MDI and Fish Scales
After picking up a mooring, I called my friend Jeff Butterfield, owner of Atlantic Climbing School and the unspoken leader of Acadian climbers. From his office on Main Street overlooking the wharf, he said he could see our boat. At 50, Butterfield has less grey hair than I do in my late 30s. He first showed up on MDI in the mid-1970s, when virtually every cliff lay untouched. Known for his keen eye, Butterfield’s spent the past three decades systematically plucking one gem after another. His guidebook, simply titled Acadia, doesn’t include first-ascent-party information. But if it did, you’d find his name, more than any other, associated with the island’s best lines. With Butterfield and two of his guides, Alexis Finley and Pete Fasoldt, both strongmen in their 20s, we spent the afternoon bouldering on a steep, 20-foot mini-cliff on the island.

Once more, we awoke to fog. The plan had been to visit Bar Harbor, and then set off again for Quoddy Head State Park, at the head of a peninsula on the easternmost tip of the United States. Quoddy Head had a climb called Mainiac, established by Spider Dan Goodwin in the mid-1980s. Some of Maine’s best climbers had tried it and described it as nearly impossible, perhaps 5.14 — at the time of the FA, maybe America’s hardest route. More than 20 years later, Mainiac remains unrepeated. I wanted to get Jared on it, but the sail up there would take us in the vicinity of “Old Sow,” a beast best left alone.

Over coffee on deck, we decided to visit Great Head. Located on a spit of land not far from Sand Beach, Great Head is reputed to be the biggest sea cliff on the Eastern seaboard — about 120 feet max and about 500 feet wide. Its defining feature is a dark, foreboding grotto (the Cavern) gouged by eons of pounding storm tides. At least one climber has died here, caught by the tide while trying to jug out. Most dismissed the cave as choss until Butterfield, in 1985, began tapping its free-climbing potential. Routes today range from 5.9 to 5.13 on bullet-hard, pocketed granite, and typically overhang Frenchman’s Bay by 20 to 30 feet.
There are two ways to access the Cavern. You can rappel, waiting for the surf to pull out and then touching down quickly, to run into the back before the next wave laps at your heels. Or, at low tide, you can make a 30-foot 5.6 traverse along the bottom. As we headed down to the traverse, we ran into another ACS guide, Greg Shyloski. “Shylo” is a super-strong climber who lives in Connecticut, working as an educator in the IT field. With summers off, he heads to Acadia to guide; whenever he’s not working, you’ll find him climbing in the Cavern.