Devils Lake Question

Hey I am going to be on the lake in May, mainly for bouldering.

Where is the best spot to camp that is easy access to the main boulder field?

I take it you've never been there before? NO state park camping is really 'near' the bouldering areas. If you want cheap, low key camping, see Donna out on Rt.12 at Green Valley CG. Otherwise pay up the nose and expect no fun from the DNR gestapo in the park campgrounds.

Man, ya know I've never camped at DL? Doesn't sound like I was missing much though.

If you do camp at the park, either Northern Lights in the woods, or toward the back of the Ice Age campground.

Everything is a pretty quick walk from Northern Lights.

Green acres or whatever its called for sure. its probably only a mile or two off the park, and that lady donna is cool as hell. really nice place to camp.

Climbing Fascist wrote:Man, ya know I've never camped at DL? Doesn't sound like I was missing much though.

You did miss the great era that ended back in '86 when they closed up the south shore campground. Right on the lake, under the best cliffs, easy in/out access to the campsites and climbs.,,, and the best parties ever in Wisconsin State Park history. Guess those are some of the reasons they closed it.

Chris treggE wrote:Before I climbed, 15+ years ago, I camped at one of the group sites with a large, maybe 25-30 people crew. I have no idea where the site was in relation to everything else. We were all not-so-kindly asked to leave and our names were taken down since we were "never welcome in the park again". I am glad they lost that Permanently Banned from DLSP list.

we were up late once at DL, playing board games, drinking and smoking cigars, shouting, cursing, you know , just having lots of fun. DNR got our site number, kicked us out. We then drove up to Mirror Lake to camp instead but they were called and warned not to let us in. Banned from the Wisconsin State park system! Now that sucked for sure. Just one of many bad events over the years there.

We (DLFA) used to have some of the most debauched and fun times when the south shore camp ground was open. As for the wannabe cop tactics of the DNR ,we accepted that dealing with them was just another "fun" challenge of climbing and clubbing at DL.
Sort of like dealing with a twisted crux of a devious climb. It actually became sort of a game after awhile and we often sought out the enevitable confrontation with the DNR.
I can tell you that they tried to be quite sneaky and that their favorite thing to do was jump out from behind a tree and yell "FREEZE,park police!!!" Upon which we would often laugh or all of us run in many different directions into the NITE!!!!
I will try and spew forth some of the more hilarious stories later. Peace and fuk-news SteveS.

Steve Sangdahl wrote:We (DLFA) used to have some of the most debauched and fun times when the south shore camp ground was open. As for the wannabe cop tactics of the DNR ,we accepted that dealing with them was just another "fun" challenge of climbing and clubbing at DL. Sort of like dealing with a twisted crux of a devious climb. It actually became sort of a game after awhile and we often sought out the enevitable confrontation with the DNR. I can tell you that they tried to be quite sneaky and that their favorite thing to do was jump out from behind a tree and yell "FREEZE,park police!!!" Upon which we would often laugh or all of us run in many different directions into the NITE!!!! I will try and spew forth some of the more hilarious stories later. Peace and fuk-news SteveS.

+1. Steve will have the best of the best to share I'm sure.

Awesome. It begs this question ; Anyone ever see a ranger on the top of the cliffs or anywhere but the main parking area? Also, what's the name of that really nasty mannered ranger with the beard? That guy is hell on earth.

If you made a game of it, no wonder they were looking for you.

Of course, that was 30 years ago. The DL staff has completely turned over several times in the decades since.

It does seem a shame that only one of them now is a climber.

If you make a lot of late night noise in the campground, other campers will complain and you will get a visit from an annoyed staffer who would rather be doing something else at that moment.

Climbing Fascist wrote:Anyone ever see a ranger on the top of the cliffs or anywhere but the main parking area? Also, what's the name of that really nasty mannered ranger with the beard? That guy is hell on earth.

Saw a ranger patrolling the East Bluff trail (from Darcy's) after dark, last summer. Also talked to a group of climbers that were fined $175 by Ranger Hell-on-Earth for climbing after 11pm.

Unless on your park campsite or out on lake with a legal license and in a fishing boat,maybe even a sponsored night scuba dive,,, well you are to be out of the park and off trails from 11PM to like 6AM or sunup. Think that has varied over the years.

Climbed at night there a few times, I never saw a ranger anywhere outside of the office. Hell it took them like 3 months to cut up the log that was blocking the CCC trail last spring. Lazy fucks.

why didn't you just cut it then?

Fascist Climber, During my tenure at DL I only saw the DNR on the bluffs maybe 3 or 4 times. Once was during the spring time Beer and Alchol ban( a rule meant to protect regular folks from hoards of drunken youngsters enjoying the end of winter with some of Wisconsin finest cheap swill, sort of a Wisconsin tradition....also a good excuse to bust people) This led to a rather mild encounter,compared to some of our other encounters.A ranger surprised Dave slosh bury and myself while we were bouldering near leaning tower. We were feeling pretty good cause we actually had Heinekin instead of some other hideous cheap swill. Said ranger first informs us of beer ban,we claim ignorance.Then he asks for our identifacation,we explain that we are bouldering and travel very light. What about the beer then boys,well we don't have any water sir. Well I am going to ask you to pure the beer out. Dave being a total smartass suggests that we be allowed to pure it down our throats.NO! We look at the beer and the ranger a few moments then I tell the ranger that we cannot pour the beer out onto the ground as it is against our religion,and we hand the beers to said ranger to pour out himself,which he gladly does(what a sicko) then he let's us go.whew. Pretty mild compared to the time they caught us bouldering at NITE during the beer ban. Oh,man epic! I will post that one another time as I have probably made you all sleepy or thirsty. Peace and fuk-news steve s

Spring beer ban....forgot about that...The hoards of prom and senior high school kids out on the prowl and thus initiating the need to ban alcohol for their own good, up until Memorial Day weekend. Then you can get as F'd up as you want all summer long.... and we do.

My most memorable run-in with partying teenagers was in Furnace, KY. For whatever reason, Mike & Jinci and their one-year old son and I decided to camp there after hiking around the old furnace. We were headed over to the Gorge (as the RRG was known then) the next day. I sometimes wonder how much worse things could have gone that night.

Around dusk the kids showed up in their pickups. They built a fire, cranked the music, and proceeded to have a loud, fun time in the woods on the opposite side of the dirt parking area. We could sympathize: as teenagers we partied in the woods, until about the age of 18 when we all began to move out of our parents’ houses. They seemed a lot like we had been 10 years earlier, only with new redneck trucks instead of ancient junkers.

I crawled in my bag early, which is not unusual, and feel promptly asleep. As my wife will tell you, I can sleep through a lot. Around midnight Mike woke me up. The music was louder than before, the fire was brighter, and they were going to take the baby and go over to Indian Creek in the Gorge to get some sleep. Luckily we had separate cars. I mumbled that I understood, and rolled over and went back to sleep until morning. I was oblivious.

As I later learned, Jinci had gotten tired of the noise, and gone over to ask them to turn it down so that the baby could sleep. They turned the volume down a few notches, and Jinci returned across the parking area. As she got back to our tents, however, they decided that she was impinging on their freedom to party, and cranked it up louder than before. Rather than escalate or plead, Mike & Jinci left. Not many days later, Mike got out his handgun when someone was firing rounds in the camping spot next to us at Indian Creek. In contrast the situation with the teenagers was pretty tame.

When I woke up in the morning, having slept straight through, everyone was gone: no Mike & Jinci, of course, and no teenagers, drunken or otherwise. Only my car was left in the area, but the strange thing was, it had turned 180 degrees and moved over a berm of logs in the center of the parking area, all with the doors locked and the parking brake engaged. Strong kids! There were also muddy footprints all over the hood and roof. After Mike & Jinci left, the kids must have wanted to get a rise out of me and decided to have fun with what was obviously my car. I’ll bet they were miffed that I slept through the whole thing. I’m just grateful that they didn’t try to do anything to my tent, or things could have really gone downhill.

When I was their age, I would have thought the car was a funny prank. Once at a drunken party out on a horse farm, we picked up a friend’s car and put it car down between two trees, trees-to-bumpers. I’m just glad the kids at Furnace waited until after Mike left, and that no one pulled a gun on me.

Woodchuck ATC wrote: You did miss the great era that ended back in '86 when they closed up the south shore campground. Right on the lake, under the best cliffs, easy in/out access to the campsites and climbs.,,, and the best parties ever in Wisconsin State Park history. Guess those are some of the reasons they closed it.

The weekend that I met my now wife, we were camping at the south shore campground. We were 6 of us high school seniors walking around. We saw one of the park police cars coming towards us. We were doing nothing wrong, but I yelled "Cops...Run". Every one scattered and ran into the woods toward the boulder-field. My wife started to run and then stopped running after a few steps because she knew that there was no reason for us to be running from the cops.
She spent the next 15 min trying to explain the mystery of why all her friends ran away when we were not doing anything wrong.

That began our 30-year adventure together!

Climbing Fascist wrote:Awesome. It begs this question ; Anyone ever see a ranger on the top of the cliffs or anywhere but the main parking area? Also, what's the name of that really nasty mannered ranger with the beard? That guy is hell on earth.

A couple of years ago I actually talked that guy into giving me a warning instead of a $175 dollar ticket for driving the wrong way on a one-way road. I had the warning laminated and I keep it in my trailer at Wheeler's.

As far as the OP's question. If you camp at Wheeler's there's actually really good bouldering right on the property but bring some brushes 'cuz the boulders have gotten a bit mossy since Eric Z and Paul J put up all the problems years ago.

jon jugenheimer wrote:why didn't you just cut it then?

a trail that is frequented by hundreds of people each week. how about they do the jobs that we pay them to do. go ahead and bring a chain saw and start cutting up fallen trees at a state park, see what happens.