Adopt a Crag event at Palisades State Park, near Sioux Falls SD.

Our East River guide Mark Greeno never seems to stop. He put together an adopt a crag day with the Access Fund at Palisades State Park. Adopt a crags do great things to allow continued access to the the climbing areas we love. Mark says "We are set for the April 24th. We will be doing clean up and trail maintenance between 9 am and 1 pm. There will be free coffee from a local shop serving between 11 am and 1 pm. We will have lunch and door prizes starting at 1 pm until 1:30 pm and then will offer climbing, sand volleyball and slack-line activities between 1:30 and 5:30 pm. At 6 pm we will have a barbecue and live music (local)." Its a lot of great activities for helping out to take care of a special place near Sioux Falls, SD.

For more info, contact Mark Greeno - 605-360-7465

Jewel Cave reaches 150 Mile marker!!

Congrats to all the cavers over the past 100 years who helped map and survey the miles and miles of Jewel cave National Park...now recognized as the worlds 2nd longest cave.

Check out a Blog post, you Tube video, and Jewel cave pictures via the Sylvan Rocks Blog site.

Also check out, Sylvan Rocks Climbing Adventure - South Dakota Tourism on the SD tourism pages. I'm still working with their web guru to get the text to load correctly, but if you have ever been out with us and had fun rock climbing, help us spread the word by clicking on the LIKE icon and or adding a link to your blog, digg, or other social media page. This helps us look cool to the rest of the world so we can keep offering up great vacation fun and photos to the rest of the world.

new website

You may have noticed that I've not been posting as much. Well there is a new blog in town and I'm not sure there is room for the 2 of them.

The new Sylvan Rocks Climbing Website has a built in blog feature, so I've been posting there. Pics of our XC skiing trip in Yellowstone....links to pics of the climbing trip to Mexico we just returned from.... If I end up not keeping up with this blog..you can always find out what is going on in the Black Hills on the Sylvan Rocks blog or the sylvan rocks facebook fan page.

How tough are you?

Just a little fun video of a pretty tough climber from India. Don't expect me to demonstrate any flips on to the hand that I'm holding myself on the rock with. WOW that looks like it must be painful even if you don't miss



see it here on youTube

Hill City Climbing Wall

Thanks and kudos to Superintendent Mark Naugle and all the rest of the crew who made the magic happen in creating the impressive new school in Hill City. Extra double kudos for putting up a climbing wall. We will be expecting a huge new wave of rad home grown young climbers to be out there tearing up the Needles, Devils Tower, Spearfish Canyon and beyond.

Thank You Hill City!!!!! Go Rangers

Custer State Park Heli Logging

As many of you know,the good folks at Custer State Park are pretty scared of the Pine Beetles that are killing the trees as a result of the conditions brought on by the long drought in the west that "ended" a few years back. CSP is doing all they can to slow the spread of this little critter and the killing effects it has on the forest. They started by chopping infested trees up in 2' hunks. This is the reason why the Cathedral Spires area looks like a war zone. Well, for awhile it was a war zone.

The battle has moved on and they are now using more high tech tools. They brought in a Heli Logging Company with a way cool K-max helicopter to pluck the infested trees out of the forest w/o building roads over the rough and beautiful terrain that we all love. The K-max is all business. Designed to lift over 6000 pounds, it is a sky truck!! Parts of the places we love are looking pretty industrial this winter, but the end result is going to look GREAT. Only the stumps of the bug trees will be left, and a whole new vision of the park will come of it. We will see granite masses that have been hidden by the trees for decades. I'm willing to bet that boldering will go off like crazy now that you can see the rocks.


For some of you, the idea of logging might be hard to swallow, but for those of you who climb, this could do a lot to save our beloved climbing area in the event of a fire. Because our forest have been starved of fire, they are over grown. Thus when they do burn they burn HOT HOT HOT. As I understand it, very hot wild fires can change the structure of the rock such that all the great crystals and friction that make this place such an awesome face climbing area start to break down and fail when weighted. Not so good for climbing!!!!! So getting rid off all that fuel might be saving a classic climbing area. Mother nature weaves such a tangled web.

Sausagefest 2010

So we harvest 3 deer this year, and Matt got one too. More importantly he helped me drag one in from over the hill and through the woods out on the prairie, but thats another really fun story!! So with all this red meat, we decided to take advantage of the sausage attachment on our grinder.

Now, having a "sausage making party" does bring up a few sophomoric jokes, but the end result is good good eats. I still have a lot to learn about this hunting game, but thats the fun of it for sure. Besides, when there is 6" of snow on the ground, the high temp of the day is 6, and there is only 10 hours of daylight, the climbing isn't all that fun. So "When in Rome..." I think Matt is becoming a true South Dakotin...he is talking a lot about buying a bow for next season.

Until then, we'll be enjoying a freezer full of goodness.