After a full day of working the Cave Traverse, Katie and I definitely needed a rest day. We wanted to play "tourist" and walk around the potholes for a little bit. It was fun and we got to mess around for the morning before we drove back down to Devil's Lake.
I will say that the Potholes were really cool and definitely fun to walk through for a while. There is a nice, self guided tour that you can walk yourself through and gives some good history on the area. It was also fun to check out the climbing over on the Minnesota side. It's VERY slick and VERY polished. It's a lot like Devil's Lake in that respect and seems like it'd be fun if we had some more time. Chances are that it'd be pretty frustrating for a while though, until you got used to the friction. Left of Lloyd's looked cool and somewhat my style. I'd be interested in getting up there again to try it out.
One thing that both Katie and I noticed were the multiple signs that explained climbing. I thought that was a nice touch that the park actually see climbers as a user group and makes an effort to educate people.
The best part of the morning might have been the half hour or so that we sat by the river watching a couple of climbers on a nearby wall. There were two climbers teaching another how to multi pitch. Taylors isn't exactly.....well.....huge, and the wall itself was only 40-50 feet tall. In the time we were there one of them scrambled up 10 feet of third class ledges and started building an anchor to bring the other two up. My guess is that they are still on the wall waiting for YOSAR to pick them up....
Here are a couple of shots from the morning.
She woulda fit if she wasn't scared that it was a bottomless pit
Most bomber toprope anchor ever built. This provided many, many laughs
Katie, walking on one of the trails through the potholes
Looking into the biggest known pothole at Taylors Falls....and looking very similar to the lady on the sign.....minus the dress
Katie is either very disapproving of getting her picture taken or trying her best to be a pirate....you decide
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I've only climbed there once but we used to go there to make trouble when I was in high school. Ahh the memories. Somewhere on the WI side across from there (it's been 2 decades since I was there, ugh I am old) there is a 100+ foot sheer cliff that it used to be popular to jump off, coolest big air ever. I have no idea how deep the water is there but I never touched bottom. Monkey see monkey do...
ReplyDeleteOops me again CE
ReplyDeleteMonkey see monkey do is always the best kind of fun. Always.
ReplyDeleteargh.
ReplyDelete