Buildering Locations in the Chicago Area

If you know of any good problems on buildings, Post em' here... This would include ways of topping out on buildings or anything else bad a, like storm-drains that are open for spelunking, and whatnot.

I do know of a perfect crack going up a parking garage right off of the Kennedy near ohare. If you wanna free solo or trad up a 5 story crack thats all hands and look like a BAMF to all the people stuck on the kennedy in rush hour traffic I highly suggest it. When the weather is better, im gonna go check it out.

Highschools are usually really good, if your interested in repelling afterwards. Downers Grove South has 2 routs up that I know of, I'm sure there are more, though. Once your up, you can rappel down into a really big courtyard. You gotta be careful of Janitors tho. especially in the winter. Its hard to keep quiet up there with all the crunching snow. John and I did DGS a few weeks ago...
I've never climbed COD, but i know of a few places you can get up the buildings...
There's a reeeaaaally deep storm drain i found at Hindsdale Central, too.. I copped out on it tho the night i found it. hah. Not that the storm drain is really climbing.. mostly just bad a spelunking.

I know that I've at least told Bill about some of this stuff, but out at NIU there's a fair amount of buildering. I'll list a few of the things that stood out to me.

- On the Dusable building (west side of campus, just east of Annie Glidden Rd.) at the south entrance, there's a v2ish problem. Start on the obvious crimp rail above the doors. Make a move up to the next rail, step up on the door handles and dyno out for the white ledge. Mantle up to finish. An undone harder variation would be to do a similar line to the left away from the door handles, just smearing on the glass for feet.

- Climb the MLK Commons sculpture (middle of the campus). It's a giant inverted cone with nice vertical slots running up it. Cover your wrists or they'll get cut up by the concrete. V fun, but kinda scary. I just matched on the lip to finish.

- In the commons/quad area behind the dorms (west side of campus), there's a weird metal amphitheatre thing made of metal tubing and mesh. It goes in a U-shape. Start at one end and climb the underside to the other side. Fun pumpy roof climbing, 5.8-9 ish route? You can also do some fun campus training on this.

- On the Neptune North dorm at the south entrance, go up the curved stairs to the actual door way. V1-2(?), watch out if you pull on the metal gating/decorative stuff up top, as it seemed kind of loose a few years ago.

- At the art building, go to the north east entrance. Climb the NE-most column, try to top out on the second floor patio area. Scary as hell up high, I wussed out while trying to mantle and shimmied back down It would probably be a good idea to have a spotter or two and some pads, as you get fairly high off the ground.

- Behind Faraday (I think this is the math building), there is a building with a weird concrete trim. There are diamond shaped 90 degree ledges that jut out all along the side of this building (I don't know the name). Pick a ledge that's not too far off the ground, and you can practice mantles on these. You don't really get anything to push off of with your feet so these are fairly challenging. Good practice for weird topouts I suppose. Also, you can choose to traverse along the lip of these ledges; kinda boring but better than nothing.

- On the music building, on the sout east side there is a wall made of what looks like cinder blocks. Easy and straightforward but sort of fun if you just want to get high off the ground. I was always paranoid of the sturdiness of these for some reason.

There is a ton of other stuff to builder around on at NIU; Altgeld Hall is made of concrete blocks made to look like cut stone. The texture is really rough though and the landings aren't really clear. Lots of plants and shrubs in the way. Some other buildings have what looks like a cut sandstone exterior, but it's generally really crumbly with sandy texture. Some okay traverses to be had on that stuff. I'm sure that there's more stuff to climb too if someone were to put the time into finding it.

With all of this said, try to be discreet. NIU cops suck and generally frown on this sort of thing. The bike cops aren't very understanding either. Also, be careful and don't kill yourselves. If you think you might want a spotter on something, chances are that you should find one. No sense in cracking your head open on the sidewalk, right? Have fun!

wow cheech you practically wrote a paper

Yea, makes me wish i didn't leave NIU. Hahahaha.

For some reason I don't think anyone will be buildering at NIU very much coming up. I've already gotten guff from police out there about climbing stuff in the past, but post yesterday's shooting I think they'll be even less tolerant of anything "out of the ordinary". Condolences to anyone who knows any of the victims from yesterday.

http://oac.cliffgear.com/docs/Resources/HarborWall

southside chicago buildering. not sure if its still there/allowed? anyone ever been?

yah

Has anyone here actually been to harbor wall to try out the routs there? how are they? I assume you just bring mats and basically highball boulder? Im suppressed there aren't more good spots along the lakefront. I was just down in Hyde Park 2 nights ago, and the shoreline had some potential stuff from old docking stations that was crumbled up...

O... I also overheard something in the gym recently about a boulder that someone recently found around here... anyone know anything about that?

There is a boulder on Barrington Rd., dunno if that was the one in discussion. Pretty small tho, really only one problem on it if i can remember correctly.

Hey guys, i live right by the boulder on barrington and I went to NiU. I work at REI and i go to VE im warrenville a lot. Im lookin for people to climb with. ...Dan- 309-705-0625