Looking back at 2025, we want to highlight our accomplishments, provide a brief update on access issues, and also thank our volunteers, sponsors, and donors.
Across the US, 2025 has several wins and losses for climbing overall. The year kicked off with the Explore Act being signed into law on Jan 4, 2025! But we also navigated a lengthy government shutdown that affected several of our local crags and unfortunately overlapped with our fall Adopt a Crag season, leading to two cancelled events during park closures. Despite that, we were able to host just as many Adopt a Crags in 2025 as we did in 2024! We had some new access issues arise, which will be discussed in the “Update on Access Issues” section. Across the country, climbing has been threatened in several areas, and we’ve also seen Access Fund and similar organizations, as well as climbers, step up to challenge these threats.
Here’s what MAC was doing in 2025:
- Hosted 9 Adopt a Crag events at 8 different locations
- 106 total attendees across the 9 events
- 337.5 total volunteer hours
- Completed work included trail building, erosion control, trash pickup, graffiti removal, invasive species removal, and tree planting.
- Tabled at several gyms/events, including DC Boulder Fest, Movement Columbia, DCBP, and Sportrock Alexandria.
- We redesigned our website! You’ll notice we have a new look and it should be easier to find information on our website.
- Launched an online merch store on our website! Now you can buy t-shirts/gear outside of tabling events.
- Moved to a much larger storage unit. This also allowed us to expand our tools and materials. We purchased more Elephant Snot graffiti remover, various handsaws, shovels, trash pickers, loppers, and heavy-duty reuseable leather gloves for invasive species removal.
- Held two sponsorship drives with MAC leadership to get sponsors for our spring and fall season. Thank you to Rhino Skin, Access Fund, Kaya, Rocky Talkie, Edelrid, Down Dog Yoga, Caboose Brewing, Patagonia DC, GaiaGPS, and CalTopo for providing various giveaway items/certificates for our Adopt a Crag raffles!
- Hosted our first Community Climb Night at DC Bouldering Project. This was an absolute blast. We climbed for a couple of hours and then went to a brewery after for a social hour. Some of the attendees of this event came to our Adopt a Crags in the fall season as well! We loved seeing you all again.
- Expanded our leadership team! Welcome to our Outreach Ambassador, Jackson, and Officer at Large, Bryan who have been a huge help in 2025.
Shoutouts & thanks!
We also want to thank various organizations/gyms/companies, and our volunteers, for their support this year:
- All 106 of our volunteers who joined our Adopt a Crags! We couldn’t have these events without you. Thank you!
- Access Fund for their constant support, donations from joint memberships, Adopt a Crag support boxes, and more
- Kaya (and Kaya guidebook authors) for donating portions of guidebook profits to us to further our mission, giving us a direct way to quickly update access issues within the Kaya app, meeting with us on several occasions, and for providing Kaya Pro certificates as Adopt a Crag raffle prizes!
- Gunks Apps (and Gunks Apps guidebook authors) for donating portions of guidebook profits!
- Rhino Skin for a HUGE donation of skincare samples, skincare kits, t-shirts, beanies, and more
- Edelrid for donating several coupon certificates
- Down Dog Yoga for donating 2-week free class certificates and pride shirts/tanks
- Caboose Brewing for donating beer tasting certificates
- Patagonia DC for donating several items including backpacks
- GaiaGPS for donating membership certificates
- CalTopo for donating membership certificates
- All Access Fund members who signed up for a joint membership and choose Mid Atlantic Climbers as their LCO!
- Movement, Sportrock, and DC Bouldering Project gyms for allowing us to table
- Anyone else who donated their time, money, or resources or supported us in any way – we are sorry if we missed you in this list!
Update on Access Issues
New closure: Kemp Mill Overhang near Northwest Branch. We know folks are disappointed about this one. This overhanging trailside boulder was put on Mountain Project in December 2024 and quickly gained popularity. Unfortunately, it was not discussed with the park first and they were unaware of climbing happening on this boulder. This rock formation has been identified as a prehistoric shelter and a protected resource, with a historic marker erected nearby as early as 2017 and archeological studies performed starting in 1997. It’s a registered site with the State (Maryland Historical Trust) and has been long before the boulder was climbed on. As such, the park has asked that we protect this historic resource. This rock falls under Montgomery Parks jurisdiction. We have a great relationship with Montgomery Parks (same park authority as Northwest Branch/Burnt Mills East and Rachel Carson Conversation Park). They are generally very receptive to climbing as a recreational activity and allow it in their parks. Due to this, we urge everyone to respect their wishes to not climb on this boulder, as we do not want to potentially hurt access elsewhere in Montgomery County, and there are several nearby options for climbing as an alternative.
Continued closure: T. Howard Duckett/Rocky Gorge. In 2024, we were working directly with a contact within WSSC Water on a climbing proposal. We drafted a climbing proposal in coordination with the American Alpine Club and Access Fund to present to the WSSC Board in spring 2025. This effort has unfortunately been stalled due to significant staffing changes within the WSSC. Our goal is to continue to push this in 2026, and we are once again involving the Access Fund for help on this issue.
Private property issues: We unfortunately do not have updates for the Jam boulder (Patapsco area) or Anthem Boulder. We did a lot of research on both of these including researching property lines, communicating with the county and police, communicating with nearby parks, and even reaching out to landowners. We unfortunately have not made any contact. We will continue to work on these issues, but private property issues are much more difficult to resolve typically (we’ve seen this in other major climbing areas across the US as well in 2025). Visiting these boulders is trespassing, and the landowners do have the right to call the police when they see folks climbing or in the area. Our official stance is to avoid these boulders and we will continue to try to come to an agreement with landowners, but there is no guarantee.
Looking forward to 2026
We have several ideas and goals for 2026 in addition to our usual Adopt a Crag activities! Including…
- Introducing a new t-shirt design! We are in the early phases of working with graphic designers to come up with a design and hopefully launch a new t-shirt later this year. We have had the same design for several years and would love to have a unique t-shirt for you all to represent MAC, our mission, and our area.
- Working with Access Fund to make progress on access issues. We have engaged with Access Fund for help on our various access issues, as we have been stalled in making the progress we would like to see.
- Hosting another community climb night. We had so much fun with ya’ll and want to do this again! We are unsure of which gym(s) we may host at, but will continue to plan and hope to have an event this spring. Keep an eye out on our website and social media!
- Attending the Access Fund Annual Conference! Several MAC leaders plan to attend the conference, which is conveniently hosted at the New River Gorge this year.
- As always, we look forward to our spring and fall Adopt a Crag seasons where we plan to host about 4 events each season. Our spring season should be posted in mid/late February, so keep an eye out and consider volunteering with us.