In reply to Simonfarfaraway:
Here’s some more detailed info on the Needles and Devil’s Tower.
Needles.
Although there is a tremendous amount of rock here, the vast majority of the climbing is contained in two regions: Custer State Park (hereafter CSP) and Mt. Rushmore (hereafter MR). This is to some extent a trad/sport division, with CSP having the majority of trad routes and MR having the majority of sport routes.
Almost all the climbing is on spires, some of them incredibly slender, mostly one pitch but occasionally as many as three pitches in length. The spires are often packed together in maze-like concentrations that make it amusing and adventurous to even locate some of the routes. Since you are climbing on Spires, the feeling is very different from cragging, as real and sometimes extremely airy summits are the rule and rappel descents are the norm.
The rock in the Needles is unique. It is granite, but not the kind you’ll find in Yosemite or Chamonix. In the Needles, the granite is infused with pegmatite and quartz crystals that have weathered out to form nubbins that characterize most of the climbing, even when cracks are involved.
Custer State Park.
As an old-school trad area, you will in general want to be very solid at the grade you are attempting, as run-out climbing is not at all rare. I think that nowadays, the best strategy is to begin with some sport routes at MR to get used to the unique Needles rock and then, if you like the adventures of trad climbing, head over to CSP.
Climbing in CSP started with a visit from Fritz Wiessner in the mid-thirties, and picked up considerably when Herb and Jan Conn moved to the area in 1949. After ten years of exploration by the Conn’s, John Gill, and then Bob Kamps and friends showed up, cameo appearances were made by American luminaries Royal Robbins and Henry Barber, and the standards went up. The area has mostly had a strong “California trad” ethic, which generally eschews fixed anchors, but does include the placing of bolts on the lead on ground-up ascents of climbs involving blank faces. More recent climbs of much greater difficulty have involved more bolting, but have generally adhered to the ground-up philosophy in which the climb itself dictates when or whether the leader will be able to pause and drill. A consequence is that the presence of bolted protection does not mean the climb is not run-out. Moreover, many of the low to mid-range grades (5.0—5.10) are are considered on the low side by contemporary climbers, so caution with respect to grading is advised.
Without maps, finding most of the routes in CSP is going to be beyond the capabilities of a casual visitor. It is, however, possible to get some maps. Herb Conn was a civil engineer and made wonderful survey maps of the region. These went through various transcriptions and eventually ended up in Paul Piana’s out of print guidebook “Touch the Sky,” and various people have posted scanned or photographed images of these maps that will be adequate for the task of locating spires. I’ve annotated some of the maps and posted them on various threads on Mountain Project. Here are links to the annotated maps:
Cathedral Spires and Picket Fence:
http://www.mountainproject.com/images/27/60/110532760_large_7bd1e7.jpg .
Ten Pins:
http://www.mountainproject.com/images/27/20/110532720_large_38ac5b.jpg .
Needles Eye:
http://www.mountainproject.com/images/27/22/110532722_large_82c0fb.jpg .
Needles Eye Detail:
http://www.mountainproject.com/v/110532724 .
Sylvan Lake Outlets:
http://www.mountainproject.com/images/27/14/110532714_large_a83979.jpg .
Guidebooks to the CSP climbs are hard to come by, and Mountain Project is currently the best resource (and the only one for more recent routes). But without the maps mentioned above, Mountain Project will not be of much use.
The classic guidebook, now seriously out of date as well as out of print, is “Touch the Sky” by Paul Piana. You can buy it at astronomic rare-book prices, but basically it is not available. There is likely to be a copy you could inspect at the local shops and guide services.
An interesting option with a historical slant is to try to retrace the Conn’s footsteps. They did more than 200 climbs in the Needles, with grades that, according to contemporary climbers, got into the 5.9 realm. Most of this is recounted in
http://stores.sharpendbooks.com/south-dakota-needles-adventure-climbs-of-he... .
There may or may not be several smaller guidebooks available. Ask at the local shops and guide services. The Sylvan Rocks guide service sells The Needles Poor Persons Guide by John Page. Go to
http://sylvanrocks.com/history_custer/custer_climbing for more information and some mini-guides (which will not, however, be of any use without the maps linked above).
Among the worst guidebooks ever written (Extreme Angles may have cornered the market), massively incomplete—way over-focused on minor areas while excluding major ones, idiosyncratically graded, laden with irrelevant fluff, employing a three-star quality system that gives almost every climb three stars, and absurdly overpriced, is
http://extremeangles.com/?product=the-needles . The maps and drawings are good for what they do cover, but I still wouldn’t mention it at all except that there is so little currently-available published info.
Mount Rushmore
This is a different story, there is a good current guidebook available,
http://www.fixedpin.com/products/the-needles-of-rushmore . The rock and general nature of the climbing at MR is the same as CSP, but the majority of MR climbing is sport climbing.
Spearfish Canyon
There’s a current guidebook for this too:
http://www.amazon.com/Dakotas-Spearfish-Canyon-Dakota-Limestone/dp/18925407... .
I’m going to make a very biased recommendation that might produce howls of protest from some of the locals: don’t spend any of the small number of days you have to climb limestone, which is available world-wide and almost certainly in higher quality and quantity elsewhere, when you are in a region with unique rock and formations that can be found nowhere else. In other words, stick to the Needles and Devil’s Tower.
Devil’s Tower
Again, Mountain Project is going to end up being your main source of information. The climbing is characterized by long crack systems. If you are going to venture beyond the Durrance, you may want a substantial rack. Here is a quote, seconded by a long-time tower local, about gear:
"I would recommend at least two full sets of nuts (some routes can take nuts very well, and you can bring more if you have them) and, if possible, 4 sets of cams up to a #3 Camalot, and as many #4 Camalots as you have if you want to do routes that take them. There may be a few specialty pitches that take wider (e.g., Patent Pending), but that's atypical.
Three sets of cams would work too for most routes I'm sure and perhaps would be more standard than 4 for most people (I don't mean to say you would bring every cam up every route of course, or even close to it). Two sets of cams just doesn't seem like enough, but if you have lots of nuts (including in bigger sizes), you could probably make that work.
I'm assuming you aren't using hexes; those could substitute for cams, but who really uses them anymore? "
A substantial list of routes with recommendations and gear lists is at
http://www.devilstowerclimbing.net/routes/index.html. But there are no pictures, so locating the routes is going to be a problem. I think there are up-to-date photos at the ranger facility at the tower.
The Sylvan Rocks guide service has a free Devil’s Tower miniguide which should be enough for a brief visit:
http://sylvanrocks.com/devils_tower_climbing/guidebook .
