The Donut Shop Climbing

Drive out of Spearfish and get on Highway 14A and drive up canyon towards Lead. Go past Blue Sky and drive about a mile past Mohican. Look for a gravel pullout on your right just before you get to a yellow Falling Rock sign. Check for house posts 21147 and 21143. Get out of your vehicle and walk towards the Falling Rock sign. Turn right at this sign and take a trail though the woods towards the creek. Cross a thick log bridge and walk past a rock carn towards the sign nailed to the tree that tells you to go right in order to get to Bob' Buttress. Turn left at this sign and start walking uphill. After what seems like a billion miles of walking, the trail terminates at a yellow wall known as The Big Leblondski. For a list of climbs for this cool, blond wall click on this link to the right mountainproject.com/v/the-b…

For those of you with a copy of Mike Cronin's "Spearfish Canyon, The VC and Other Black Hills Limestone" turn to page 104 for a small preview of what this part of Spearfish Canyon has to offer at Bob's Buttress mountainproject.com/v/bobs-…

If you want to climb at The Bob Buttress, Cronin's guidebook has a map that tells you to take a right turn after crossing a log bridge over the creek. The Big Leblondski wall and The Donut Shop wall can be reached if you simply turn left after the log crossing. If you want to climb at The Donut Shop Turn right at The Big Leblondski wall and walk in a westerly direction for one more minute. Most of The Donut Shop routes are on a black wall with patches of blonde. Past this mostly black wall is a yellow buttress with a group of hard 5.12 climbs on it. The black and yellow wall is the warm-up wall for this area and has a good mixture of hard tens, worthy elevens and one stout 5.12 to keep the average climber busy all day.

The Donut Shop, and its neighbors, are probably the closet thing to a locals only crag that Spearfish Canyon offers. Getting invited by a resident climber, who knows the area, is the best way to enjoy these crags. Their remote location and strange weather windows have ensured these crags to be places where solitude is utterly guaranteed. The routes range from five ten to five twelve with an even mixture of everything. Visitors should not be detoured, but if The Big Picture Gully hike almost caused you to have a heart attack, you might think twice about trying to climb here.