Sunbowl I do not know.

So yeah, for a lot of Gunks.com folks, heading out to the Sunbowl might not be well-advised.

But I did caution people that setting TRs is a big issue (which alone would keep away a good portion of folks looking for a nice, easy, sunny day of winter climbing). Beyond that I assumed that if individuals were really interested, they could suss out the beta for climbing there ... which really isn't hard to do.

I amend my post:

The Sunbowl is THE place for winter climbing. If you can climb at least 5.10+. If you can find the cliff. If you can find out where the routes are. If you can figure out how to set TRs and not have an accident doing so. Or ... if you can find a rope-gun who can lead some of the routes.

there are two or three 5.4-5.7's that I know of just left of the ascent path. this area is also sunny, no shade trees, south facing.

these ones have easy tr anchors. they should be very easy to find if you have an eye for judging rock difficulty.

Sunbowl is THE place for winter climbing

Good thing Lester is smart enough to know that most folks are capable of independant thought.

Actually since it was Lester, I was assuming it was a 5.11 mecca and didn't bother reading any further!

is it possible to approach the sunbowl/bounticou from the back side of the ridge...ie from the yellow-marked bonticou ascent trail? (maybe this is what is meant by "ascent trail" above?)

thanks,

gr+sw