My first climbing at Devil's lake: Rusty Piton Tower. And, the rusty piton, to prove I didn't make it all up.
We were having a family reunion in the Wisconsin Dells, since my sister's family lives in Wisconsin, and so I did some googling to find some climbing in the area. Turns out that the best rock climbing area in the midwest is just a few miles away, at Devil's Lake just south of thriving metropolis of Baraboo, Wisconsin (home of the Circus World Museum.) So I had my sister retrieve a guide book for the area from the local library, A Climber’s Guide to Devil’s Lake by that quintessentially Midwestern name, Sven Olof Swartling.
We headed down to the lake Wednesday afternoon, for climbing for me and swimming and a bit of hiking for the rest of the family. I'd hoped on an early start, but with a large extended family (including teenagers) on vacation, you take what you can get.
We parked at the north end of the lake and I left the kids at the beach, and my mom, sister, and I headed off to the hiking trails and the climbing.
As with Mt. Erie, the crux here is actually finding the crag. I had the book in my hand, plenty of documentation, and so it seemed to me that I should have been able to just walk right up to the crag of my choice, but of course I got it confused.
So, once I had figured out that I needed to look at the diagram at the most northerly end of the lake, I found a promising-sounding crag, Tree Tower, and headed up the trail looking for where it might be. A few people passed me heading the other way, one of them talking authoritatively about poison ivy, which I couldn’t identify even after his description, and eventually I found what seemed to match the description of the area. The upside to this place is that it’s pretty dry, so there’s not a lot of underbrush to thrash through. It wasn’t nearly as unpleasant as in Walla Walla.
I headed down a scree slope, and found what looked like might be the Tree Tower, not very big or impressive, but a tower nonetheless. So I pulled on my shoes and climbed what was described as a 5.2 route, although another 5.2 route next to it seemed much harder than I thought it should be. There was an old rusty piton in there, though, which seemed to suggest it was the right area. So I messed around on the tower, climbing another side of it, and then headed north, back towards the swimming beach, to another tower the book mentioned, Tyrolean Tower.
And, came upon the ACTUAL Tree Tower. Much bigger and more impressive, (and with a tree growing out of the top of it!) and much nicer climbing. I did the 5.2 crack route twice, and it was a good twice as long as the other tower (Piton Tower?) and much nicer climbing. I downclimbed the flake route, which seemed sufficiently easy that I didn’t bother climbing it.
Then, north again to the actual Tyrolean Tower. There’s an “easy 5.4” chimney route on it, and I gave it a try. But it was filthy, full of dirt and leaves and enormous spider webs. Clearly this route doesn’t get much climbing. There’s a 5.7 route right next to it that looked quite clean and tempting, but I wasn’t about to give that a go without a rope or a helmet.
So, back to the beach. It felt awfully good to get into the water and wash off the sweat and dirt. That's a nice feature of climbing here -- you get filthy and trashed, and then you can go swimming!
But, of course, I wanted more, since I had gotten an idea of the lay of the land. So on Saturday, I got up at 5:00 AM, and headed back down to Devil’s Lake and do some more climbing. The humidity of this place continues to astound me -- according to the outside thermometer in my rental car, it was 68 degrees, but still so muggy that I needed the air conditioner running!
I got to the south parking area by 6:00, and hiked up to the Balanced Rock wall. I started out on “Basswood Chimney,” a 5.2 climb which starts out every bit as awkward as they say, but ends nicely then circled around to the “Box Canyon” where there are better easy climbs. (As I got ready to start up Basswood Chimney, a walking stick appeared on my arm, a good-sized one four inches long. I panicked briefly before I recognized it.)
There’s a very nice apparently unnamed 5.4 climb up the corner, and once again, I was able to tell whether I was off-route by the markings in the green lichen. It’s almost like following the chalk marks, but for feet rather than hands.
I liked the corner climb well enough that I climbed it a second time, and then tried the two crack climbs on the wall. I did the left one first, Hitch Hike, because it looked so easy I figured it must be harder than it looked. It was, actually; in fact it wasn’t until I did what felt like cheating, using a foothold to the right of the crack, that I was able to get up. At the top of the climb, there was a good-sized and active wasp nest, and so I jetted away from that as quickly as I could, back down past the balanced rock yet again. Then, I did the right crack, which is a very fun hand crack, Whamus, so fun that I would have done it a few more times, if not for those irritating (and irritated) wasps.
I tried doing the face climb, Balance Climb, but I just couldn’t get up it, it was too slick. The rock is quartzite, and I guess the humidity is a factor. Or, maybe I just suck. So I did the corner climb one last time, then decided to try a nearby crag, “Hole in the Wall” but wasn’t able to find it.
The whole time I was climbing, thunder rolled every few minutes, and it got increasingly loud and near, and I figured rain must be on its way. And, in fact, it did start drizzling, about the time I got back to the parking area.
There is an Indian mound there on the south side of the lake, in the shape of a bird with long legs, wings extended. It’s hard to see; it’s only two or three feet high, and something like 150 feet across, so it’s subtle. According to the sign next to it, it’s one of the few mounds that have actually had a human skeleton in it; it’s unclear how many of these mounds were burial mounds, but evidently this one was.
Clearly, if we go back to the Dells for another family gathering, I'll have to plan for more time there. It's quite nice rock, and LOTS of crags, and not at all crowded (at least not in August.)