Climbing in the Black Hills with the Woods and Coopers

The featured photo shows Bob Wood climbing in the Chopping Block area of the Rushmore Needles. Typical of the beautiful scenery up there ...

The kids really enjoyed the opportunity to get together - unlike last trip when Julia was stuck w/ us for most of the time.

Night time entertainment was provided by Bob and Garett and their instruments.

More photos here! (Added to the end of the Aug Black Hills Climbing Trip)

Black Hills - Climbing, and the Harley Culture

We picked a loud time to climb in the Black Hills. It was the week before the Sturgis Harley motorcycle ralley. We saw thousands of bikes every day. The campground was filled with them and their fanatic culture - awake at dawn, cleaning their bikes before even taking their morning pee. Crazy like Islam might be to a Christian fundamentalist .. They were all nice folks though!

The good part was that all the climbers were elsewhere, the climbers familar with the ralley anyway. We had the climbing areas to ourselves. We would have been climbing all day except for the daily afternoon rain and the draw of good ice cream in Custer.

Bill Daniels and his daughter, Sara, joined us for a day so we could get a couple of decent climbing shots. Above is Bill on Hrum Hroom, a great 5.7 in Custer State Park (official site, map). Many climbs in the park are quite run-out so no sniffing at 5.7s here. We also climbed in the Rushmore Needles. See a nice climbing shot of Julia here.

At some point, we said enough and left for Tensleep Canyon in the Bighorn Mountains of Wyoming. Stay tuned.

Black Hills pics, including motorcycles, here!