This week a new book about South Dakota is on the shelves-but it’s not a western romance or a new take on Great Plains politics–rather it’s a rock climbing guide. SDPB’s Charles Michael Ray spent some time with the authors as they were making their way up some Black Hills granite. He reviews the new guide on today’s Dakota Digest—and reports that even if you’re not an avid rock climber this book has something to offer, stunning photographs and views of the Black Hills impossible to capture without a rope and harness.
“The Needles of Rushmore” is a heavily illustrated guide written by two rock climbers with the same initials.
“This is AB and I’m AB,” says Andrew Burr. “I’m AB1 and that’s AB2”, says Andrew Busse. “Wait how come you always get to be AB 1?” asks Burr.
The pair of authors Andrew Busse and Andrew Burr have spent hours together hashing out the minute details and getting the photos just right. This climbing guide is a total of nine years in the making.
“To use the cliché term it’s definitely a labor of love. Not a whole lot of money to be made off this sort of stuff, but that’s really not the reason we do it anyway, so that’s what makes it OK,” says Burr. “And if you decide to co-author it’s like a marriage, if you want to use another cliché, and the honeymoon is over pretty quick too,” says Busse.
Burr and Busse really do joke and bicker a like an old married couple–but the mutual love of rock climbing is evident. On a cold November afternoon the pair are out with another local climber Eric Hansen near Sylvan Lake. Hansen is leading up a sheer granite face, with Burr following up, while Busse logs details about the climb on paper. It’s slow and sort of hard going. First they have to find the right line, then they must climb it--along the way they take down notes to rate each route for safety, difficulty, and quality. They’re doing this for the next volume of the climbing guide on about 15-hundred routes around the Sylvan Lake and Cathedral Spires area. The book they just published, on the area around Mt Rushmore has many more on top of this.
“I just counted them for the first time yesterday. That book has 940 routes in it. And we I’d say that either 95 percent of those we either climbed or rappelled and looked at every single route to give accurate information and to help people find them,” says Burr.
There are hundreds of rock formations that dot the Central Black Hills. Some, have well-known names like Old Baldy, Little Devils Tower, and the Cathedral Spires–each individual outcrop can have dozens of different routes to climb. Who knew there were so many rock climbs in the Black Hills? Turns out–not even all the locals. Sitting at the base of a granite face on the backside of Sylvan Lake Burr notes that there are some 300 climbs in this vicinity. But…
“There is maybe published information on 40 of those 300 routes. So, that’s where the problem occurs. So, unless you’re in the know there is not a lot of local people in the community who know what’s going on you can’t find the routes. More so you don’t even know that they are there,” says Burr.
Burr and Busse are unwilling to take all the credit for this work. They say this guide is a collaborative effort involving the climbing community–others who pioneered early routes, or authored earlier guides, contributed advice, essays, data, time, and photos.
“The Black Hills has a really great climbing community it’s tough to find that in other places. And even when traveling I’ve noticed that there is not a sense of local community like there is here. But on top of that the climbing here is very historic and very unique in that you have all these rock lime spire formations poking out of the forest everywhere and it’s like super cool it’s amazing. I love it here,” says Burr.
For Andrew Busse the work is also about putting his home state in a good light.
“It was kind of my intention starting out was just to put out something reputable out for South Dakota. And, being from South Dakota you’d travel abroad or just get outside of the state into a climbing scene and people would kind of laugh at you when you said you’re a climber from South Dakota. Because they just envisioned flatness. For me it was about giving back and putting something together that was quality that we can be proud of for the entire climbing community,” says Busse.
The newly published rock climbing guide “The Needles of Rushmore” is rich information on how to find and tackle a huge number of rock climbs. It seems important to disclose-I’ve personally dabbled in rock climbing-but I’ve only been up a handful of the routes featured in this guide. But, as a reviewer of this work–I believe “The Needles of Rushmore” has something to offer non climbers as well as enthusiasts. This book is part of the history of climbing in the Black Hills-a sport that was first documented here in the mid 1930’s. On top of this it’s full of visually stunning photos--images captured in some really hard to reach vantage points. Busse and Burr may have set out to make a book local climbers could take pride in, but in the end they achieved a piece of work the entire state can be proud of.