Prior to our formal separation from the Potomac Appalachian TraiL Club in December 2025, the Club was known as the Mountaineering Section of PATC. As such, we published two local guidebooks that highlight climbing at Great Falls and Carderock. Paper copies of these guides can be bought from on the PATC website or from their office in Vienna.
We usually have copies of the guides available at our summer Carderock Wednesday top-rope sessions and at our quarterly meetings.
You can contact us directly to see if we will have books at one of our many events throughout the year.
Alternatively, you can purchase a digital guide to these areas through Rakkup – that also raises money for the Club!
Climbers’ Guide to the Great Falls of the Potomac
(Second Edition; Tate; 2001; 190pp.)
This guide provides maps, descriptions, and ratings of technical climbing routes along the Potomac River; covers both the Maryland and Virginia shorelines. The revised edition includes dozens of new routes, and updated maps and photos that are extremely easy to read.
This guide is available as a Rakkup guide here. The Rakkup edition includes over 200 routes and updated images.
Carderock Past and Present: A Climber’s Guide
(2008 edition)
This historic site has long offered the best bouldering close in to the Nation’s Capital and the guide offers route descriptions and difficulty of the main Carderock climbing, as well as information on less populated areas. Carderock is a unique natural resource located near the Nation’s capital. It has a long history as a climbing area and today it offers the best local bouldering with easy access. Carderock’s character is largely defined by its history, and this guide provides a historic perspective to climbing at Carderock. This guide offers route descriptions and difficulty of the main Carderock climbing, as well as information on less populated areas. This guidebook intends to document the exploratory-and in recent years creative-spirit of climbers and mountaineers who have used the rocks along the Potomac River for decades. It is a guide to some of the newer routes as well as a partial record of the people who first actively climbed the area and named many routes.