Following up on yesterday’s post, not all the bouldering on the West Bluff at Devil’s Lake is spread out and hard to find. A short hike down the tumbled rocks trail followed by a brief foray in to the talus will bring you to the boulder that is home to Wisconsin’s (likely) hardest problem, The Keymaker (V11?).
The boulders are actually visible from the trail – Full directions here
Beautiful Soup = Green line, Keymaker = Blue line
The Keymaker is a logical extension to a previously established problem, Beautiful Soup (V8). Beautiful Soup starts on the left side of the boulder and traverses off right after gaining a break at half height. Gaining the break via a long deadpoint with your left hand is the crux.
The Keymaker starts at a logical point on the lower right of the boulder, climbs up through the difficult deadpoint move on Beautiful Soup and continues straight up to the top of the boulder. The crux of the problem is found in these last few moves where you are required to lockoff a very small crimp at your waist. The height also becomes a factor as the uneven landing tends to funnel falling climbers into a deep pit at the base of the boulder. To recap, you climb a non-trivial traverse into the V8 crux of BS followed by a difficult lockoff move over a bad landing.
The first ascent of The Keymaker was done back in 2003 by Brian Sandona. At the time he proposed a grade of V11, but that was partly based on Beautiful Soup being considered V9 at the time. With Beautiful Soup settling more in the V8 range it is possible that Keymaker is not quite as hard. Of course the only way to know for sure is for someone to repeat it, which I hope someone (me?) will do this year. Here are a couple of pictures I took in May of 2003, a few weeks before the FA was done:
Moving through the traverse into the beginning of Beatiful Soup
Another notable problem in this cluster of boulders is Alpine Club (V9). First climbed by Peter DeSalvo, this deceptively difficult line has seen few repeats (that I am aware of). It starts on a rather positive edge indicated by the chalk mark near the bottom of the below picture. After that…I have no idea.
