Mountain Project: Climbing Raspberry Rocks

Submitted By: Peter Gram on Jul 18, 2002
Administrators: Andrew Gram, Peter Gram, Greg Parker
Views: 8,982 page views

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Description

Raspberry Rocks is a highly secluded ridge of high quality rock. Most routes are around two pitches long. This is a great place to go for a high concentration of cracks. A lot of crack climbing in the Needles is little more than crack protected face climbing. But here, many true jam cracks are available for fingers to offwidths, chimneys and even vertical caving on Carl's Bad Caverns. Another plus for this area is the lack of crowds. There is little to no bolted routes here, so bring a standard rack.

Getting There

From Keystone, head out of town towards Mt. Rushmore. At the highway 244 and 16a junction, take a left on 16a and measure the distance from this point. The road is hard to find, so make sure to keep an accurate odometer reading. After 4.5 miles, you will pass the high point of Iron Mountain highway. Continue an additional 4.1 miles to the Raspberry Rocks road. To find it, watch out for a overgrown dirt road heading right as the highway veers left. If you see a small paved parking area on the left side of the road, then you just missed the turn. The turn is a very hard right from the highway.

From here, either park or drive (probably need at least a Subaru Outback or something similar) for 1 mile to the end of the road. This is at the top of the hill, and Raspberry Rocks is to the right. Find a faint trail, and then traverse around the rocks on talus, losing 100 or more feet of elevation. The main area is several minutes of hiking away. Keep walking around the base until the rock gets steeper and less fractured.

The Classics

Mountain Project's determination of some of the classic, most popular, highest rated routes for Raspberry Rocks:

Rocking Raspberries 5.9 Trad, Sport, 1 pitch, 80 feet Weather Watchers Wall

Weather or Not 5.9 Trad, 2 pitches, 170 feet Weather Watchers Wall

Raspberry Corn Flakes 5.10a Sport, 1 pitch, 90 feet West Face

Dog Days of Summer 5.10a Trad, Sport, 1 pitch, 80 feet Weather Watchers Wall

Somewhere East of Fresno 5.10c Trad, Sport, 1 pitch, 80 feet Weather Watchers Wall

Frosted Red Raspberry Pop Tarts 5.10d Trad, Sport, 2 pitches, 90 feet Weather Watchers Wall

Featured Route For Raspberry Rocks

Shannon Twomey commits to the beginning of the 30' long crux on Somewhere East of Fresno.

Somewhere East of Fresno 5.10c SD : Raspberry Rocks : Weather Watchers Wall

In my opinion this is the finest single pitch Raspberry Rocks has to offer. I have climbed this pitch over 50 times myself. Locate a hand crack about 20' left of Pressure Drop. Climb this handcrack into a "V Slot" then start clipping bolts, move over the roof and start the finger tip liebacking alternating with some stemming. After the seventh bolt move right into an incipient finger and handcrack. At about 80' you will find the anchors. It is po...[more] Browse More Classics in SD

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