Tulip Knows Best
At Little Elephant Head in Tompson Street Reservation on Cape Ann, the 5 feels like a 7, the 6 starts like an 8, and the best 7 climbs like a 5. And as Nick and I discovered last weekend when we set off to climb at this obscure Red-Rock-alternative, the routes themselves are really hard to find.
Driving up Route 128, we punched “Tompson State Reservation” into the GPS. Siri directed us through two quick turns off the exit, right into a lot near a cemetery, just off Essex Ave. With boulders all around us and the Mountain Project directions advising to initially “walk straight in through the cemetery, and continue straight,” it seemed like we were in the right place. But after cross-checking our location with the crag’s GPS coordinates, it was obvious we were by the wrong cemetery. We weren’t even in Tompson Street Reservation and the crag we were looking for was near Essex Ave. on the other side of the highway.
Back in the truck, we circled under the highway on Essex Ave., now aiming for Bray Street, the only street address we could find on Mountain Project for a Tompson Street Reservation climber’s parking lot. A few miles of Gloucester backroads later—really neat, by the way—we stumbled upon the “green gate” referenced in the directions on Mountain Project. So we parked, grabbed our packs, and started hiking along the historic Old Tompson Street Cart Path. But although there was rock all around us, none of it seemed climbable, and after walking for a while, the GPS showed that while we’d found the correctly named reservation, we still weren’t in the vicinity of Little Elephant Head. Back to the truck we went.
Anybody who’s spent time with Nick knows that he doesn’t give up easily, and at this point, we were going to find the climbs. So as we drove back down Bray Street towards Essex Ave., the search remained on. By happenstance, we turned onto Fernald Street, thinking it would be a shortcut back to the main drag. It was. But on the way, it took us past another cemetery. After some investigation of a trail map on a sign near the cemetery, we realized it was the “right” cemetery (Mt. Jacob Cemetery for anybody who’s interested) and started the approach.
The approach trail took us up and over Sunset Mountain. The view from the summit had Gloucester, Gloucester Harbor, and the Atlantic Ocean in the foreground and, way in the distance, a surprisingly large Mt. Washington. This alone made the earlier confusion worthwhile.
A little while later, we found the crag. The climbing was fun, but nothing special. Both the 5 (Dumbo Proof) and the 6 (Elephant Walk) had cruxy starts that were much harder than the rest of the enjoyable climbing higher up. We chalked this up to the crag having “old school” ratings, but then climbed two 7s, one where the rating seemed accurate (Climbs Like the White Elephants) and one that felt soft (Edison Crack). Maybe that’s because the latter was a crack climb, while the other climbs we did were primarily slab climbing with not-so-good hands at the cruxes.
After a couple hours of climbing, we packed our bags and headed out. Instead of heading back up over Sunset Mountain, we decided to follow the path that Tulip, a dog we’d met while climbing, had taken. In a few minutes, we were in a small, signed climbers’ pull-off on Essex Ave. It was the lot we’d been looking for all day. We’d only driven by it twice.
