That evening Paul Hudak and his kids joined us. We did lots of fooling around with the kids as well as sneaking out for occasional climbs. Paul and I did Loose Ends on the Book and Marti and I did Sorcerer on the Bookend. Next to us we saw a couple on a new route: Climb of the Ancient Mariner. This is an extremely clean bolted slab that they said was about 10a. The big climb was to be the Barb on the Spearhead. We were on the trail by 3:45am and to the route by 7:30. However, it was cold with no sun and ominous clouds over Longs. We traversed off after 2 pitches. Marti decided to stay down and Paul and I did the ridge. The ridge turned out to be very nice - especially the last two pitches above the barb. Paul was wasted by the altitude but we eventually hit the top. Just before we went back to Denver Paul and I bagged the Ancient Mariner - very well bolted and one of the nicest routes on Lumpy.
After Paul and Marti left I ran out of partners. I talked my brother Doug into a day in Eldo and hauled him up VD on the West Ridge - a nice 5.7. That evening Marti's cousin Paul and his son Brad (10) did an easy route on the Wind Tower. On Wednesday, I headed to meet Mike Coffin in the Black Hills. On the way I took Doug and Eric up to Vedawoo for an afternoon. Eric refused to climb again but Doug and I did MRC (sandbag 5.7) and a bunch of short slab routes. That evening I met Mike in Rapid City to do the Needles in the Black Hills.
Needles was awesome - definitely have to get back there. The first day we started at the `Outlet Rocks' area. Although there are a few larger rocks, most of the climbing there is on free-standing pinnacles about 50 - 70 feet tall. Lots of them have no rap anchors - you lower one guy down then have him hold the rope while you rap the other side. We started on the decimal point (?), an easy 5.6. The rock is extremely coarse and full of large crystals. There's also not much pro - occasional cracks and bolts. Lots of runouts. This one wasn't bad and we headed for another route. Although the next one (I forget the name, but on the same mass of rock) was no harder, I backed down after staring at a potential 40' fall on vertical (but large) crystals. Fortunately, we found shiny bolts around the corner on a route that proved to be about 5.7 but not in the book.
Next we buzzed to one of the classic areas, the Ten Pins. These spires really do look like bowling pins and are right on the road. We bagged an easy one called the Tent Peg in light rain and figured out where the others were (the crux of many climbs is figuring out which rock is which). We had a look at the Needles Eye, but the prospect of a groundfall from 80' up on 5.8 didn't appeal to me. We did `Bell Ringer' instead, a 5.6 crystal climb with lots of funky pro. Mikey finally was toasted (his feet always give out on him) so we headed back.
Next day we went back to the 10 pins. We bagged Kingpin (easy 5.7) and it had an old register with lots of climbing gods in it - way cool. When a touristo asked Mike how we got the rope up there he even pulled one of the `stupid question replies' out of the guide and told him that someone put it up last night. We then bagged Tricouni Nail - probably the most classic climb in the area. It's sustained 5.8 with good pro except for a little runout at the top. The summit barely holds two people. After rapping down, we decided to head to Devils Tower (it was only 1pm) and bag Durrance after all the turkeys were off. Returning, we found the car battery was dead and this lead to a long car epic which I'll avoid describing. In the end, we borrowed another car and finally buzzed out of town around 4:00pm. Arriving at the Visitor Center at 6:30 I forced Mikey into an evening epic. Since it was going to be a full moon I wasn't worried. We were at the base of Durrance by 7 and started buzzing. There was nobody else on the tower and it was nice and cool. We blasted the whole route in about 1.5 hours even though Mike hates cracks. It seemed really easy after being in the Needles. We scrambled to the summit around dark and then rapped down with only a minor stuck rope epic. We hit the bottom at 10pm and crashed for the night. I was still suffering from a cold that started back in Estes and was truely miserable all night. The next morning Mike and I were too wasted to do another route so we headed back to Rapid City. We noticed two guided parties were clogging up Durrance before 7am as we left. Mike and I split up and I made it back to Denver that night.
The last day of the trip I got back to Eldo with some old climbing buddies, Lew Buchholz and Dennis Boyd. We hit the West Ridge again and bagged The Unsaid (5.9), Chianti (5.8), Dr. Michael Solar (5.7), and Positivelt 4th Street (?) 5.9tr. All nice 1 pitch routes I'd never done before. The Youk stopped by and told me about his trip to Canada.