| The Other Mixed Climbing Article |
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| Page Type: Article Activities: Trad Climbing | Page By: knoback Created/Edited: Jul 14, 2007 / Jul 14, 2007 Object ID: 311802 Hits: 1978  Loading... Page Score: 87.47% - 16 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
"Well, we're here, and it's not that far off the highway." With those words, the captain heaves his junk out of the B. K. parking lot onto Mt. Rushmore Road and Keystone, SD will draw enough sustenance to prolong its unholy exsistence for one more summer.
The Black Hills thrive on opportunistic tourism. Attractions like Reptile Gardens (actually, pretty damn good) and Mt. Rushmore (actually, not that good) are not destinations, but stops along the way to Yellowstone, Grand Teton, or Glacier.
The Hills are an easy place to visit as a sightseer. Climbers hoping to tick off a few routes in the Needles on their way to the Really Big Mountains farther west face a tougher proposition. You ain't from 'round here, is ya? Last summer, a friend and I were at the head of the 3/4 gully when we heard an unusual sound - other voices. We peeked around the corner and found two guys sitting at the base of Tusk, one still tied in to the rope which ran through gear strung half way up the route. Their first question was: Where are we?. Their second question was: Where does the route go?.
Their predicament sums up the trouble with stopping in the Needles for a few days of climbing. First , you have to get to the right spot. Aerial photos and diagrams make this look easy. On the ground, the real experience is frustrating, as you peer through the pines trying to sort out which spire in which gully harbors your objective.
This contributes to the second affliction of visiting climbers: the constant, nagging feeling that you are off route. On arriving at the base of the right spire (I think) in the right gully (I think), the climber frequently faces a "mixed" route with trad gear at the start, a bolt or two in the middle, and more gear and maybe another bolt at the top. Though these routes have bolts, they are trad climbs. Most of the bolts were placed on lead or are situated as if they had been. Launching off from one of these oases in a trackless waste of crystals is daunting even when the leader knows where he is and where he is going.
This is what stopped our friends on Tusk. They were strong climbers, fully capable of the route. They just got stymied by uncertainty at the bolt.What to do? Confounded, many such visitors are relegated to sport climbs at Mt. Rushmore or worse, to the crumbly,poorly protected "easy" routes up the Cathedral Spires. In terms of quality, these activities cannot compare to the mixed routes and crack climbs in the Needles.
No adequate guidebooks exsist for the area currently. Touch the Sky was a very well done guide; it was just compiled in 1983. The Poor Person's guides are almost impossible to obtain. The new Needles guidebook is like Paris Hilton: pretty in its own weird, anorexic way, but utterly lacking in content. I don't have the qualifications to do a guidebook, but I am going to try to add some route pages to this site, so visitors might have alternatives to the fear and mediocrity that characterize the Needles experience for so many. Anybody want to help? Images
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