A day of Black Hills Ice : Trip Reports : SummitPost

After work

After the first consecutive days of the 40's after a cold winterI was super psyched and cruse some fat easy ice after work. I went up to Bridal Veil and get a few laps in. Bridal Veil is about a 15 min drive from Spearfish and a one minute approach. It is surely the classic in the area. Though not being the biggest or the tallest it comes in fat and consistent every year and gets quite fat with a good variety of lines.

Almost Full Moon

As I was drining back to town I talked to my wife and she said our ten year old was staying at a friends I tought that what a perfect opportunity to get out on an almost full moon and do the Harney Flow. This is a flow on the highest peak in the hills and tops out after about 125 calf busting feet. It is nestled in on the north face of the peak and it takes about an hour to hike in. You hike past some very cool spires and in the moonlight they were quite eary. After getting to the flow we found it in very good shape as the bottom was way thicker than I had seen it in several years. Regardless it maintained its reputation for dry brittle ice as many times you would swings and huge cracks would split the ice very deeply several feet long in very clear ice. Despite the cracking the ice did not break up tht much due to the last several days of moderate temps. The climb was great but we missed the window of good light by just several feet as I am sure you can see in the photos. We ended up getting back to Rapid City in the early AM.

Taking the family to back to climb ice.

[img:600833:alignleft:medium:] Back to Bridal Veil in the morning to take my 9 year old out for the first time this year with my wife and Ruby our three year old. Ice climbing in the Black Hills may not be great but with short approaches and minimal driving man is it convieneint.

A day of Black Hills Ice

After work

Almost Full Moon

Taking the family to back to climb ice.

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