New Hard Sport Climbs at Claghorn Longwall

Claghorn is the future of new routing. Knowing a cliff like this one has been relatively untouched in Canada is hard to believe, until you consider the population of Thunder Bay and its proximity to a large population.

Claghorn Longwall is an hour north of Thunder Bay, Ontario. The walls are between 20m and 60m. The wall stretches for a over two-kilometres. The top is easy to access and the base of the cliff has a trail system. The approach from the car is short. Until recently the potential of Claghorn has not been realized. The first routes were climbed over 20 years ago. Some of the obvious cracks and splitters were climbed but only a fraction and none of the face climbing was explored until 2008.

Nick Rochocawich and friends have been developing routes at Claghorn for three consecutive seasons. With a dozen new sport routes up to 5.13+ and hundreds of potential lines everyone is excited. There are not only new sport routes but hundreds of cracks to be climbed.

The wall is along the Black Sturgeon River. It is the place to climb if you are driving across Canada and going through Northern Ontario. It is a 12 hour drive from Toronto. Stay tuned as we will be featuring Claghorn in a future issue of Gripped magazine.