Wisconsin… it’s where I grew up and it will always have a place in my heart. I still think Madison is my perfect city and my whole family lives in or around it. Unfortunately, the weather poses one giant dealbreaker. I dislike cold to begin with, but can handle a few weeks of cold weather here and there. Wisconsin, however, is filled with 8 months of bitter cold (ok… I’m exaggerating… but barely). The weather forces you to stay holed up indoors for long periods of time, scrape snow off your car and driveway over and over again, deal with terrifying driving conditions, and spend spring looking at a slushy, brown mess. This just doesn’t appeal to me – especially since I like to be outside as much as possible, and have spent the last 8 years in a place where I can go climbing outside or play beach volleyball barefoot in the middle of February. However, the summer is beautiful!
A few years ago, I was surprised to learn that Wisconsin is the home to some of the best rock climbing in the Midwest, all at Devil’s Lake State Park. I grew up going to this park on a regular basis, but had no idea. Now that I climb, I was naturally excited to take a trip home to visit the family while also getting the chance to experience some incredible climbing.
On our last day of climbing there (after it rained on both previous days, limiting us to only about 3 climbs total), we were excited to get great weather. On the very first climb, John led a challenging 5.10a called Congratulations. For anyone not familiar with Devil’s Lake, the routes here are incredibly tough for the grade. I consider myself a 5.10d/11a climber, and yet I could not get past the crux on this climb. And there were a number of other climbs that proved challenging… despite only being rated 5.7 or 5.8.
Anyhow, John took a few falls on the low crux before making the climb. As a result, his first piece of placed gear (one of the fancy tri-lobed link cams) got yanked deep into the crack. We ended up spending the next hour trying to wrestle the over-cammed gear from the crack.
Eventually, we realized that the cam simply wasn’t going to budge. Die-hard trad climbers consider leaving gear in the wall akin to littering, so John resolved to clean the wall up any way possible. At this point, he built a simply pulley system to create a mechanical advantage so he could yank the gear out through force.
John wrapped the rope around a giant rock over and over again, and then wrapped it through carabiners attached to the cam. After a couple rounds of tightening and then pulling on this setup, the cam ripped free. In the end, an entire lobe was torn off and left in the wall (which STILL wouldn’t come out).
I should also note that poor John experienced some more gear destruction on this trip. I want to preface this by pointing out that I only seem to talk about the times where I mess up or freak out (because who wants to hear about the times everything goes smoothly?). Just don’t go thinking think that I am constantly screwing up, destroying gear, or freaking out. Most of the time, I’m actually level-headed and not completely insane and accident prone… I swear.
Anyhow, I was following a climb along a diagonal crack, so I knew that every time I removed a piece of gear a fall would send me swinging. This coupled with the fact that the climb was extremely high up, the rock was unfamiliar, and my dislike of climbing on trad gear, and I was a terrified wreck. I would remove gear as quickly as possible and then try to get to the next piece as soon as possible. As a result, there were three times where I cleaned gear from the wall but never moved it to my harness.
When I finally reached the time, I was crying and cursing mess (much to my dismay, there was a group of stunned 8 year olds hanging out at the top). I was so relieved to be done that I untied and threw the rope down, sending those three pieces of gear plummeting towards the ground… and John (thankfully he noticed them falling and got the hell out of the way).
Needless to say, John was a good sport about it, and I eventually replaced the cams. And I only ‘retired’ for about two weeks, despite insisting at the completion of the climb, that I never wanted to climb again.
Leave a Reply