For most city dwellers, the term bouldering likely calls to mind the chic new climbing gyms in Gowanus or Williamsburg. Sam Lerner Dreamer, a 19-year-old climber from Brooklyn, is trying to change that.
Lerner Dreamer, who was raised in Prospect Park South, just finished his freshman year at Colorado College, a school he selected in large part for the region’s excellent climbing opportunities. Still, his heart belongs to New York City climbing—a fact exhibited by his recent induction as the primary author of New York City Bouldering guide from Gunks Apps, which includes over 700 local routes and detailed sections on area history, climbing history and geology.
“People kind of laugh at me,” said Lerner Dreamer. “People think it’s funny that I’m out there in maybe the best bouldering state in the country, and I’m just dreaming of some grimy New York City boulders.”
Lerner Dreamer first stepped foot in a climbing gym when he was nine-years-old. A compulsive tree and furniture climber, he instantly took to bouldering.
As Lerner Dreamer developed as a climber, the New York City Bouldering guide, first published by author Conor O’Hale in 2018, became a key resource for finding new routes. But Lerner Dreamer quickly found that the guide was outdated. Other online and printed guides were missing routes or included only the most popular sites. Lerner Dreamer, an accomplished climber who has amassed half a dozen USA Climbing Youth National Championships appearances, was eager to document boulders that were off the beaten path.
He began reaching out to O’Hale, requesting updates to the guidebook. In late 2023, his persistence was rewarded with an offer to become the guide’s new author. “I just annoyed them enough, basically,” Lerner Dreamer said.
Making his first updates in early 2024, Lerner Dreamer has since added hundreds of new routes in the Bronx and Manhattan to the guide, some of them his own “first ascents” and many of them in parts of the city previously overlooked.
“There is not a single boulder in Brooklyn taller than my shoulder, except at the aquarium, but those are fake,” he said about the lack of climbing spots in his home borough.
There are benefits to climbing indoors, Lerner Dreamer admits, adding that he’s visited every commercial climbing gym in the city. Setters can lay routes that you would never see in your local environment, demanding unusual body movements.
But nothing beats the outdoors, where climbers can connect more deeply with the land, he noted.
“Unlike the gym climbs that get reset every month, you can return to a boulder and see how much stronger you are now on it,” he said. “You can have a boulder that you’ve been projecting for basically a lifetime, and keep coming back to it.”
Lerner Dreamer, who can be found teaching private lessons at VITAL Climbing Gym and coaching the VITAL youth climbing team in Williamsburg during the summer, said he is committed to finishing the bouldering guide, a love letter to a climbing ecosystem otherwise easily overlooked.
“I think there’s around 200 climbs that haven’t been done yet,” Lerner Dreamer said.
To those who think they need a car, a day off work or an expensive gym membership to start climbing, Lerner Dreamer says the unique merit of city climbing is that every boulder is accessible by public transit.
