UKC

I'm heading to the Caribbean next week and wondering if it's worth taking my rock shoes? We will be staying on St Martin, but will be visiting Saba and Anguilla, also possibly Antigua, St Kitts & Nevis and maybe a few more. Wee bit of work to do but plenty of time to explore and play too!

I spent about a week on St Martin and didn't use the rock shoes I had with me once. I don't remember seeing much in the way of usable rock, I'm afraid.

Go to the French side, it's loads better than the Dutch side. There's a town on the north west side of the island by a bay with a whole covered market area of tiny, cheap, excellent BBQ shacks.

In reply to Kahti:

I spent six months living on St Eustasius. The rock is generally very soft, being mostly composed of volcanic ash, so I found bouldering was generally quite tricky and holds tended to snap. Certainly not really aware of any established bouldering on any of those Islands.

I think Virgin Gorda is the place to go for bouldering in the Caribbean.

In reply to Elsier:


Same on St Kitts. Nice pockets but horribly crumbly. Only for the desperate, go diving instead!

In reply to Kahti:

I found some stunning limestone (I think, it was a long time ago) on Tobago. A horizontal roof 2 meters off the sandy beach about 4 meters in depth and 50m long/wide. The holds were pretty decent and problems from V0-8, mainly V4-6. And there was a bar just above it!

In reply to Kahti:

the Baths in virgin gorda ... short flight and a ferry from st. marten have perfect granit boulders right on the beach.

In reply to Kahti:

have you seen this?
http://www.fixedpin.com/collections/climbing/products/a-guide-to-bouldering...

In reply to rpc:

thanks for the replies! Just arrived last night, so different compared with the Caribbean coast of Honduras and Nicaragua i've been to before! Went for a wander along the beach this morning and found some promising looking boulders (the obvious ones about half way along Orient beach) but on closer inspection the "crumbly pockets" description from above seems accurate. larger holds ok but anything less than a 3 finger hold tried from the ground snapped. Disappointing as there's a lot of cool looking rock formations around the island. Might get over to the BVIs but really if I'm making a trip anywhere its gonna be for the diving - Saba this weekend, well excited!