Extremist’s Guide To Devil’s Lake New Climbs

Extremist’s Guide To Devil’s Lake New Climbs

Any climber that has spent time on the quartzite cliffs at Devil’s Lake State Park knows that it has a rich and colorful history.  Legends like Fritz Wiessner, John Gill and Pete Cleveland all spent time there back in the day, and there is a lot of interesting history behind many of the routes.  I have always wanted to find out more about things like who was the first to lead many of the mainly toproped lines, and I suspect many others would find this interesting as well.  Unfortunately, the main guidebook for Devil’s Lake does little to nothing to share this history.

With this in mind, I was pleasantly surprised the other week to stumble across a post on MountainProject about an old guide to Devil’s Lake called Extremist’s Guide To Devil’s Lake New Climbs.  It was put together by Leo Hermacinski in the mid 1980’s, and it offers a lot of great insight into the route development at Devil’s Lake in the early 1980’s.  The guide has some historic information about the first leads of many of the older Devil’s Lake lines as well.  I think any aspiring Devil’s Lake trad climber will be humbled seeing how long ago (and how boldly) many of the more well known routes were climbed on lead.

Hermacinski was gracious enough to scan the guide and post it for people to take a look at.  You can download a scanned copy of the guide by clicking here.  It is a big file (40+ mb), but I think it is well worth checking out if you have ever been to Devil’s Lake or you enjoy reading some of the history of an old school trad climbing area.

People that know me know that there is one climb at Devil’s Lake I always reference when we talk about ridiculous routes.  By ridiculous I mean contrived, squeezed in, that sort of thing.  Needless to say, I feel pretty vindicated in my point of view after reading Hermacinski’s description of the route on the below page.  The first person to guess the route wins a prize?

Extremist's Guide

Posted In: Traditional Climbing
Areas:

Subscribe

Subscribe to the RSS feed to receive updates, and follow us on Twitter & Facebook

20 Responses to Extremist’s Guide To Devil’s Lake New Climbs

  1. Chris December 11, 2008 at 6:41 am #

    Evanston Township. Now can I have a knife with a hole for a carabiner? (I am so disappointed in you, Alex Johnson.)

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  2. Chris December 11, 2008 at 6:46 am #

    Still missing pages 12 and 13, no?

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  3. Narc December 11, 2008 at 8:22 am #

    Close…but no

    And yes, those pages are still missing.

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  4. Mosley December 11, 2008 at 8:52 am #

    Pine Box?

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  5. Narc December 11, 2008 at 9:00 am #

    Getting warmer…

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  6. Mosley December 11, 2008 at 9:03 am #

    Have to be Ironmongers then…

    maybe? hmmmm, maybe not?!?

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  7. Narc December 11, 2008 at 9:15 am #

    Ding ding ding

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  8. Mosley December 11, 2008 at 9:33 am #

    That was actually my first guess but if you put ‘ironmonger’ or ‘ironmongers super direct’ in to the search at the top, you come up with no results 😉

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  9. Narc December 11, 2008 at 10:20 am #

    I just love how he describes it.

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  10. Chris December 11, 2008 at 12:15 pm #

    Damn you Alex Johnson and damn you Climbing Narc and damn you Mosley.

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  11. Mosley December 11, 2008 at 3:13 pm #

    Awwww, Chris. Don’t fret, I’ll take good care of the carabiner knife.

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  12. Rhoads December 11, 2008 at 3:50 pm #

    Yea, I saw the Ironmongers Super Direct thing. Priceless!

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  13. Narc December 11, 2008 at 4:24 pm #

    How much more DIRECT can one get?!?!?

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  14. Dave December 12, 2008 at 4:46 pm #

    Believe it or not, Ironmongers SD was the most coveted line at DL for a while. Sheldon Smith led it in Oct. 1966 placing two pitons before joining the regular Ironmongers route.

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  15. Narc December 13, 2008 at 9:30 am #

    I should probably qualify my remarks by saying that I have never actually tried Ironmongers SD, so I have nothing against it per se. It just represents the more contrived nature of some climbs at the Lake.

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  16. Chris December 13, 2008 at 11:29 am #

    Don’t knock it till ya try it!

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  17. Narc December 13, 2008 at 11:33 am #

    Probably true, but then I might have to try hard.

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
  18. jonclimbs July 21, 2015 at 4:56 pm #

    I tried the link to download the extremist guide. No luck Can you repost this?

    GD Star Rating
    loading...
    • Narc July 21, 2015 at 5:04 pm #

      Let me see if I can find it

      GD Star Rating
      loading...
      • Seth October 27, 2021 at 4:23 pm #

        I love this. Did you ever get around to reposting this? Thank you

        GD Star Rating
        loading...

Leave a Reply